Reviewing my novel, I found a few areas where I do use sound. One is in how characters sound when they talk. Below are a few examples.
Describing a three-year-old boy: “Because he … talked so well, True gave you the weird impression he was a miniature adult.”
A sixteen-year-old boy is chronically nervous. So he talks fast. Throughout my story, I mention “Gabe answered at full speed”, and “The longer he talked, the faster he got”. He also has a habit of drumming his hands on any handy surface when he’s really nervous.
A petty crook has “a voice as deep and rocky as an abandoned mine”. Later he speaks in his “basement voice.”
I have a character who runs a notoriously wild bar and may be engaged in illegal activities there. So he doesn’t like the police. When the sheriff shows up at his bar to investigate a possible crime, he says, “‘Get lost, Acker.’ Mr. Ferrick flung an arm at the patrol car.”
Since I have already established Ferrick doesn’t like the police, his action conveys how he sounds when he speaks to them.
For more on dialogue tags, read my previous post on them.
Another area I can use to evoke sound is nature. My book is set in the mountains of eastern West Virginia, so I have a great opportunity to make a scene come alive with sound.
I’ll discuss that next time.