Read half of a Scott novel and notice central characters are mechanical (7)
I believe the answer is:
robotic
'mechanical' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'read half of a scott novel and notice central characters' is the wordplay.
'read half of' means to take half the letters.
'a scott novel' becomes 'robroy' (rob roy is a novel by sir walter scott).
'and' means one lot of letters go next to another.
'central characters' indicates the central letters.
The middle letters of 'notice' are 'otic'.
'robroy' with half the letters taken is 'rob'.
'rob'+'otic'='ROBOTIC'
'are' is the link.
(Other definitions for robotic that I've seen before include "Unthinking, like a machine" , "Mechanical; unemotional" , "Stiff, unemotional" , "Of automated movements" , "Like a mechanical figure" .)