Author: Ralph Peters

The Quiet Power: Why Silence Matters in Stories

Turn on the news or scroll through social media for five minutes and your brain is drowning in chatter. Literary fiction pushes back against all that noise. It makes room for what isn’t said—the gaps, the pauses, the moments when a character just breathes. As a book reviewer, I’ve always had a soft spot for novels that trust readers to lean into those quiet spaces. So I sat down with three very different writers to talk about how silence works in their fiction. Their answers surprised me, unsettled me a little, and reminded me why I keep returning to the books that know how to shut up.

Here’s what I came away with: silence isn’t an absence. It’s a presence. It can hold grief, anticipation, intimacy, even the threat of violence. A single well-placed pause can hit harder than a page of dialogue. And for readers, those quiet spots invite a deeper kind of attention—one where we’re not just swallowing a story but helping to shape its meaning.

Meeting the Authors

I talked with three novelists who treat silence as a craft element, not an afterthought. Miriam Thorne’s latest, The Hollow Between Notes, follows a cellist who walks away from the concert stage after a devastating loss. Leo Carver wrote Still Water, Deep Current, a family saga set on a remote Maine island where generations of unspoken things carry their own weather. And Ada Jimenez’s debut, Night Gardens, uses short, splintered chapters to show how trauma scrambles memory—and how silence can be a survival tactic. Three different angles, one stubborn idea: silence is never empty.

Miriam Thorne on the Music of Absence

Eliza Gale: Miriam, your novel centers on a musician who stops playing. How did you think about silence as structure, not just theme?

Miriam Thorne: I kept coming back to the rests in a musical score. A rest isn’t nothing—it’s measured, on purpose. My protagonist, Elena, goes through a traumatic loss and afterward she can’t stand the sound of her cello. But the silence that follows isn’t peaceful. It’s thick, loaded with everything she’s dodging. I wanted the prose to feel like that. So there are scenes where I describe the absence of sound almost physically—how a room feels after a door clicks shut, how the air changes when someone stops talking mid-sentence. I used white space on the page, too. Short chapters that cut off abruptly, so the reader has to sit in that discomfort.

Eliza: That discomfort can be potent. Did you worry about losing readers who want more spelled out?

Miriam: Always. But I trust readers more than that. With grief, too much explanation rings false. Real grief is wordless half the time. I wanted to honor that. If a reader feels unsettled, good—that’s the point. Silence in fiction can be a kind of respect for what the character is living through. It says, “I’m not going to tidy this up for you.”

Miriam’s approach made me think of negative space in painting. What gets left out shapes everything that stays. In The Hollow Between Notes, the silences often carry more emotional weight than any description of music could. It’s a risky move, but it works—it makes you feel Elena’s isolation in your bones.

Leo Carver on Secrets and the Unspoken

Eliza: Leo, your novel is stuffed with family secrets that never fully surface. How do you lean on silence to build tension across generations?

Leo Carver: In a family, silence can be a weapon or a hiding place. In Still Water, Deep Current, three generations share a small island. They’ve learned that survival means not rocking the boat—literal and otherwise. So nobody mentions the father’s drinking, or the grandmother’s affair, or the son who left and never came back. That silence becomes a character. I show it through what people do instead of speak: a character polishes the same window for ten minutes, another stirs a pot way past when it needs stirring. Those small, repeated actions turn into a language of avoidance.

Eliza: So silence as action. Do readers pick up on that consciously?

Leo: Some do, some don’t. But I think it works below the surface. When you read a scene where two people are in a kitchen and neither says what they need to, you feel the weight. You notice the clock ticking, the faucet dripping. Those details get louder. I’m not interested in spelling everything out. If I’ve done my job, the reader will sense the undercurrent even if they can’t name it.

Leo’s use of domestic rituals as stand-ins for speech reminded me of Harold Pinter’s famous pauses—how they can be more menacing than any dialogue. In literary fiction, this technique demands we pay attention not just to the characters but to the space between them.

Ada Jimenez on Fractured Narratives and Survival Silence

Eliza: Ada, Night Gardens is told in fragments that often break off mid-thought. Can you talk about silence as a response to trauma?

Ada Jimenez: For my narrator, silence is a way to grab back some control. She’s been through something she can’t fully put into words, so the narrative reflects that. The broken sentences, the white space—those are the silences of a mind protecting itself. I wanted the form to mirror the content. When she can’t speak, the page goes quiet. It’s not a trick; it’s an honest representation of how memory works. We don’t remember in tidy, linear stories. We remember in flashes, then nothing, then something else bobs up.

Eliza: That asks a lot of the reader’s patience.

Ada: It does. But I think readers are starving for that kind of trust. They don’t need everything handed to them. When you leave a gap, you’re inviting them to step inside the story. You’re saying, “Your experience matters here.” Some of the most powerful responses I’ve gotten were from readers who filled those silences with their own histories. That’s the magic of literary fiction—it’s a collaboration.

