Silence in radio drama is not the absence of sound, but the presence of what is implied, either by music, sound effects, or speech which has just disappeared before reappearing again.
But it won’t do for there to be too much silence all at once. Otherwise, you just have dead air, and the listener might think there’s something wrong with his radio set or smartphone. The producer must be deliberate. The deliberate producer knows that the purpose of silence is to emphasize and intensify the spoken word, with a pregnant pause after a particular line often being equivalent to a reaction shot in film or TV. But the subjectivity of radio means that such an invisible reaction shot can, if used correctly, have more power than either the unmasking of the culprit in a mystery novel or the climactic revelation in a TV finale.
Silence is used in radio drama to strategically draw attention to what is contained within speech, acting as a way to communicate emotion and subtext.
Silence in radio drama only has meaning, only creates meaning, if it is used in the middle of periods of speech, and if that silence is filled by some sort of sound effect happening in the background.
Now, in radio drama, when I say “silence,” I do not mean dead air, where no sound is being broadcast at all. The silence must be taken up by the whirring of gadgets in an engine room, or the gurgling of a brook near a riverside path. To repeat, the spoken word is supreme in radio drama, but sometimes, silence can be used to turn up its power a notch. A stunning revelation, followed by the bewildered silence of a gang of people gathered around a secret letter, can work wonders. Sound effects play a role in this too. The classic tactic of the footsteps thudding down the stairs or on the floor in the middle of a silent room, before the entrance of some dreaded personage, whether it be a political officer or a ghost, is a classic of American Old Time Radio.
Why use silence in this way? The use of silence in a radio drama draws attention to the mood set by the imagined, physical environment of a scene. This silence emphasizes that mood and adds to it the psychological context of the characters and their conversation, their language. A lot of times, what is not said says volumes more than what is said.
When used correctly, incrementally, sparingly, silence can be golden. The trick is to not use too much of it, and to not use it at the wrong time.
In the Dimension X episode “The Last Objective” (1951), written by Paul A. Carter, the appropriate use of sound effects and silence is used to make up for the truncated scale of a 25-minute run-time and the difficulties of a fairly large cast. This is one of the few American Old Time Radio shows where I got more out of it by listening to it a second and third time. A good novel ought to give similar intellectual pleasure, and as we’ll explore in future installments, the radio play has a lot in common with the novel.
That Dimension X episode stands out to me because it was able to so expertly capture the mood of the sci-fi environment which is depicts, emphasizing the story’s setting not just via the language of the characters, but also through strategic silence and the invisible acting such silence implies. In a 25-minute stand-alone science-fiction story, there is a natural temptation to rely on a bad version of the type of spectacle which you might find in a film or TV version of such a story. Other episodes of Dimension X actually did make that mistake.
But “The Last Objective” wisely chose to emphasize the psychological and thematic implications of its subject matter rather than the spectacular nature of the plot. It did so, in part, by using appropriate moments of silence to amplify the tension of a crew of rough, hard men stuck with each other like sardines in a can while a fatalistic series of events beyond their control inexorably unfolds.
Radio drama is a subjective medium, meaning that the story in each radio play takes a different form in the imagination of each individual listener every time that play is broadcast. Your idea of what the titular character of The Shadow actually looks like in terms of physical appearance is just as valid as mine, because a radio play has no reliable, objective way of establishing such facts.
This doesn’t mean that radio drama has no meaning, which is what is usually implied when something is classified as “subjective.” Meaning in radio drama comes from the force and color of personalities and the logic and memorability of events. Characters have to be compelling and idiosyncratic and plots have to be both orderly and lively.
Silence is important when considering the subjectivity of radio drama because it is in moments of silence within a radio play that such subjectivity is at its height, when subtext is communicated most emphatically. Whether that means a debatable interpretation of a climactic sequence of dialogue or an equally debatable interpretation of a final scene where our only clues are sound effects and music, the gaps (the silence) within and around those pieces of evidence create a profound opportunity for listeners to fill in for themselves such thematic blank spots based on whatever clues are available.
There is a danger, however, in overusing silence, or using it incorrectly. When silence in a radio drama goes on for too long, even if a pleasing environmental sound effect is audible, listeners can stop forming their own opinions about what’s being communicated and instead suddenly believe that nothing is being communicated or can be communicated at all, hence the word “dead” in the term “dead air.”
The use of silence, then, is an advanced artistic tactic which amateurs (such as myself) have been known to mishandle egregiously, similar to how some amateur novelists write books where specific chapters are made up of only a single short sentence of text, or God forbid, only one word. If bad use of sound effects in radio drama is comparable to bad use of description in a novel, then bad use of silence in radio drama is comparable to bad use of formatting in a book. All of these mistakes cause confusion in the audience, which in a radio play is the kiss of death.
To use so many words, silence in radio drama creates subtext and meaning when wisely juxtaposed with speech, music, and sound effects. All four of these elements must be mixed together correctly to create a pleasing brew.
Silence in particular creates ambiguity and tension in a narrative by emphasizing how characters function given the mood of a setting. An excellent series which does this well is the radio drama version of The Twilight Zone, produced by BBC Radio 4 Extra from 2002 to 2012. While silence can be a critical tool when taking advantage of the subjective nature of radio drama, it must be employed carefully. I have firsthand experience with unwise, clumsy use of silence in my own debut radio play Son of Yi, Son of Pangu.
The solution to the problems posed by using silence incorrectly is to remember that, despite its great power, silence must be used to bolster and emphasize speech. Balance here is key: the right mix of the four central elements of radio drama (speech, music, sound effects, and silence) must be properly engineered in a radio play, but with speech always as the chief part.
One quote attributed to Plato (perhaps apocryphally) says: “Wise men speak because they have something to say, fools, because they have to say something.” The implication, of course, is that sometimes the wisest thing to say is nothing at all. Sometimes it is wisest to be silent.
Levi Sweeney is a writer, AI enthusiast, and indie radio producer from Seattle, Washington. Listen to his new AI radio play Son of Yi, Son of Pangu, now on YouTube and Spotify.