Day 7: Sound in Story

We are Writing: It's a month of writing posts, prompts, exercises, tips, and places to submit

Photo by Luana De Marco on Unsplash

These next few posts are about putting the senses in our writing to make cooler, better stories.

Those are just:

• Sight

• Sound

• Touch

• Taste

• Smell

Yesterday, we talked a bit about sight and had a couple of exercises below the paywall. Today, it’s about SOUND.

If you’ve read more than three picture books, you’ve probably seen onomatopeia—that sensory language that makes us hear how something in the fictional (or nonfictional world happens.

Here’s a quick example.

• The water came out of the faucet into the metal sink.

• The water dripped out of the faucet into the metal sink.

• The water gushed out of the faucet into the metal sink.

• The water trickled out of the faucet into the metal sink.

• The water whooshed out of the faucet into the metal sink

All those verbs (dripped, gushed, trickled whooshed) make a lot of readers’ brains hear that water whooshing (etc.) and then hitting that metal sink.

Here’s a quick definition of onomatopeia from Merriam-Webster.

“Onomatopoeia.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/onomatopoeia. Accessed 6 Feb. 2025.

Things like:

• Buzzzz buzzzz went the bee.

That counts.

Why is this important?

Sounds help us communicate. Sounds help us understand the world we move through. Their vibrations push against the drums of our ears, right? Little itty-bitty bones (hammer, stirrup, anvil) react and move. How cool is that? Those bones make fluid move, which makes itty-bitty hairs move. Those hairs get the nerve cells going and then—whoosh—the brain hears.

Seriously. I know I already wrote it, but how cool is that?

So, below the paywall, I have a bit more, an exercise, and some fun things about adding sound to your writer’s toolbox to make better stories.