Ada’s book is proof that silence can be a form of speech. By refusing to smooth over the narrator’s fractured experience, she gives voice to what often can’t be said. As a reviewer, I found myself lingering on those blank spaces, wondering what I might have placed there myself.

How Silence Shapes the Reading Experience

After these conversations, I started thinking about my own habits as a reader. When a novel trusts me with its silences, I slow down. I get more attentive. I notice the rhythm of the sentences, the heft of a chapter break. It’s a different kind of reading—almost meditative. In a moment when distraction is the default, that’s a rare gift.

But silence in fiction isn’t just about pacing or style. It’s ethical, too. What does a writer owe their characters? What do they owe their readers? Miriam, Leo, and Ada all seemed to land on the same patch of ground: the writer’s job isn’t to hand over all the answers. It’s to build a space where questions can live. Silence is that space. It’s where ambiguity hangs out, and where meaning gets made instead of delivered.

The Risks of Quiet Writing

Of course, this approach has its traps. A novel that leans too hard on silence can feel evasive or self-important. I asked each author how they steer clear.

Miriam stressed sensory detail. “If you’re going to have silence, the world around it has to be vivid. The smell of rosin on a bow, the feel of a wool blanket, rain on a tin roof. Those details ground the reader so the silence doesn’t feel like a void—it feels like a held breath.”

Leo pointed to character want. “Even if characters don’t speak their desires, those desires have to be clear. The silence has to be about something. If the reader doesn’t sense a current of longing or fear underneath, they’ll just be bored. The tension comes from knowing what’s at stake, even if it’s never named.”

Ada talked about pattern. “In Night Gardens, the fragmentation isn’t random. There’s a rhythm. The silences land at specific emotional peaks. If you just scatter silence everywhere, it loses its punch. It has to be earned.”

These insights feel essential for any writer trying to use silence as more than a stylistic tic. It’s a tool that demands precision and deep empathy for both character and reader.

Silence Across Literary Traditions

It’s worth remembering that silence in fiction isn’t new. Virginia Woolf and Ernest Hemingway were masters. Woolf’s “Time Passes” section in To the Lighthouse is a long, lyrical silence covering a decade of loss. Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” famously says the dignity of an iceberg comes from only one-eighth of it being above water. Both approaches remind us that what’s absent can be as solid as what’s present.

Contemporary writers are carrying that tradition forward, but with a new urgency. In a culture that demands constant narrative, constant confession, silence becomes a kind of resistance. It’s a way of saying: some things can’t be summarized. Some experiences fight language. And that’s not a failure—that’s a truth.

Finding Your Own Quiet

If you want to explore this more deeply, start with the books we’ve discussed. But also, pay attention to the silences in whatever you’re reading. Notice when a writer chooses not to describe something. Ask yourself why. What’s being protected? What’s being asked of you? You might be surprised by how much you find.

As the conversations wound down, I asked each author the same final question: What do you hope readers carry away from the quiet in your work?

Miriam said, “A sense that they’re not alone in their own silences.”

Leo said, “Curiosity about what’s unsaid in their own families.”

Ada said, “Permission to be incomplete.”

Those answers strike me as fiercely generous. In the end, literary silence isn’t about holding back—it’s about making room. Room for the reader, for the unspoken, for the mystery that keeps a story breathing long after the last page.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do some literary novels use so much white space or fragmented text?

Authors often use white space or fragmentation to mirror a character’s emotional state, like trauma, confusion, or deep reflection. It lets the reader viscerally experience the story’s mood instead of being told about it. The gaps invite you to pause and feel the weight of what’s missing, similar to a rest in a musical score.

How can I become a better reader of quiet, subtle fiction?

Start by slowing down. Watch what characters do instead of what they say—small gestures, repeated actions, things they avoid. Notice the sensory details that surround moments of silence: sounds, textures, light. Ask yourself what might be happening beneath the surface. Trust your gut; if a scene feels heavy or tense without explanation, you’re likely picking up on the author’s intent.

Is silence in fiction just about sadness or trauma?

Not at all. While silence often accompanies hard emotions, it can also express joy, intimacy, awe, or contentment. Think of a quiet moment between two characters who get each other without words. Silence can be a shared space that deepens connection, or it can signal a turning point where a character is on the verge of change. Its meaning always hinges on context.

I’ve always gravitated toward books that leave room to breathe—the kind where a pause lands heavier than a shouted confession, and the white space on the page feels as deliberate as the sentences it holds. That curiosity led to a long, wine-soaked chat with Mira Chen, a literary novelist whose latest, The Listeners, treats silence not as emptiness but as a character in its own right. We settled at her sun-drenched kitchen table in Portland, a stack of dog-eared paperbacks between us, and talked about what gets lost when writers try to say too much.

