For today’s writing prompt, let’s use one of our senses to gather sensory details to improve our writing. (Our five senses are sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch, but today we’ll focus on sound.)
Sensory details help your reader better understand what you are trying to convey. You want your reader to feel as though he or she is right there in your setting with your characters, hearing everything they are.
Pamela’s Prompt: Stop and Listen
Find a comfortable place to write and grab either a pen and paper or your laptop. (I like to do this exercise in my dining room where I open the window that connects to my front porch. That way, I can hear things that happen outside as well as inside.)
Set a timer for five to 10 minutes, close your eyes, and listen carefully. Jot down everything you hear. Here’s what I heard:
- Children playing a game of hide and seek – excited chattering, giggling, a boy counting down “10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1. Ready or not, here I come!”
- The thudding of a baseball against a backdrop.
- Squealing of brakes as a delivery truck stops in front of my neighbor’s house.
- A far-away police siren.
- The roar of a plane overhead.
- The tinkling of wind chimes on my porch.
- My coffee maker sputtering as it finishes brewing.
- Footsteps above me as my husband walks from room to room on our second floor.
- The soft whir of an oscillating fan.
Next, take one of the things you heard and write a sentence, using as much sensory detail as possible.
For example, instead of:
“The coffee maker finished its brewing cycle.”
I might write:
“Like a winded runner, the coffee maker sput-sput-sputtered and finally gasped, as though it had given its all and could go no further.”
Sensory details are like soundtracks in movies. Remember the mechanical and ominous sound of Darth Vader breathing when we were first introduced to him in Star Wars IV: A New Hope? Or, how about the signature theme music from JAWS? Bummmmmmmm. BUM. Bummmmmmmm. BUM. Bum-BUM-Bum-BUM. (By the way, typing that out was harder than it looks!)
Without soundtracks, these blockbuster movies would be infinitely boring and uninteresting. Keep your writing from suffering the same fate.
Add sensory details and let the reader “hear” for themselves.
Next week, we’ll explore the sense of sight.