Writing About Sounds

Stylistically, as the writer, you can write however you want. But it’s important to be aware of how your choices can be perceived by your readers. Keep that in mind. When something happens in your book that is a sound i.e., a door slamming, a gun shooting, or thunder crashing. How do you write it? Do you spell out the sound, say it happened, or rely on punctuation to make that sound stand out?

Today as we talk about sounds, know there is no one way to do this. I’ve seen writers take many creative avenues when painting a scene and a sound to their readers. I think you need to take into account how your choice fits in with the rest of your book’s style and how it looks on the page. It’s also important to think about how your choices interact with other stylistic choices in your book.

Writing Sounds in Books

• BAM!

• “Bam!”

• Bam!

• The door slammed shut.

• BAM

When a sudden sound happens in a story, it can be hard to fit in to the rest of the scene. I sometimes think throwing in a “BAM!” looks messy but if I take my time to pause and say, “the door slammed shut,” I feel like it slows down the moment too much if it is a sudden happening. Sometimes a loud “BAM!” works perfectly but I know when I read a book, if I see a word in all caps on a page, my eyes will jump to it first before I even read the page, ruining the effect. But that’s my doing, isn’t it?

There are many ways you can show a sound to your reader. It’s up to you to pick what way you like to write sounds, but I want to give you some pointers to think about.

• Writing sounds in quotation marks (“Bam!”) might be confused with dialogue.

• Using all caps to show a sound and then again using all caps in dialogue might be too much. This is something you want to use sparingly. But do you use all caps for every interruptive sound? Or just certain ones?

• If you use italics for a sound, when do you use italics for other parts of your stories? Do you use italics for a character’s inner thoughts and sounds? This can confuse sounds VS thoughts so you might want to pick only one to be in italics.

• The benefit of using all caps or something big can be really jarring and captures the reader’s attention. But it might catch their attention too much and pull their eyes to that part of the page before they even get there.

Noise Example Two

• The doorbell rang.

• A doorbell sounded.

• Ding-dong!

• DING-DONG!

• “Ding-dong!”

I don’t recommend all caps for a sound that is not very LOUD.

“Ding-dong!” really reads as a dialogue to me.

The wording “sounded” is unspecific. It’s better to use more specific words like “rang” or “ding.”

My Pet Peeves with Sounds

Pet-Peeve #1: If you go out of your way to spell out sounds, be sure to never repeat them (as much as possible.) No one wants to read something with “Bam!” or “Thud!” up and down the page unless it is a 1950’s Batman cartoon.

Pet-Peeve #2: I wouldn’t draw too much attention to regular sounds such as a normal door closing in a not stressful situation.

Don’t do this:

Jasmine goes home after school. She opens the door and steps into her well-lit home. Her mom is in the kitchen.

SLAM!

The door closes shut behind Jasmine.

“Hi, Honey. How was school?”

You can do this:

Jasmine goes home after school. She opens the door and steps inside, but the front-room light is not turning on. Jasmine tries to flip the switch again but the door behind her swings shut.

SLAM!

Jasmine yelps and steps into her dark living room, wondering where her family is.

Why: Here, the door can aid a stressful unknown situation. It’s not normal for Jasmine’s family to not be home and for the lights to be out. The loud slam can accentuate her nerves in the weird situation.

Pet-Peeve #3: Write out sounds to draw a reader’s attention to them. Avoid this for normal sounds such as cars honking in the street, crickets chirping, a train going by, and more unless those sounds are a pivotal importance or result of the story and plot.

Pet-Peeve #4: Avoid doubling up on sounds being spelled out and descriptors. You can say, “the door slams shut,” and “BAM!” but avoid saying something like, “the door slams shut with a bam. BAM!” Don’t repeat yourself. Pick one or the other.

Conclusion

I was looking back at my writing advice article on colors and decided to pick another sensory detail to talk about. I have a lot of pet-peeves when it comes to writing sounds but at the same time, you can learn to just know what you need in your story when you are working on these moments. I can say I dislike using all-caps for any reason in my book but then the next week, I might decide they fit perfectly into another scene I am writing. It all depends on what the scene calls for and what catches the readers’ attention the best without going overboard.

Be sure to share below how you write out sounds in your stories or what are some pet-peeves you have come across as a reader?

Best,

Danni Lynn, Evangeline40003