Mira’s approach to quiet in fiction didn’t come from a craft book. It grew out of a childhood spent in a house where words were often weapons. “My mother was a yeller,” she said, stirring her tea so the spoon clinked sharply in the quiet kitchen. “I learned early that silence could be a shield. That’s probably why I write characters who use it as armor, or who hide inside it. Silence isn’t always peaceful. It can be violent, too.” That tension—between silence as refuge and silence as wound—threads through all her work, but it’s especially sharp in The Listeners, a novel about a family learning to live around an unspeakable loss.

What Silence Means on the Page

For Mira, silence is never a void. It’s a presence. “My first drafts are a mess of overwriting,” she said. “Then I go back and cut, and cut, until the gaps feel like held breath. A pause in dialogue, a paragraph break that lingers—that’s where the reader steps in and becomes a co-creator.” She described the process as almost sculptural: chipping away at the excess until the shape beneath is visible. “You have to trust that the reader will bring their own life to those empty spaces. If you don’t trust them, you’ll fill every crack with explanation, and the story suffocates.”

We got into how literary fiction splits off from genre stuff here. A thriller lunges forward; a romance builds toward a kiss. But a novel like The Listeners asks you to sit with discomfort. In one chapter, a married couple eats dinner without speaking for seven pages. No internal monologue. No narrator explaining what’s in their heads. Just the scrape of forks and a faucet dripping. “Readers either love that or hurl the book across the room,” Mira said, grinning. “But the ones who love it tell me they felt the marriage more than if I’d listed every grievance. The silence did the work.” She pointed to the way a single gesture—a hand hovering near a glass, then pulling back—can carry more weight than a page of dialogue. “Fiction that respects quiet respects the reader’s intelligence. It says, ‘You’ve been in a room like this. You know what’s happening.’”

The Risk of Losing the Reader

I asked the obvious: Doesn’t too much silence risk losing an audience that’s used to constant narrative hand-holding? Mira leaned in. “Alienating? Maybe. But I’d rather lose a reader who wants everything spelled out than cheat the truth of a moment. Real life is stuffed with silences we can’t decode. A father who won’t talk about the war. A friend who stops calling. Fiction that acts otherwise feels like a lie to me.” She motioned toward Marilynne Robinson’s work—Gilead is practically a long meditation on unspoken love and regret. “Robinson trusts the reader to carry the weight of what’s unsaid. That’s the deal: I won’t spoon-feed you, and you won’t skim.”

Mira admitted that early drafts of The Listeners were met with pushback from a few early readers. “One said, ‘I don’t know what to do with all this quiet. Give me something to hold onto.’ And I thought, that’s exactly the point—the discomfort is the thing to hold onto. But I did learn from it. You can’t just drop a reader into silence and walk away. You have to earn it, build toward it, so the quiet feels inevitable, not arbitrary.” She mentioned a scene where a character stares out a window for a full page. “In the first draft, I described the view. In the final, I cut the description. The window was enough. The reader fills in the view from their own memory.”

Silence as Structure

We shifted from dialogue to form. The Listeners is split into three sections, each separated by a single blank page with just the section number. No epigraphs, no quotes. “I wanted those white pages to work like a musical rest,” Mira said. “You’ve just come through a harrowing scene, and then—nothing. A beat to absorb before the key changes.” She compared it to the moment in a symphony when the orchestra drops out and the silence rings. “In a book, that blank page is a dare: don’t rush. Stay here. Let the last scene settle before you move on.”

That structural quiet echoes something I’ve seen in other recent literary works: the short, titled chapters in Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, leaving gaps the reader has to leap across, or the fragmented, almost poetic spacing in Claudia Rankine’s Citizen. These aren’t tricks. They’re nudges to slow down, to notice what’s missing. Mira sees a lineage that goes back further—to Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, where the central section, “Time Passes,” is built largely of empty rooms and the sound of wind. “Woolf understood that absence could be a narrative engine. The empty house tells you more about loss than any character could.”

When Characters Refuse to Speak

One of the more gripping characters in Mira’s novel is a teenage son who simply stops talking after a family tragedy. For fifty pages, he communicates through gestures—a shrug, a plate left on the counter. “Writing that scared me,” Mira said. “I kept wanting to give him a monologue. But the silence was the point. His refusal to speak was the most honest thing about him.” She described the challenge of keeping him present on the page without words. “I had to use the other characters’ reactions to build him. The way his mother watches his hands, the way his sister leaves food outside his door. His silence reshaped the whole family’s language.”

That violence of withholding surfaces in the novel’s climax, where a long-held secret comes out not through confession but through a photograph left in a drawer. No words with it. The protagonist’s reaction—a single, strangled sound—is the only release. “I cried while writing that scene,” Mira said. “Not because it was sad, but because it felt true. Sometimes we don’t get explanations. We just get evidence.” She sat back. “Readers ask me if the son ever speaks again. I won’t tell them. But I will say that his silence becomes a kind of language the family learns to read.”

