SMFS Member Guest Post: The Pause that Refreshes by Paula Messina

Please welcome our fellow member, Paula Messina, back to the blog today...

 

The Pause that Refreshes

by Paula Messina

 

On Christmas Eve last year, the priest celebrating Mass never came up for air. During the responsive prayers, he spoke immediately after the lector. He was consistently a beat or two ahead of the congregation.

He galloped through his sermon as if the steeple were collapsing. I had no idea what his sermon was about. I stopped listening.

The priest failed to pause.

Pauses are part of pacing. They create mood, emphasize a point, and clarify phrases and sentences. They reveal character. Above all, pauses make room for the audience.

The placement of the text on the page creates visual pauses. Contrast the abundance of pauses in poetry with the more niggardly use in prose. Fooling around with that formatting creates a whole new world. For example, here’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem about the loss of his dear Fanny, “The Cross of Snow.”

 

In the long, sleepless watches of the night,

   A gentle face — the face of one long dead —

   Looks at me from the wall, where round its head

   The night-lamp casts a halo of pale light.
Here in this room she died; and soul more white

   Never through martyrdom of fire was led

   To its repose; nor can in books be read

   The legend of a life more benedight.
There is a mountain in the distant West

   That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

   Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast

   These eighteen years, through all the changing scenes

   And seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Now read the same poem as prose:

In the long, sleepless watches of the night, a gentle face — the face of one long dead — looks at me from the wall, where round its head the night-lamp casts a halo of pale light. Here in this room she died; and soul more white never through martyrdom of fire was led to its repose; nor can in books be read the legend of a life more benedight. There is a mountain in the distant West that, sun-defying, in its deep ravines displays a cross of snow upon its side. Such is the cross I wear upon my breast these eighteen years, through all the changing scenes and seasons, changeless since the day she died.

Not the same, is it?

Punctuation creates pauses. Sentence length, paragraphs, and white space do as well. You might not think of these as pauses, but they are. White space, the placement of words on the page, is a pause.

Pauses can shape character. One with a folksy manner might speak slowly with few words and plenty of dead air. This might drive another character crazy a la the interviewer in Bob and Ray’s classic sketch, “Slow Talkers of America.” A maniacal character might spill his words out in one long rush and leave the listener or the reader confused and irritated.

The flip side of a pause is no space. For example, a character chased by a bear isn’t about to slow down for anything. Gasping for air, he’s bent on breaking the sound barrier.

Once up that tree, he slows down and catches his breath.

And so does the reader.

Pauses are important when reading aloud as well, and for all the reasons stated, but they also are vital to the performer. Breathing or pauses help with nerves as well as create pacing, emphasis, drama, humor, suspense. Breathing aids projection. After all, without air it’s impossible to speak.

Winston Churchill, arguably the greatest orator of the twentieth century, knew the importance of pauses. In her article, “Pace, Pause & Silence: Creating Emphasis & Suspense in Your Writing,” Lorelei Lingard notes that “Winston Churchill is said to have annotated his speeches with reminders to himself about rhythm and tempo—when to be silent, when to appear to struggle for the right word, when to pause for audience response (whether heckling or applause).

“Like other effective public speakers, Churchill knew that what is not said impacts the audience as much as what is. A pregnant pause whets appetites.”

In Speaking Skills for Every Occasion, Peter L. Miller says, “Besides allowing you to fill your lungs with air, pausing also allows the audience to absorb the spoken words and create pictures in their own minds...and adds emphasis to your last point.”

“But,” you object, “pauses, too much white space, too many commas slow down the action for the reader.”

Gordon A. Long agrees with you and says, “When readers come to a pause, unless the author specifically tells them otherwise, nothing is going on.” I disagree. Poorly placed pauses can slow down the action, but using them wisely enhances the audience’s experience. The right pause at the right place allows the reader’s imagination to take flight.

Lingard says, “Prose need not always be a fast-flowing faucet, and readers need not be continuously engulfed. Pacing, pause and silence are important tools in your writing. Knowing the conventions of punctuation and syntax allows you to bend them strategically in order to both help your readers pay attention and enlist them into productive engagement with your ideas.

Use pauses deliberately and judiciously. Your writing will benefit and so will your readers.

A good illustration is the opening to Dicken’s A Tale of Two Cities. It is essentially one long sentence.

 

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way--in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.

Changing the punctuation changes the rhythm.

 

It was the best of times. It was the worst of times. It was the age of wisdom. It was the age of foolishness. It was the epoch of belief. It was the epoch of incredulity....

You get the idea. It’s a subtle difference, but the periods create a bigger break, a longer pause. The original is driven, a quality that is diminished by changing the commas to periods.

Of course, Dickens and his Victorian cohorts were masters of expansive pauses, leaving the reader lusting for more by serializing their works.

As was that famous tease Scheherazade. In One Thousand and One Nights, she used cliff-hangers to avert her overhanging execution. Her husband, King Shahryar, cannot kill her because he is dying to know what happens next. And Scheherazade ain’t telling until tomorrow night.

The most important reason to use pauses is that they create space for the reader. The reason we write is to communicate with our audience. That can only happen when we allow the reader enough space to really take in our words. Churchill understood this. That was why he spent such care crafting his speeches. Writing, no matter how beautiful, is useless if it doesn’t connect with the reader.

The priest on Christmas Eve failed to connect with the congregation because he left no space. The Mass itself has many pauses. For example, after the sermon, the priest sits for several moments in silence, giving both him and the congregation time to digest what was said. On that particular Christmas Eve, the priest failed to effectively employ pauses to connect with the congregation. It was an unpausable sin.

You now know better.

Go forth and pause.

 

Paula Messina ©2023 

When Paula Messina isn't writing, she explores the United States' first public beach. She writes fiction and non-fiction and is working on a novel set in Boston during World War II.