There’s a strange heft to the things we don’t say. In the best literary fiction, silence isn’t just a gap between words—it’s a presence, thick and alive, pressing against the page. I’ve always been drawn to writers who understand that a character’s refusal to speak can tell you more than any monologue. To explore this quiet craft, I sat down with novelist and short story writer Julian Croft, whose latest book, The Pauses Between, has been praised for its delicate, restrained power. We met in a sun-drenched corner of a library, where even the dust seemed to float in slow motion, waiting for a story to land.

The Unspoken as a Character

Eliza Gale: Julian, your new novel is almost suffocating in its quietness. There are these long stretches where characters simply don’t talk. Yet the tension is electric. How do you turn silence into something so loud?

Julian Croft: I treat it like another character, Eliza. It has a shape, a texture, a temperature. In The Pauses Between, the silence between the father and daughter isn’t empty—it’s packed with years of grief and resentment. My job is to make the reader feel that weight, not just notice that nobody’s speaking. I do it by focusing on the physical: a hand that hesitates over a teapot, the sound of a clock ticking in a room where a confession should be. The silence becomes the thing that’s actually being said.

Eliza: So you’re choreographing the negative space?

Julian: Precisely. A dancer doesn’t just move; they hold a pose. The stillness is part of the performance. In prose, a character’s refusal to answer a direct question can hit like a thunderclap. It forces the reader to lean in, to become a co-conspirator in deciphering the subtext. You’re not just handing them a story; you’re asking them to sit in the discomfort of what’s not being said.

The Echo of What Isn’t There

We shifted to the mechanics of writing quiet. It’s a gamble—too little, and the emotional landscape feels shallow. Too much, and the story stalls, leaving a reader adrift. Julian explained that the secret is in the echo.

Julian: Imagine a bell. The strike is the event—a cruel word, a sudden death. The silence that follows is the resonance. A writer’s task is to describe that resonance. You don’t write, “He was sad.” You show him staring at an orange peel left on a plate, the way the light catches the pith, the faint citrus smell that’s now a ghost of a shared breakfast. The silence lives in the details of what’s left behind. In the objects that become little shrines to loss.

This approach, he said, demands a deep trust in the reader. You’re not spoon-feeding emotion; you’re setting the stage for it to bloom in the reader’s own mind. “It’s a collaboration,” Julian said, leaning in. “The writer builds the architecture of the silence, but the reader fills it with their own losses, their own loves, their own things left painfully unsaid. That’s why a quiet moment in a book can feel so intensely personal.”

The Risk of Losing the Reader

But isn’t there a danger, I asked, of pushing the reader away? Of crafting a story so internal and hushed that it becomes a locked room?

Julian: Oh, absolutely. It’s a tightrope. The silence has to be earned. If a character clams up on page one and we don’t yet know what they’re holding back, it’s just a void. The reader needs a glimpse of the stakes first. They need to see the character’s hand tremble as it reaches for the doorknob, to understand the weight of the conversation waiting on the other side. Then, when the character turns away without knocking, the silence is devastating. You’ve built a context where the unsaid is louder than any scream.

Silence as a Cultural Mirror

Our talk turned to how different literary traditions handle quietness. Julian noted that in many Western stories, silence is often a problem to fix—a barrier to intimacy that must be broken. But in other traditions, it’s a form of connection.

Julian: I’m heavily influenced by Japanese aesthetics, especially the idea of ma—the meaningful pause, the space between things. In a haiku, the silence after the last line is where the poem actually lives. In a novel, a shared silence between two characters can be a moment of deep understanding, not a failure to communicate. It’s a cultural shift I try to bring into my work. The silence isn’t a wall; it’s a bridge.

This led us to the reader’s own cultural lens. A pause that feels contemplative to one person might feel awkward or maddening to another. Julian acknowledged that, but argued that strong literary fiction creates its own internal rules. “If you’ve built the world right,” he said, “the reader learns how to read the silences within that specific story. They learn that for this particular character, a downward glance means ‘I love you’ and a turned back means ‘I’m terrified you’ll leave.’ You’re teaching them a new grammar of quietness.”