Why Literary Fiction Needs Quiet

In a time of constant noise—notifications, headlines, the push to be “productive”—the quiet novel feels almost countercultural. I asked Mira if she thinks silence in fiction is a response to our overstimulated world. She nodded right away. “Absolutely. I have readers who tell me they read The Listeners in one sitting, with their phones off. That’s a gift I didn’t expect to give. They’re starved for spaces where nothing is demanded of them.” She described letters from readers who said the book made them more patient with their own quiet moments. “One woman wrote that she started leaving her phone in another room while she read, and it changed the way she listened to her kids. That’s more than I ever hoped for.”

But she was careful not to romanticize it. “Quiet fiction isn’t an escape. It’s a mirror. When you strip away the noise, you’re left with yourself—your own judgments, your own memories. That can be tougher than any thriller.” She mentioned a passage in The Listeners where a character sits alone in a parking lot for three pages, and readers have told her it forced them to confront their own loneliness. “I didn’t set out to do that. But silence has a way of turning the lens back on the reader. You can’t hide from yourself in a quiet book.”

Practical Advice for Writers

Before we parted, I asked Mira what she’d tell a writer struggling to fold in silence without tipping into pretension. She laughed. “Read your work aloud. If you’re bored, the reader will be too. Silence has to earn its place. A pause after a big revelation? That’s earned. A pause because you don’t know what to write next? That’s just laziness.” She also suggested studying playwrights. “Harold Pinter is the master of the pause. In his plays, a silence is an event. Fiction writers can borrow from that—treat every paragraph break like a held breath, every white space like stage direction.”

She offered one more piece of advice, softer now. “Listen to the silences in your own life. The gap between what someone says and what they mean. The beat before you answer a hard question. Write from those places. If you’re just inserting pauses for effect, it’ll ring false. But if you’re writing from a real, lived quiet, the reader will feel it.” She smiled. “And don’t be afraid to delete. Cutting a line of dialogue, a chunk of exposition—that can be the most generous thing you do for a reader. You’re giving them room to breathe.”

I left Mira’s house with a copy of The Listeners and a weird urge to sit in my car without turning on the radio. The book, like our conversation, had reminded me that what’s unsaid often carries the most weight. In literary fiction, silence isn’t a lack of craft—it’s the craft itself, polished to a whisper.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why do some literary novels use so much white space?

White space can act as a visual pause, giving readers time to process emotional or thematic shifts. It mirrors the natural rhythm of thought and speech, and often signals that the narrative trusts the reader to fill in the gaps instead of spelling everything out.

Isn’t silence in fiction just a stylistic gimmick?

When handled badly, it can feel that way. But in the hands of a skilled writer, silence is a deliberate tool that deepens characterization and theme. It’s not about withholding information, but about creating space where the reader’s own experience completes the scene.

How can I get more comfortable with quiet passages as a reader?

Try approaching a quiet novel like a piece of music—pay attention to the rests as much as the notes. Give yourself permission to sit with discomfort or ambiguity. Over time, you may find that these spaces offer a deeper, more personal connection to the story.

In a world that rarely stops talking, the silence inside a novel can feel radical. It’s the pause between two characters who have run out of safe words, the white space after a chapter that ends not with a bang but a held breath. I’ve been chasing that particular quiet for years, both as a reader and as someone who asks questions for a living. So when I sat down with Dr. Miriam Sowell—novelist, critic, and lifelong student of narrative restraint—I wanted to know why silence on the page often says more than any dialogue ever could.

Miriam arrived with a copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead tucked under her arm and an apology for being three minutes late. “I got caught up rereading a passage where nothing happens,” she said, and I knew we were about to have exactly the conversation I’d hoped for.

Eliza Gale: I’ll admit it—sometimes I skim the quiet parts.

Miriam Sowell: You’re not alone. Most of us are trained to read for plot, for the next turn. But literary fiction often asks us to slow down and sit with what isn’t being resolved. Silence in fiction isn’t absence—it’s a presence that’s just harder to name. Think of the long, wordless stretches in Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day. Stevens doesn’t tell us he’s heartbroken. He straightens a doily and changes the subject. The silence is the grief.

I nodded, remembering a scene where a butler’s professional composure felt louder than any scream. “So silence as a character choice?” I asked.

“Precisely. A character’s refusal to speak—or an author’s refusal to let them—can be the most honest thing on the page. It mirrors how actual people avoid pain. We change the subject, we pour tea, we look out the window. Literary fiction honors that evasion.”

Eliza Gale: Your latest novel has an entire chapter with no dialogue. Were you nervous?

Miriam: Terrified. My editor asked if I’d forgotten to write the scene. But the protagonist, a widow named Cora, spends a morning in her garden after learning a secret about her late husband. To put words in her mouth would have been a betrayal. She needed to just be with the dahlias and the dirt. I trusted the reader to understand that her silence wasn’t emptiness—it was processing.

That image stayed with me—a woman among flowers, saying nothing, while the reader leaned in closer. I asked Miriam if she worries about losing readers during such stretches.

