Music, Silence and the Architecture of a Crime Novel
The role of music and silence in my writing process is practical rather than decorative. Sound can establish a setting, suggest a character’s state of mind or give a scene its hidden rhythm. Silence can do the opposite: it can remove certainty, hold back information and make an ordinary room feel threatening.
When I write the Thorkild Aske novels, I listen for the emotional weather of a scene. A melody may help me find the pace of a conversation, while a period of quiet can reveal that the scene needs fewer words. The aim is not to create a soundtrack for the reader, but to make the prose carry an audible sense of tension.
Sound Before Scene
Music often helps me enter a scene before I know exactly what will happen in it. A slow, restrained piece can bring me towards isolation; a harsher sound may suit a passage in which Thorkild Aske is unsettled or physically exhausted. I am interested in the atmosphere music creates in the body: the tightening of attention, the sense of movement or the pause before something changes.
This is close to the way weather and light work in crime fiction. A landscape is never merely a background when a character is carrying fear, guilt or suspicion. I have written about using weather and light to set the mood in a scene, and music serves a related purpose during drafting. It helps me locate the temperature of the passage before I decide on its final language.
A piece of music may also provide a private time signature. Some scenes need short sentences and quick transitions. Others require long, unbroken paragraphs in which the reader feels trapped inside a character’s thoughts. I might listen while walking, travelling or staring at a difficult page, then stop the music entirely when I begin revising.
Silence as Pressure
Silence is rarely empty in a suspense novel. It can mean that a character is refusing to answer, that a room contains something unspoken or that the writer has reached the precise point where explanation would weaken the scene. The pause around a line of dialogue may hold more threat than the line itself.
I use silence in several forms. There is physical silence: snow, darkness, an empty road or a building after everyone has gone. There is social silence, when people avoid the truth. Then there is narrative silence, when the reader receives an incomplete account and must sense what has been omitted. These forms can overlap, especially in Thorkild’s investigations, where memory and evidence do not always agree.
For Australian readers, the effect may be familiar in landscapes that appear open but are never entirely quiet. The hush of a beach before sunrise, the distant traffic under a Melbourne overpass or the pause inside a country hotel after the last conversation has ended can all carry dramatic force. Silence changes according to place, season and the expectations of the people inside it.
A Working Soundtrack
Music and quiet have different jobs at different stages of a manuscript. Early drafting benefits from instinct and atmosphere; later editing demands control. I may begin with sound to discover a scene, then remove every musical association from the prose so that the reader is free to experience it independently.
| Writing stage | Role of music | Role of silence |
|---|---|---|
| First idea | Finds emotional tone and movement | Leaves space for images to form |
| Scene drafting | Sets pace and concentration | Creates hesitation and tension |
| Structural revision | Tests whether the rhythm serves the plot | Reveals unnecessary explanation |
| Line editing | Helps identify repetition or stiffness | Sharpens pauses, omissions and endings |
| Final reading | Confirms the emotional after-effect | Allows the scene to stand on its own |
I also pay attention to the sounds that belong to a place rather than to a playlist. In Sydney, a ferry engine, gulls and harbour traffic create a different rhythm from trams in Melbourne or the humid evening noise of Brisbane. Such details do not need to be announced. When they are accurately placed, they become part of the reader’s unconscious sense of location.
The Australian publishing market adds another layer to this awareness. A Norwegian crime novel may travel through translation, rights sales and different editorial traditions before it reaches a bookseller in Australia. The music of the original language cannot be transferred word for word, so rhythm, restraint and silence must survive through the translator’s choices.
From Draft to Page
The first version of a scene can be overfilled with sound. I may describe footsteps, machinery, wind and voices because I am trying to make the setting tangible. Revision is where I ask which sounds carry meaning and which are simply evidence that I have not yet understood the scene. The strongest detail often remains after several others have been removed.
Silence helps with this reduction. If every emotional beat is explained, the reader has no room to participate. A withheld reaction, a sentence that ends too soon or a character who changes the subject can create a more active form of suspense than a paragraph of psychological commentary.
This matters when a novel crosses borders. Readers encountering the Thorkild Aske series in English or another language are meeting both a story and a translated rhythm. The range of foreign editions reflects how the novels move into new linguistic settings, where pauses, repetitions and tonal shifts may be handled differently while the underlying tension remains.
The Reader's Inner Sound
A finished novel should create its own sound inside the reader’s mind. That sound comes from sentence length, punctuation, recurring images and the balance between dialogue and description. It may be quiet, abrasive, hurried or almost hypnotic, but it must be consistent with the emotional journey of the story.
I do not expect readers to hear the same music I heard while writing. Someone reading on a train across New South Wales, during a lunch break in Perth or on a winter evening in Hobart will bring a different acoustic world to the pages. That personal experience is part of the novel’s life after publication.
Music helps me begin, and silence helps me decide what belongs. The reader should remember that atmosphere is built through both presence and absence: the sound that draws us into a scene, and the quiet that makes us listen for what has not yet been said.