Let’s pause for a moment.
You’ve heard the phrase “pregnant pause.” How does a pause become pregnant—ripe with meaning, freighted with consequence, tingly with anticipation?
A pause is not simply empty space between phrases, like the gap between words on a page. True, it does set one phrase off from another, but it can also serve as connective tissue, linking one thought with others, propelling momentum forward, and underscoring emotion or intention.
A pause can be expressive in its own right and can be meaningful in a variety of ways. For example:
- Creating suspense: “She opened the letter…PAUSE…and froze.”
- Providing a transition: “That was the past. …PAUSE…This is now.”
- Establishing authority: “Let me be clear. …” PAUSE
- Focusing attention: “With plans in place, the project would begin…” PAUSE
- As a staging device, preparing us for what follows: “On your mark…” PAUSE
- Ratcheting up tension, stirring anticipation: “And now the story can be told…” PAUSE. OR, the classic: “Once upon a time…” PAUSE.
The lines above would not have had nearly the impact without the “set-up” provided by the pause.
Pausing in comedy is essential for a joke to work – we call this comedic timing: “Take my wife…Please!” The pause tricks the listener into anticipating an expected meaning. Caught off guard, the unexpected line, “please”, triggers the laugh.
Pauses are endlessly manipulated for “dramatic effect”. Politicians, preachers, motivational speakers, and carnival pitchmen all seem to have a knack for inflating rhetoric with strategic pauses.
Simple exposition would be dull and monotonous without the accents pauses provide. The rise and fall of stirring rhetoric is driven forward by gate-keeping pauses—building and releasing tension.
Pauses don’t exist apart from language; they derive their meaning from the words that surround them. A powerful phrase earns a pause; the pause, in turn, amplifies the phrase.
Words and pauses can sometimes be (nearly) one in the same, “I told you to STOP!” PAUSE
Strategically placed pauses are naturally woven into speaking patterns and should not be ignored or slighted. They are essential to conversational cadences. They have a beat of their own, on a footing comparable with words and phrases. Syncopated speech depends on the presence of pauses, equally weighted, equally emphatic. “I came. I saw. I conquered.”
So what does this mean to the working actor?
While effective, pauses can be overused. They have to be deployed discreetly, tactfully. Overuse of pauses—exaggerated, drawn-out pauses—sound gimmicky, call attention to themselves, and quickly become tiresome.
Much of commercial and narration voice work is limited by settled conventions, which often means brisk, minimally inflected patter. Certain genres call for baked-in-the-cake inflections and intonations: Promos, trailers, documentaries. Consequently, opportunities for dramatic expression are limited, as contrasted, for example, with the interpretive freedom allowed actors in film and theater.
There are, however, exceptions: testimonials, character work in commercial dialogues, and documentary re-enactments. Animation and audiobooks are certainly exceptions. Sometimes scripts naturally call for full, fat pauses, for example: “On December 7th, 1941, Japanese forces launched a devastating attack on Pearl Harbor.”
PAUSE. No direction notes needed.
A pause often accompanies a breath—because audible inhalations can also be punctuators. A quick intake of breath brings us to attention and puts us on alert.
For the working actor, authentic, instinctive reads are the key to delivering natural, unobtrusive pauses. Calculated pauses, on the other hand—the kind that marked up scripts often encourage—spoil the broth. Incorporate pauses, but don’t exaggerate them. Pauses should be woven into the natural, textured flow of language. Pauses provide resonance for ideas and sentiments expressed. Lines and pauses are joined at the hip, one leading the way, the other imparting an affirming nod. Give words the room they need to breathe, and that sometimes means just taking a pause.
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