“Some will put the book down. That’s okay. The readers who stay are the ones I’m writing for. They understand that a novel isn’t just a delivery system for plot points. It’s an atmosphere. Silence is part of the weather.”

Eliza Gale: How do you teach silence to writing students?

Miriam: I assign them a scene with a strict rule: no one can say what they mean. Two siblings cleaning out their father’s house. A couple at a restaurant after a bad doctor’s appointment. They can talk about the weather, the salt shaker, anything but the actual thing. The real story happens in the gap between what’s said and what’s felt. That’s where literary fiction lives.

She paused, then added, “Hemingway called it the iceberg theory. Seven-eighths underwater. But I think silence is more than hidden mass. It’s the shape of what’s missing. The reader fills it with their own experience.”

Eliza Gale: I’m thinking about the silence between characters who love each other but can’t connect.

Miriam: Yes—the silence of estrangement. That’s almost a character in itself. In James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room, what isn’t said between David and Hella is a roar. The unsaid builds the tragedy. As a writer, you have to be brave enough to let the tension sit there, unresolved, sometimes for pages. It’s uncomfortable, but so is real intimacy. So is real loneliness.

I thought about the times I’ve loved someone and chosen silence over the risk of being understood. “Do you think readers project their own silences onto the page?” I asked.

“Constantly. That’s the gift of it. A well-placed silence in a novel becomes a mirror. You bring your own unsaid things to it. That’s why two people can read the same quiet scene and have completely different emotional reactions.”

Eliza Gale: Are there silences that bother you as a reader?

Miriam: Oh, absolutely. Silence used as a gimmick. The brooding hero who won’t speak because it’s supposedly mysterious. That’s not silence; that’s a cardboard cutout. Real silence in fiction has texture and history. It’s earned. You need to understand why a character is quiet. Is it shame? Discipline? Fear? The silence in Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels is thick with class and gender and decades of resentment. It’s never empty.

“So you’re advocating for silence with context,” I said.

“Exactly. Context and consequence. The silence in a novel should change the air for everyone in the room. If it doesn’t, it’s just the author taking a break.”

Eliza Gale: Let’s talk about reading aloud. When I read a particularly quiet passage to myself, I almost hold my breath. Does the silence translate to spoken word?

Miriam: It’s a different creature. At a reading, a deliberate pause can be electric. But on the page, the silence is visual—the white space, the short paragraph standing alone. I’m obsessed with what the poet Jane Hirshfield calls “the mind’s silence.” In prose, a section break can be as eloquent as a line. You’re giving the reader room to feel something before you ask them to think again.

I confessed that I’d never considered section breaks as part of the narrative’s voice. “They’re the punctuation of pacing,” Miriam said. “A long chapter followed by a half-page of white space is the author saying, ‘Sit with that. Don’t rush.’”

Eliza Gale: Is there a book you return to when you need to remember what silence can do?

Miriam: Stoner by John Williams. It’s a quiet book about a quiet man, and yet it absolutely wrecked me. The protagonist’s inner life is so rich, but his outer life is almost mute. The silence isn’t failure; it’s a kind of dignity. That novel taught me that a character doesn’t need to be loud to be unforgettable. Sometimes the most memorable characters are the ones who leave the most unsaid.

We sat for a moment, neither of us speaking, and I think we both appreciated the irony. Then I asked my final question.

Eliza Gale: What do you hope readers take away from the silences you write?

Miriam: Permission. Permission to be quiet in their own lives without feeling empty. Permission to listen to what’s underneath the chatter. A novel’s silence can be a kind of companionship. It says, “I know you have things you can’t say yet. Me too. Let’s just be here together for a while.”

As I walked Miriam to the door, she turned and added, almost as an afterthought, “The best literary fiction doesn’t fill the silence. It teaches you how to live inside it.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is silence so powerful in literary fiction?

Silence in literary fiction mirrors the way people actually experience emotion—often without words. It allows readers to inhabit the unsaid tensions, grief, and love that characters can’t or won’t express. Instead of spoon-feeding you a feeling, a well-crafted silence invites you to bring your own emotional history to the page, making the reading experience feel personal and a little different for everyone.

How can I learn to appreciate quieter, slower-paced novels?

Start by shifting your expectations. Rather than chasing the next plot point, pay attention to what’s stirring inside the characters during the still moments. Notice the physical details—a character’s hands, the light in a room, what they choose not to say. Try reading a passage aloud, even just to yourself, and let the pauses land. Over time, you’ll start to feel the weight of the unsaid as a form of action all its own.

What are some examples of novels that use silence exceptionally well?

Many readers and critics point to Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, where the protagonist’s emotional restraint speaks volumes about regret and duty. Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead is rich with meditative quiet that reveals a father’s complicated love. John Williams’ Stoner proves that a seemingly passive life can hold immense inner depth, and Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels use charged silences to explore friendship, class, and identity.