The Writer’s Own Quiet

I was curious about the writer’s process. Does crafting such restrained prose demand a personal quietness? A withdrawal from the world’s noise?

Julian: For me, yes. I can’t write the quiet if my own mind is a racket. I need a certain stillness to hear my characters’ unspoken thoughts. It’s not about a perfectly silent room—I often write in cafes—but about an internal quiet. It’s the discipline of listening, of not forcing the story, of letting the characters reveal themselves in their hesitations and their glances away. The most powerful moments in my writing come when I stop trying to invent and start trying to observe the scene in my head, to notice what isn’t being said.

He described his first drafts as often being too on-the-nose, full of characters explaining their feelings. The real work, he said, starts in revision, which he calls “the art of removal.” He goes through the manuscript and cuts lines of dialogue, swapping them for a gesture, a look, a description of light falling across the floor. “It’s like sculpting,” he said. “You start with a block of stone and chip away everything that isn’t the statue. I chip away the words to find the silence that holds the truth.”

The Reader’s Role in the Quiet

Our conversation naturally drifted to the reader’s experience. In a world drowning in noise and constant information, a quiet novel can feel like either a sanctuary or a test. Julian believes that literary fiction’s use of silence is a form of respect for the reader’s intelligence.

Julian: We’re bombarded with content that tells us exactly what to think and how to feel. A novel that leaves space for the reader is a radical act. It says, “I trust you to find your way through this.” The silence becomes a shared space between the writer and the reader. When a character doesn’t answer a question, the reader is forced to answer it for themselves, to project their own understanding onto the page. That’s where the magic happens—in that collaborative, imaginative act.

He gave an example from his own reading of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead, a novel that is essentially one long, quiet letter from a father to a son. “The entire book is a meditation,” Julian said. “The silence is in the spaces between the narrator’s memories, in the things he chooses not to tell his son directly. It’s a book that teaches you how to breathe slowly, how to listen to the quiet. It’s a profound gift to a reader willing to accept it.”

FAQ: Understanding Silence in Fiction

Q: How can I, as a writer, tell if a silent moment in my story is effective or just boring?

A: A boring silence is static; an effective silence is dynamic. Ask yourself: Is something changing in this quiet moment? Is a power dynamic shifting? Is a character realizing something they can’t yet voice? If the silence is just a pause in the action with no internal movement, it’s likely dead air. But if the reader can feel the emotional temperature in the room drop or spike, if they’re holding their breath, then the silence is doing its work. Read it aloud. The rhythm of the prose around the silence should feel tense, charged.

Q: Can silence be a form of violence in a story?

A: Absolutely. The silent treatment is a classic form of emotional abuse. In fiction, a character’s deliberate, weaponized silence can be more brutal than any shouted insult. It’s a way of erasing the other person, of refusing to acknowledge their existence or their pain. When a character withholds information or affection, the silence becomes a cage for the other person. Writing that kind of silence requires showing its impact—the confusion, the self-doubt, the desperate attempts to break through that are met with a wall of quiet. The violence is in the effect, not the act itself.

Q: How do you balance the need for quiet, introspective passages with the need to keep the plot moving?

A: The quiet passages shouldn’t stop the plot; they should deepen it. Think of the plot as the skeleton and the silent, introspective moments as the breath that gives it life. A moment of quiet after a major plot point allows the reader—and the character—to absorb the emotional consequences. That absorption then propels the next action. If a character makes a difficult decision in silence, the reader understands the weight of that decision, making the subsequent action more meaningful. The silence isn’t a pause in the story; it’s an essential part of the story’s emotional engine.

As our conversation wound down, the library’s own quietness seemed to deepen. Julian’s final thoughts lingered in the air, a perfect coda to our talk. “In the end,” he said, “silence in fiction is an act of generosity. It’s the writer saying to the reader, ‘I’m not going to fill every crack with noise. I’m going to leave room for your soul to enter the story.’ And that, I think, is the most intimate connection we can hope for.”