The Power of Silence in Books
Personally, I dislike silences. Silences are awkward and make me feel anxious. Should I fill the void? Is the silence bad? Is someone about to pop out from a corner? That last one might be a result of all the horror movies I watched growing up. At one point my mom told me that scary movies were only scary because of the music. Once I started paying attention to that, I learned that the reason the music was effective was because most times, there is silence that leads up to the crescendo of the music that terrifies you.
Movies and TV shows use silences to help create tension. We can see how uncomfortable situations are in video because of silences. The facial expressions help too. In videos, it is easier for silence to be powerful because we feel it. We hear it. We can relate to it a lot easier.
I recently read an article about how college students at elite institutions are struggling with their reading courseloads because they’ve never read a book cover to cover. There are so many curriculums that are being used that use excerpts instead of using novel studies. Part of the article talked about how students aren’t immersing themselves in novels and reading. This was really eye-opening for me because I do immurse myself in my reading. I didn’t think there was a way to read without immursing yourself. If you’re only given excerpts to read though, it would be easy to just skim through or race through the text. If readers aren’t immursing themselves in reading though, what is happening to the writers?
For those who have been reading since they were kids, do you see a difference in the novels published when you were a teenager and the novels published in the last five years? I feel like I’ve noticed a huge difference in the story lines, the plots, and the character development. If anything, the more recent novels have a tendency to lecture on ideology through the main character’s inner monologue. In a lot of the novels I’ve read (with more recent publish dates) the storylines are too simple, the characters are not that deep, backstory is barely existant, and you can see the writing formula from a mile away. The craft of writing has taken a hit and perhaps the way reading has taken a hit has played a part of that.
We know silence can be powerful in movies and tv shows, but silence isn’t only powerful there. Silence in books can be powerful, one just has to know how to use it.
Silence creates tension- just like in movies, silence can create tension within character interactions and within the reader. Proper use of silence helps the reader feel the tension, the stress, the anxiety you are giving to your characters.
Silence keeps the reader in the dark- In writing, you need to drop the right hints at the right time. Silence help keeps the reader in the dark until the exact moment you want the plot twist to reveal itself.
Silence can be used in more than suspense/thriller/horror stories- Silence isn’t just for the scary scenes or the things that bring fear. Silence can be used in any genre of writing.
Show, don’t tell silence- Allow your character to feel the silence but show through the actions of what is happening. Don’t simply tell the reader that silence is occuring.
Now, your challenge is to write a scene using silence to build tension.
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