Is silence just an absence of dialogue, or can it be something else on the page?

Silence in fiction goes far beyond missing quotation marks. It can live in the white space between sections, in a narrator’s refusal to comment on an important event, or in what a character notices instead of what they feel. It can be a structural choice, a thematic presence, or a form of characterization. When done well, silence becomes a texture—a weight you can feel on every page.

On a hushed afternoon, I sat with novelist Claire Reston, whose new book, The Pauses Between, has been rattling around literary circles for its stubborn reliance on silence—not as a gap, but as a weight. Reston’s prose is careful, almost withholding, and her pacing makes you wait. Over tea in her sunlit study, we talked about how the unsaid can steer a story, shape a person, and get under a reader’s skin.

Finding Voice in the Void

Eliza Gale: Claire, your novel trusts the reader to sit still for long stretches. What hooked you on silence as a literary tool?

Claire Reston: It goes back to my grandmother. She wasn’t cold, exactly, but she could say more with a pause or a sideways glance than most people manage with a paragraph. I noticed that the biggest things between people often happen without words. Fiction, though, tends to babble—endless chatter, overstuffed interior monologues. I wanted to write something that mirrored how we actually feel: in fragments, in stillness, in the things we can’t bring ourselves to voice.

That pull sent me to Harold Pinter’s plays, where a pause can feel like a third character. In prose, silence can push back. It gives the reader room to build alongside you.

The Reader’s Role in the Quiet

Eliza: Early in The Pauses Between, two estranged siblings sit on a porch for almost three pages without a word. It’s tight with tension, but also weirdly tender. How do you know what a reader will stomach?

Claire: I don’t think about stomachs. I think about invitations. If the emotional stakes are humming, the reader leans forward. In that scene, the siblings’ past is so loaded that a single word might crack everything open. The silence holds the grief and the love at once. I gambled that the reader would feel that pressure and fill the gap with their own unsaid history.

It’s a gamble, sure. Some early readers begged me to stuff in more internal thought. But when I tried, the scene went flat. Silence in fiction only works when it’s earned—not a hollow, but a container.

Silence as Character and Structure

We shifted from the porch to the bones of the novel. Reston built her book in three parts, each named after a different brand of quiet: Hush, Stillness, and Echo.

Eliza: Walk me through that structure. How did silence become your organizing principle?

Claire: It hit me during a residency in a remote cabin. I got obsessed with how the silence changed over the day—morning had a waiting sort of hush, afternoon a sleepy one, night a deep, listening dark. I wondered: what if a novel’s spine followed that? Hush holds secrets; Stillness is the moment before a bomb goes off; Echo is the aftermath. Each part’s silence has its own texture.

That forced me to tighten up. If a character is defined by what she won’t say, you have to build her through gestures, weather, how others flinch around her. It’s like drawing with the empty space.

The Unreliable Narrator of Silence

Eliza: Your main character, Lena, is often silent because she was trained to be, not because she chooses it. How does that make her silence unreliable?

Claire: Lena figured out young that speaking brought punishment. Her silence is armor, but it warps her vision. She reads other people’s pauses with paranoia. The reader has to sift through: is she reading the room right, or just projecting? Silence becomes a tricky narrator—it hints at meanings that might not be there.

I leaned on research about families where silence is law. The psychologist Evan Imber-Black has written smart stuff about how secrets shape a household. For Lena, silence is both a cage and, eventually, a way out.

Crafting Silence on the Page

We got into the weeds of technique. As a writer, I wanted to know how you render quiet in a medium built from noise.

Eliza: How do you actually write silence? Punctuation? White space? Something messier?

Claire: All of it. White space on the page is a big one. A stubby paragraph after a long one signals a catch in the breath. I use em-dashes for snapped-off speech, and sometimes I just let a sentence die without a period’s dignity. But the real engine is rhythm. You set up a pattern of sound, then you crack it. The crack is where the silence sits.

I also lean on small noises—a fridge hum, a clock chewing time. Those become the backdrop that makes a character’s quiet feel huge. In one chapter, the only sounds are Lena’s footsteps and a far-off dog. That thin soundtrack makes her inner silence almost loud.

Dialogue as a Dance Around Silence

Eliza: Your dialogue circles around what’s not being said. How do you layer in subtext?

Claire: I picture dialogue as a dance where both people are always a half-step off. Most folks don’t say what they mean, especially when things are raw. They crack jokes, ask sideways questions, deflect. In revision, I gut any line that announces the obvious feeling. If a character is furious, I don’t let her say “I’m angry.” I have her scrub a glass too hard or let a phone ring itself out.

Subtext is the story simmering underneath. It’s what the reader catches without being told. And that takes trust—trust that the reader is sharp enough to pick up the scent.

The Cultural Dimensions of Quiet

Reston’s novel is anchored in rural Minnesota, but its quiet ripples outward. We talked about how silence lands differently across cultures.

