Sensory Writing: Sound (Part 3 of 6)

Welcome to the Sense Series. The first part was an overview of sensory writing. The second part covered sight. Now we’ll talk about hearing and sound.

Hearing is a physical reaction within the eardrum. A vibration that carries meaning. Everything your character hears should do the same. It should resound within the story or characters.

Sounds are easily remembered. A familiar voice. A musical note. A scream in the night. Reminding your reader of these sounds is a great way to recreate the sound within their head when the only real sound is that the pages turning. You can create music using letters strewn across the page. That is the power of words and of sound. Not everything is as easily recalled.

But sounds also distract. They pull your attention away. Consider all the ways noises distract when you are trying to concentrate—the tapping of a pencil on a desk, chewing, listening to videos without earbuds, talking on the phone, whistling, crinkling cellophane wrappers, crunching ice. Use that when trying to create tension and chaos on the page. Pull in those noises that intrude upon our lives all the time—the birds singing, motorcycles revving their engines, horns, lawnmowers. We are constantly surrounded by noise. Add some of it into your manuscript for authenticity.

You can also reveal key bits of information by adding dialogue and noises. Think about the slam of a door following a gun shot. A creak on the floor below you when you’re alone in the house. The sound of footsteps when you’re supposedly alone. Including sounds in your story adds another level, another layer.

Sounds engage the reader. They pull her closer and make her listen and react. It’s why some people jump (not me—looking away so as not to make eye contact) when watching scary movies or yelp out loud when startled. Sounds evoke a visceral reaction.

Repetition makes it even more so. We recall those things we hear again and again. The repetition of a line of poetry or a bit of dialogue. It makes it stand out and takes on a higher level of importance. It makes your reader pay attention. Look at how Edgar Allen Poe used this to his advantage in the Tell-Tale Heart:

I talked more fluently, and with a heightened voice. Yet the sound increased –and what could I do? It was a low, dull, quick sound –much such a sound as a watch makes when enveloped in cotton. I gasped for breath — and yet the officers heard it not. I talked more quickly –more vehemently; but the noise steadily increased…I foamed –I raved –I swore! I swung the chair upon which I had been sitting, and grated it upon the boards, but the noise arose over all and continually increased…But anything was better than this agony! Anything was more tolerable than this derision! I could bear those hypocritical smiles no longer! I felt that I must scream or die! –and now –again! –hark! louder! louder! louder! louder! —
Edgar Allen Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart

You don’t have to add a lot of sound to your story, but slipping it in when it makes sense will make your writing pop. Here are some examples where authors did just that:

He took a deep breath and blew it out of his nostrils like a shotgun blast.
The Dark Horse, Craig Johnson

I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart. I am, I am, I am.
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

A boy arrived first, with cluttered breath and what appeared to be a toolbox.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

She didn’t know if the scream ringing in her ears was her own in the thunderous roar of rending rock.
Clan of the Cave Bear, Jean M. Auel

I was jolted awake by the sound of gunfire in one of the neighboring stacks. The shots were followed by a few minutes of muffled shouting and screaming, then silence.
Earnest Cline, Ready Player One

Then there are authors who do a deeper dive:

The quiet doesn’t last. Barrius screams, and the students howl in response, flinging jeers at him. Marcus is loudest of all, leaning forward, practically spitting in excitement. Faris rumbles his approval. Even Demetrius manages a shout or two, his green eyes flat and distant as if he is somewhere else entirely. Beside me, Helene cheers, but there’s no joy in her expression, only a stern sadness. The rules of Blackcliff demand that she voice her anger at the deserter’s betrayal. So she does.
An Ember in Ashes, Sabaa Tahir

Snowman wakes before dawn. He lies unmoving, listening to the tide coming in, wave after wave sloshing over the various barricades, wish-wash, wish-wash, the rhythm of heartbeat. He would so like to believe he is still asleep.
Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood

The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone, over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.” A little maple tree heard the cricket song and turned bright red with anxiety.
Charlotte’s Web, E.B. White

Lying in bed beside her husband, Molly Sloan had been restless before the sudden cloudburst. She grew increasingly fidgety as she listened to the rush of rain.
The voices of the tempest were legion, like an angry crowd chanting in a lost language. Torrents pounded and pried at the cedar siding, at the shingles, as if seeking entrance.
The Taking, Dean Koontz

When I opened my eyes, the window shade was a pale rectangle in a wall of black. I listened for Charley’s breathing but heard only distant noises elsewhere in the building—footsteps, vague creaks, the sound of water running through pipes. I tried to make out the time on my wristwatch, but the luminous numbers had lost their glow.
The Precipice, Paul Doiron

Earlier, kids had been playing hopscotch there, on the street that looked like oil-stained pages. When I arrived, I could still hear the echoes. The feet tapping the road. The children-voices laughing, and the smiles like salt, but decaying fast.
Then, bombs.
This time, everything was too late.
The sirens. The cuckoo shrieks in the radio. All too late.
The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Presently I heard a slight groan, and I knew it was the groan of mortal terror. It was not a groan of pain or of grief –oh, no! –it was the low stifled sound that arises from the bottom of the soul when overcharged with awe. I knew the sound well. Many a night, just at midnight, when all the world slept, it has welled up from my own bosom, deepening, with its dreadful echo, the terrors that distracted me.
The Tell-Tale Heart, Edgar Allen Poe

Finally the blustery day turned into a blustery night. To Pooh, it was an uncomfortable night full of uncomfortable noises. And one of the noises was a sound he had never heard before. “Gr-r-r-rowl!”
Pooh got up and went to his door to check it out. “Hello, out there! Oh, I hope nobody answers.”
Just then a funny-looking animal bounced into the room. “Hi, I’m Tigger. T-I-double Guh-ER.”
Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day, A.A. Milne

I could hear it from far away, that sound which only very big cities can produce: a sound consisting of all sounds rolled into one: the hum of voices and the cries of animals, bells ringing and the chink of coins, children’s laughter and hammers beating metal, knives and forks clattering and a thousand doors slamming—the grandiose sound of life, of birth and death, itself.
The 13½ Lives of Captain Bluebear, Walter Moers

I eased into a more comfortable position and calmed my breathing, straining to listen to the forest over the wind. The snow fell and fell, dancing and curling like sparkling spindrifts, the white fresh and clean against the brown and gray of the world. And despite myself, despite my numb limbs, I quieted that relentless, vicious part of my mind to take in the snow-veiled woods.
A Court of Thorns and Roses, Sarah Maas

The doctor sat up in bed. No sound but the faint roar of the air conditioner. Why was he thinking about it tonight in a hotel room at the Parker Meridien? For a moment he couldn’t shake the feeling of the old house. He saw the woman again–her bent head, her vacant stare. He could almost hear the hum of the insects against the screen in the old porch. And the brown-eyed man was speaking without moving his lips. A waxen dummy infused with life—
The Witching Hour, Anne Rice

The questionable sound of Silas’s loom, so unlike the natural cheerful trotting of the winnowing-machine, or the simpler rhythm of the flail, had a half-fearful fascination for the Raveloe boys, who would often leave off their nutting or birds’-nesting to peep in at the window of the stone cottage, counterbalancing a certain awe at the mysterious action of the loom, by a pleasant sense of scornful superiority, drawn from the mockery of its alternating noises, along with the bent, tread-mill attitude of the weaver.
Silas Marner, George Eliot

Minna’s Court Street was the old Brooklyn, a placid ageless surface alive underneath with talk, with deals and casual insults, a neighborhood political machine with pizzeria and butcher-shop bosses and unwritten rules everywhere. All was talk except for what mattered most, which were unspoken understandings.
Motherless Brooklyn, Jonathan Lethem