Writing Craft
Some scenes only start working when the dialogue stops trying so hard.
Silence can do the heavy lifting if you let it. A look, a hand left on the table, someone folding a napkin into smaller and smaller pieces while the real subject sits there between them, perfectly unspoken. The risk, of course, is that silence turns into vagueness if the tension isn’t doing its job.
Still, there are moments when the most revealing thing in the room is what nobody can quite bring themselves to say. And that usually tells you more than a polished exchange ever could.
Silence can do the heavy lifting if you let it. A look, a hand left on the table, someone folding a napkin into smaller and smaller pieces while the real subject sits there between them, perfectly unspoken. The risk, of course, is that silence turns into vagueness if the tension isn’t doing its job.
Still, there are moments when the most revealing thing in the room is what nobody can quite bring themselves to say. And that usually tells you more than a polished exchange ever could.
Silence can buy you a lot, but it can also become a convenient fog. In drafts, I usually find the scene only starts to earn its quiet when the subtext is already loaded. Otherwise it’s just people staring at each other and hoping the reader will do the work for them. A withheld line needs a reason to be withheld.