Eliza: In some places, silence reads as respect; elsewhere, it looks like stonewalling. Did you wrestle with those angles?

Claire: I did. Lena’s family has Finnish roots, and there’s a cultural ease with quiet that can get mislabeled as cold. I wanted to honor that without flattening it into a stereotype. In one scene, a neighbor from a warmer, more talkative background misreads Lena’s stillness as hostility when it’s really just shyness. Those cross-cultural misfires are gold for fiction.

I thought about gender, too. Women’s silence has often been forced, but it can also be a quiet kind of rebellion. Lena’s mother uses silence like a blade; Lena eventually reclaims it as a choice. That arc mattered to me.

Silence and the Reader’s Inner Life

As the afternoon thinned, I asked Reston what she hopes readers take from the quiet pockets in her work.

Eliza: What does silence give a reader that chattier fiction can’t?

Claire: I think it gives them back themselves. When a book goes quiet, the reader’s own mind floods in. That can be uncomfortable, but it can also crack something open. We’re hardly ever given permission to just be still. A novel that holds that space is a small gift—it says, “Your inner life counts. Your reflections are part of this.”

She paused, and the room seemed to catch its breath. Then she grinned. “See? You’re already filling the pause.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is silence an important element in literary fiction?

Silence in literary fiction works as a narrative tool that thickens emotional resonance and pulls the reader in as a participant. While genre fiction often sprints after plot, literary fiction uses quiet to dig into character psychology, subtext, and thematic weight. When a writer trusts the reader to interpret pauses and unspoken tensions, the story turns into a shared act, making the experience more personal and reflective.

How can writers effectively incorporate silence into their own work?

Writers can weave in silence by playing with rhythm, sensory cues, and subtext. Try varying paragraph lengths to create visual pauses, use small background sounds to frame still moments, and write dialogue that circles the truth rather than blurting it. Studying plays and poetry helps, too—their compressed language naturally stresses the unsaid. The trick is making silence feel earned, rooted in character and circumstance, not just empty white space.

Does silence in fiction risk alienating readers?

It can, if it’s handled clumsily. Silence pushes readers away when it lacks emotional stakes or feels like a writerly stunt. But when it’s tied to real character experience and clear narrative context, quiet moments often pull readers closer. The aim isn’t to withhold for the sake of difficulty, but to open a space where readers can pour in their own understanding, which makes the reading feel more intimate and sticky.

What is the difference between silence and emptiness in a story?

Silence in a story is a charged absence—it carries tension, feeling, or meaning. Emptiness is just a lack of substance, where nothing lands and the reader drifts off. In strong literary fiction, silence is never truly empty; it’s stuffed with what characters can’t or won’t say. It’s a deliberate choice that shapes pacing and deepens immersion, while emptiness usually signals undercooked scenes or foggy intent.

An Introduction to Quiet Spaces

On a drizzly Tuesday afternoon, I met literary critic and author Margaret Ashworth at her house in Bath. We sank into a pair of worn armchairs and got talking about a subject that doesn’t make nearly enough noise: silence in literary fiction. Margaret’s recent essay collection, What Is Not Said, has been stirring up hushed, enthusiastic chats among readers who love books that leave room for mystery. She’s spent most of her career looking at what happens between the lines—and I was there to pry.

I’ve always had a soft spot for novels that let me breathe. As Eliza Gale, my interviews keep circling back to the same thing: the pauses, the white space, the words characters swallow. Margaret’s work gave me the perfect excuse to chase down why silence hits so hard in a story and how it changes the way we turn the pages.

Margaret Ashworth on Defining Literary Silence

Eliza: Margaret, your book opens with the line, “Silence is the writer’s secret collaborator.” Can you unpack that for someone who might think of silence as just an absence?

Margaret: Of course. Silence in fiction isn’t emptiness—it’s a presence. When a character stops speaking mid-sentence, or a narrator refuses to describe a traumatic event, that silence is doing heavy lifting. It makes the reader lean in. In Kazuo Ishiguro’s The Remains of the Day, the butler Stevens never once says he’s heartbroken, but the silences around his feelings are so loud they practically echo. That’s the collaboration: the writer trusts the reader to fill the gap, and the reader becomes a co-creator of meaning.

We talked about how this differs from simply leaving things out. Margaret drew a sharp line between omission and strategic silence. “Bad writing skips over things because the writer doesn’t know what matters. Good silence—literary silence—is deliberate. It’s like the rest in a piece of music. It shapes the sound around it.”

The Emotional Weight of What Goes Unspoken

Eliza: Some readers find silence in books frustrating. They want everything spelled out. How do you respond to that?

Margaret: I get the frustration, but I think it comes from wanting to be spoon-fed. The real emotional wallop in fiction often lands because something isn’t said. Think of the end of James Joyce’s “The Dead.” Gabriel Conroy watches the snow falling and says nothing about his epiphany. The story closes on that quiet image. If Joyce had made Gabriel turn to his wife and announce, “I’ve just realized my whole life is a sham and I’m paralyzed by jealousy of a dead boy,” the story would collapse. Instead, the silence lets the feeling swell inside the reader.

