Quiet and Clamor: Creating Contrast with Sound
Series: Sound & Rhythm in Writing - Writing to the Beat (Rhythm and Resonance)
We often treat prose like it should always be speaking. Explaining. Persuading. Performing. But sometimes, the most alive moments in a story are the ones that pull back, go still, resist the urge to fill the air.
Volume isn’t what makes a sentence powerful. Tension does.
Good writing moves between pressure and release, density and hush. The sentence that shouts lands harder if the one before it was whispering.
This post is about that shift—how to make language not just say something, but resound.
Let’s start here:
Think of the most electric conversation you’ve ever had. The one where someone said something, and then—nothing. That pause. That silence. You felt it like pressure. Like a held note.
That’s craft. That’s sound.
Good writing isn’t afraid of noise. But great writing knows how to use silence. It knows when to whisper and when to shout—and, more importantly, when to stop speaking altogether.
How to Use Sound and Silence for Contrast
Use Density to Create Clamor
Sometimes a paragraph should feel like a rush of bodies—crowded, hot, breathing down your neck. Pile your sentences. Layer sound upon sound. Let language go breathless.
Write a paragraph where every sentence runs long. Don’t break. Don’t pause. Let it roll over itself until the reader feels overwhelmed. Yes, we’re talking about sensory overload—but controlled. Let clamor do its work. Let the soundscape pressurize the scene.
Let Silence Take Up Space
White space is not absence. It’s emphasis. A single-line paragraph, a phrase standing alone, a sentence cut off too early—these are not quiet for quiet’s sake. They hold weight.
Isolate one line from a draft and give it its own breath. Let it stand on the page and see if it holds. This is not minimalism. It’s choreography. Quiet writing isn’t less—it’s precise.
Break the Rhythm with Stillness
If you’ve built a rhythm—quick, percussive, fluid—interrupt it. Pause unexpectedly. Pull back.
Take a passage that flows too well and break it in half. Add a beat of stillness. A short sentence that doesn’t try to match the rhythm before it. The stillness will echo louder because of the sound around it. Readers feel the pause more deeply after motion.
Use Sound to Signal Emotion, Not Just Action
Noise isn’t just physical. A cluttered paragraph might reflect a spiraling mind. A flat sentence might hold grief. Sound and silence are emotional carriers.
Ask yourself: what does this character hear in this moment? Then write the scene to match. You’re not describing sound. You’re using sound to become the feeling.
Trust the Reader to Hear What’s Missing
You don’t need to say it all. Especially when silence says it better. A character doesn’t respond. A question isn’t answered. A thought trails off—
End a paragraph mid-thought. Let the next one begin somewhere else entirely. The reader will follow the silence. This isn’t confusion—it’s confidence. The story lives in what’s unsaid.
Creative Connections
Music/Dance: John Cage’s 4’33”
Four minutes and thirty-three seconds of silence. But it’s not empty. It’s ambient. The audience shifts in their seats. Someone coughs. Someone breathes. The piece teaches you to hear differently—not just what’s played, but what isn’t. Writing works the same way. What you don’t say rings loudest.
Invitation to Play
Take a scene you’ve written that feels too even—too balanced.
Now rewrite it two ways: once with clamor, once with quiet.
In the clamor version: no paragraph breaks. Let sentences stack, twist, repeat, surge.
In the quiet version: isolate lines. Cut what isn’t essential. Use white space like pressure.
Then read them back to back. What changed? What did the rhythm teach you about the scene’s emotional shape?
Try it. Let your writing breathe in silence—and in noise.
About Me
I’m Rena—a writer, educator, and relentless explorer of stories. Originally from Southern California, I’ve spent the past 20 years making my home in Costa Rica, where I live with my husband, two children, and a pair of Rhodesian Ridgebacks who refuse to acknowledge their size.
My writing has appeared in places like Brevity Magazine, South Florida Poetry Journal, Five on the Fifth, New Flash Fiction Review, Headland Literary Journal, and more. Along the way, I’ve collected more rejection letters than I care to count—a badge of honor for any writer chasing the next story.
At my core, I believe in the power of ideas, in listening for what’s unsaid, and in finding beauty in the unexpected. Stories connect us—and together, I believe, we’re better.
Come write, wonder, and explore with me.