Most people think of silence in a novel as a gap—a place where the words stop. But for writers like Margaret Atwood, it’s more like a held breath. It shapes the room, pulls you closer, and sometimes says more than a paragraph ever could. I wanted to understand how that works on the page, so I asked Atwood to walk me through it. Her answers surprised me. They were less about technique and more about trust—trusting the reader to lean into the quiet and find something of their own there.
The Architecture of Quiet: How Silence Builds a Scene
Eliza Gale: Margaret, your books give the reader so much space. Pauses, things left hanging, characters who just… don’t go there. Is that something you map out ahead of time, or does it grow out of who the characters are?
Margaret Atwood: A little of both. I think of it like the empty parts of a canvas. You don’t just cover every inch with paint; the bare spots are doing work too. In a story, silence can be structural—a chapter break that leaves you dangling, a conversation where someone flat-out ignores a question. But it also comes from the people you’re writing. Some characters are just cagey by nature. Offred, in The Handmaid’s Tale, lives inside a regime that silences women, but her own quiet—the memories she circles without landing, the grief she won’t name—that’s what gives the book its grain. I’m drawn to characters who hold back. It builds a charge, like there’s a whole hidden mass beneath the surface. The reader has to lean in, guess, fill some blanks. That’s where the electricity lives.
Silence as Resistance and Revelation
Eliza: In The Handmaid’s Tale, silence is a weapon the regime uses, but Offred turns it into something else—a kind of shield, or maybe a private rebellion. Can you talk about that flip?
Margaret: Gilead silences women by law—no reading, no writing, no talking freely. But Offred’s mind is a room they can’t lock. Her interior voice is a quiet mutiny. She also keeps things from the reader. We never learn her real name. That’s not an accident; it’s a refusal. It makes her everybody and nobody at once, a symbol and a secret. Silence can be a prison or a hiding place. Grace Marks in Alias Grace is famously silent about what really happened. That hole in the story pulls the whole plot forward—the doctors, the lawyers, the public, they all pour their own versions into her quiet. She becomes a mirror. That’s true in life too, isn’t it? When someone won’t explain, we rush in with our own answers.
The Reader’s Role: Listening to the Unsaid
Eliza: That makes me think about what you ask of the reader. We’re so used to stories that explain everything, sometimes impatiently. How do you invite someone to sit with ambiguity instead of fighting it?
Margaret: It’s not about trust, exactly. It’s an invitation. You’re saying, “Come build this with me.” If I hand you a finished puzzle, you glance at it and move on. But if I leave gaps, I’m asking, “What do you see in that space?” That can feel uneasy, but it’s also the thing people remember. Nobody recalls the book that spoon-fed them every answer. They remember the one that made them wonder. A novel is a back-and-forth. A pause in the talk, a description that cuts off, a chapter that ends without resolution—those are all ways of saying, “Now you.”
The Sound of Silence: Rhythm and Pacing
Eliza: Let’s get practical. How do you actually make silence show up on the page? Is it sentence length, punctuation, the white space itself?
Margaret: All of it. A short sentence can feel like a caught breath. A paragraph break can land like a small shock. I pay a lot of attention to rhythm—how the words sound if you read them aloud. A long, rolling passage can almost hypnotize you, and then a fragment stops you cold. That sudden stop is a kind of silence too. I also use what I call “negative description.” Instead of telling you what a character feels, I’ll list what she doesn’t do. “She did not cry. She did not move. She did not look at him.” That absence is louder than a scream. It makes you picture the storm inside her.
Cultural Silences and the Unspoken Past
Eliza: Your work often digs into history, and history is full of holes—voices that were never recorded, stories that got buried. How do you approach those blank spots as a novelist?
Margaret: History gets written by the winners, sure, but also by the literate, the connected, the ones who had access to paper and ink. Fiction can step into those silences and give them shape. With Alias Grace, I was working from a real person whose inner life was almost completely missing from the record. The court transcripts and newspapers were loud, but Grace herself was a blank. That blank was a gift. It let me imagine her without breaking known facts. A lot of writers are pulled toward historical fiction for exactly that reason. The silences in history are an open door. You’re not stuffing them full; you’re listening to them and asking, “What might have lived here?”
Silence in Dialogue: The Unsaid Between Characters
Eliza: Dialogue is where silence gets loudest, which is a funny paradox. How do you write a conversation that’s really about what nobody says?
Margaret: You follow the subtext. In real life, people almost never say exactly what they mean. They dodge, they switch topics, their sentences trail off. I try to catch that. A character might answer a question with another question, or just let the quiet hang there. How the other person reacts to that silence—annoyance, relief, fear—tells you everything. I also lean on objects to carry the weight. A character picks up a photo, stares at it, sets it down. No words. The silence around that small act is thick. It’s a way of trusting the reader to get it without a signpost.
The Writer’s Own Silence: Facing the Blank Page
Eliza: Let’s flip it around. The blank page is a silence every writer knows. How do you meet that quiet before the words start coming?
Margaret: With dread and excitement, same as anybody. A blank page is pure possibility, but it’s also a void. I’ve learned not to rush at it. I sit with it. I let things surface slowly. Sometimes I’ll write one sentence and then stop, just to see what it whispers back. That pause is fertile. It’s like dropping a seed and waiting for the dirt to do its work. Writers get scared of silence because we call it writer’s block. But silence isn’t a block; it’s a gestation. The trouble starts when we try to force noise into every second. The best stuff often comes from the quiet cracks between our busy efforts.
Why Silence Matters Now
Eliza: We’re swimming in notifications, endless feeds, constant chatter. Does silence in fiction feel more urgent today?
Margaret: I think so. We’re pelted with words—ads, social media, news, streaming. A novel that gives you quiet is a counterweight. It’s a place to rest your mind. When a book leaves room for your own thoughts, that’s almost a rebellious act. It says, “What you think matters. How you interpret this matters.” That’s a rare gift now. I’ve noticed younger readers, who’ve grown up in all this noise, are especially hungry for quiet books. They’re looking for novels that ask for patience, that don’t tie everything up. It’s a way of taking back their own mental space. I find that really hopeful.
FAQ: Understanding Silence in Literary Fiction
What is the difference between silence and omission in a novel?
Omission is just leaving something out—a fact, a scene, a detail. Silence is more active; it’s the felt presence of that absence. A good writer makes you aware that something is missing, and that awareness becomes part of the story’s meaning. Omission can be accidental; silence is always on purpose.
How can I become a better reader of silent, ambiguous fiction?
Slow down. Notice what characters don’t say, what the narrator avoids, where the prose suddenly thins out. Ask yourself why the author might have chosen to leave a gap. Don’t rush to fill it with your own assumptions—sit with the discomfort and see what surfaces. Rereading helps too; silences often get louder the second time through.
Are there genres where silence is less effective?
Silence can work in any genre, but it’s most at home in literary fiction because that mode leans into interiority and ambiguity. In plot-driven genres like thrillers, silence might show up more sparingly—a clue withheld, a motive left hazy—but it can still add depth. The rule is that the silence has to serve the story, not just be a stylistic tic.
Can too much silence frustrate readers?
Yes, and that’s a real risk. If a novel is nothing but gaps, it can feel evasive or pretentious. The art is in balance—enough solid ground to keep the reader oriented, enough quiet to pull them in. Think of it as a dance between revealing and withholding. The best writers know when to speak and when to let the hush do the work.