Her point made me think of the quiet desperation in Jhumpa Lahiri’s stories, where immigrant families often can’t find words for their dislocation, so the silence itself becomes the subject. Margaret nodded vigorously. “Exactly. Lahiri is a master of the unspoken. In ‘A Temporary Matter,’ the couple communicates more through their shared silences during the power outages than they ever did with words. The darkness lets them finally be honest, but the silence around their grief is the real conversation.”

Silence as a Structural Tool

We shifted to craft. Eliza: How do writers actually build silence into the structure of a novel? Is it just about short sentences and white space?

Margaret: It can be, but it’s much more varied. Chapter breaks, for instance, are a powerful form of silence. What happens in the gap between chapters? The reader is left to imagine. A novelist like Virginia Woolf uses the white space between sections in To the Lighthouse to mark the passage of years, and that gap is filled with unspoken loss. Dialogue is another tool. Often the most important thing in a conversation is what characters avoid saying. Hemingway’s “Iceberg Theory” is all about this: the dignity of omission.

She pulled a well-worn copy of Marilynne Robinson’s Gilead from her shelf. “This novel is essentially one long letter, and the silences are in what the narrator, John Ames, chooses not to confess directly to his son. The whole book is steeped in a quiet, contemplative hush that mirrors his pastoral life. Robinson doesn’t need to announce the themes; the rhythm of the prose creates a meditative silence.”

Cultural Silences and What They Reveal

Eliza: Does silence work differently across cultures in literature?

Margaret: Absolutely. In many Japanese novels, silence is a form of communication itself. In Yasunari Kawabata’s Snow Country, the relationship between Shimamura and Komako is defined by all the things left unspoken, and that reticence reflects a cultural value of restraint. By contrast, in a lot of American fiction, silence can signal repression or trauma—something that needs to be broken through. The meaning of silence isn’t universal; it’s shaped by cultural context, and the best writers use that deliberately.

We discussed how Zora Neale Hurston uses silence in Their Eyes Were Watching God—Janie’s long stretches of internal quiet while she endures her marriages speak to the ways Black women’s voices have been historically suppressed. The silence isn’t weakness; it’s a survival strategy and a form of resistance. “When Janie finally speaks, the silence before makes her words seismic,” Margaret said.

When Silence Overwhelms the Story

I asked the question that had been nagging me. Eliza: Can there be too much silence? Can a book become so oblique that it alienates readers?

Margaret: Definitely. Silence is a spice, not the meal. If a novel is all gaps and no substance, it’s just a puzzle that most readers won’t bother solving. I think of certain experimental works that withhold so much they become solipsistic. The key is balance. The silence has to be surrounded by enough concrete detail and emotion that the reader trusts the journey. Otherwise, it’s just an empty room.

She mentioned a contemporary novel that tried to center on a character who never speaks aloud, but the author failed to give us access to her interiority, so the silence became a wall rather than a window. “You need to feel the pressure of what’s being silenced. If there’s no pressure, there’s no power.”

Practical Insights for Writers and Readers

Before we wrapped up, I asked Margaret for advice. Eliza: For a writer trying to use silence more effectively, what’s the first step?

Margaret: Listen to your characters. Pay attention to what they nearly say and then pull back from. Write a scene where the most important emotion is never named. Then read it aloud and notice where the pauses naturally fall. For readers, I’d say: when you’re reading and you feel a little pang of confusion or curiosity because something is missing, don’t rush past it. Sit in that discomfort. That’s where the author is probably doing their best work.

FAQ: Understanding Silence in Literary Fiction

Why do some authors use so much silence in their writing?
Authors use silence to create depth and invite reader participation. By leaving things unsaid, they allow emotions and themes to resonate without over-explaining, making the reading experience more personal and powerful.

How can I tell if a silence in a novel is purposeful or just bad writing?
Purposeful silence feels charged; it adds tension or meaning. If a gap leaves you curious and emotionally engaged, it’s likely deliberate. If it just leaves you confused about basic plot or character facts without any payoff, it may be careless omission.

What are some classic books that use silence exceptionally well?
Margaret mentioned The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, and Snow Country by Yasunari Kawabata. Other strong examples include Ernest Hemingway’s short stories and Toni Morrison’s Beloved, where silence around trauma speaks volumes.

Does silence in fiction only relate to dialogue?
Not at all. Silence can appear in narrative gaps, descriptive choices, pacing, chapter breaks, and even what a narrator chooses not to tell us about their own feelings. It’s a structural and thematic tool, not just a conversational one.

As I left Margaret’s home, the rain had stopped and the streets were quiet. I found myself thinking about all the conversations I’d had where the most important parts were the pauses. Maybe that’s the mark of a good interview, too—and certainly the mark of a great book.