72 Ways to Describe Sound
Since novels rarely include pictures, audio, color, or anything multimedia, their power to captivate lies entirely in words. How we authors describe action, surroundings, setting, and characters determine whether readers will not be able to put the book down or will throw it into the trash. Here are a few suggestions for describing sounds in your novel.
A note: These are for inspiration only. They can’t be copied because they’ve been pulled directly from an author’s copyrighted manuscript (intellectual property is immediately copyrighted when published).
Outside
Somewhere a dog barked
Muffled music pulsed from a building to our right, boomed as a patron emerged
The white noise whoosh of traffic from Soldiers Field Road was rhythmic, almost lulling.
The call of the muezzin echo from the mosque loudspeaker out over the rain-slick street
The rasp of leather on rock
A hush in the dark
The wind made the various chimes hanging from the eaves and trees, sing
Croaking of frogs
Blat of motorcycles; the full-throated growl of a truck
Through a window I could hear the risings and fallings of a conversation being held on a porch near the corner, chatting and yapping and playing and shrieking; a car passed on the street
the creaking, the sea noises, and the night birds outside. I was surrounded by the musty, oily, salty smell of the ship and the ocean, and realized how sharp one���s senses become in the dark. Every place has its own scent, a peculiar mixture of organic growth and human industry, of must, paint, wood and vermin.
Faint sound of music from the rooftop lounge above us
A cab idled
Sounds of traffic, a horn honking, an engine revving.
Heard the crunch and rattle of peppercorns as he approached the car
The locusts keened at me
slap of rope against asphalt
the rhythmic cadence of a cadet platoon running through the grounds, the steady tramp of their feet like a muffled drum on the quad
A faint electrical hum in the background sounds in the street
A piercing silence
Hot humid air was electric with the chirping of crickets and the rattle of cicadas
Sounds of jackhammers, the bleat of sirens in the night, 24-hr diners, graffiti, coffee serve in cardboard cups, steam exhaled through manhole covers
A motorcycle snarled
The roaring sound of a motorcycle revving on the other side of the cemetery intrudes like a profanity
Nature
the wind roared
the clinking whisper of snow on the metal roof, the panting of my dog, the scrape of my own footfalls���the only sounds in a place ���
Vehicles
The rhythmic pounding punctures the stillness of the morning air���fwtt fwtt fwtt
Drumbeat of a chopper, coming in low, hidden by the tree line
Thrum of the rotors
The engine whined at a high pitch
Traffic howled in both directions
Doppler wail of a passing patrol car
Squawking
Trouble
The boom of the rocket propelled grenade leaving its launcher
The whoosh as it blistered through the air en route to its target, and finally the deafening explosion as the RPG connected
Barrel up under lights and klaxon
Clink of metal, brush of boot
War
Sound of the aircraft powering up was like an industrial turbine red-lining.
Klaxon sounded on the ship���s internal speaker system.
Inside
The fire hissed softly and the log shifted with a little shower of sparks
doors opened and closed and water ran and toilets flushed and then the house went quiet. The heating system whirred and the taped-up football players muttered and grunted and snored
chink chink of cutlery on china
Phone rang, a short, sharp trill
Silence swelling to fill the space available
Creak the basement steps made when he���d sat down, drip-drip-drip from a leaky utility sink faucet
Offices
Phones chirping and deputies yelling at each other
Heels tapping softly against the polished stone floor
Keyboards clacking
Elevator doors clunked shut
Senses
ringing was growing in her ears
Sounded like a chicken being strangled
the loudest man-made sound on the North American continent until the detonation of the first atomic bomb at Alamogordo, New Mexico.
The soft snick���a knife opening
Ice clinked gently in the glass
Human
Hacked out a cough, noisy and bronchial
High pitched cackle, an ugly gasping sound, half laugh, half choke, erupted somewhere in front of them
Rubber-soled boots silent on the polished stone surface
Braying laugh
Basso voice he���d developed from years of smoking, drinking and yelling
Conversation louder here, laughter, the blare of music from digital players, movies playing on laptops or flat-screen monitors
Snick
Here’s how IEFLT describes sounds that humans make.
More descriptors about your senses:
57 Ways to Describe Talking in a��Novel
65 Ways to Describe Sight and Eyes in Your��Writing
How to Describe Sensory��Actions
Jacqui Murray is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman
, the story of her daughter���s journey from high school to United States Naval Academy. She is the author/editor of dozens of books on integrating tech into education, webmaster for six blogs, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, adjunct professor, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers, monthly contributor to Today���s Author and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics. You can find her book at her publisher���s website, Structured Learning.��
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