Stories become more thrilling and palpable to readers when we zero in on what a character is sensing. However, writers tend to favor describing what their characters see more than what they hear, smell, feel, or taste. So today we’re leaving behind more popular and favored visual descriptions to write about what we hear, and or to build a flash fiction scene centered entirely around what our characters hear, to explore first-hand how audio details can build deep psychological tension and understanding.
🎨Creative Prompt
The Audio Isolation Sprint: Write a 300-600 word scene tracking a character who is trying to find the source of an odd, irregular scratching sound coming from inside a wall or floorboard or unseen place inside a house or building. Focus your writing entirely on their hearing and auditory senses, and do not reference or use any of the other senses (sight, touch, smell, taste) in this scene to describe what your character is doing or their environment.
🧠Reflective Prompt
The Sound Environment Check: Take five minutes to close your eyes and listen to the noises surrounding your current writing space or immediate environment. When you open your eyes again, list three background sounds you heard (like a refrigerator hum, distant traffic, or muffled conversations), especially those noises you usually try to tune out. Then write about how this ambient noise affects your daily mental endurance and or how you prefer to work or write.
🔄 Share these prompts with others so they can write with us, then share your writing in the chat so we can workshop it. ✍️
📝My Response: A Story in Scratches
Selling life insurance had never been Edward’s dream or plan. No, he had always imagined himself out of breath on a field of some sort, chasing a ball of some kind— any ball of any size would have been fine, too, as long as there was a crowd roaring in the stands nearby— and so did everyone else in this god-forsaken town. The town he had once tried so desperately to leave behind.
Scratch. Scratch. Scratch.
He never thought he’d be forty-three, thrice divorced (only two of which had been his fault, arguably), shuffling reams of paper and boxes, both new and used, from one side of this decaying room to the next, with no real final destination or home.
Two months had already passed since Edward Sr. did, along with this decapitated business empire, which was built entirely on anticipating catastrophe and demise, to him. And so many f$@#ing stacks of paper. Piles and piles and piles of it!
scratch scratch scratch scratch scratch
Just his luck that his father was one of the only people left on the planet who hadn’t believed in cloud-based technology. Or in hiring an assistant to organize this indecipherable mess. Or in calling an exterminator to—
SCRAAATCH
—locate wherever the hell those mice were hiding.
For days now, Edward had been trying to locate their nests but couldn’t. There were just too many damn boxes filled and topped with wayward stacks of paper in the way.
But if he heard even one more—
scratch scratch scraaaaatch
Edward pushed the half-empty tower of cardboard boxes with manila folders to his right so forcefully that it wobbled into the tower next to it, which sent the tower next to that and the tower next to that one careening, sending dozens of leaves of paper rustling to the ground like giant butterfly wings, thick with unspoken wishes full of ink, to wordlessly cover the bottom two steps.
SCRATCH scratch scraaaaaaaatch
Edward lunged toward the staircase, disbelieving his negligence. He’d been so overcome by boxes and paperwork and loss that he’d completely forgotten to inspect the upper levels of this worn-out semi-converted Victorian residence. Of course! That’s where the noisy vermin were. Had to be.
His rubber sole squeaked when it met the semi-glossy paper on the ground as he began his ascent to a place he’d never been before. A place that had always been strictly off-limits.
Ever since he was a child, his father had warned him never to go upstairs, claiming it opened the door to an entirely different universe… but in a ‘backwards’ and ‘darker’, ‘more ominous’ sort of way. Not in a ‘fun’ or ‘recreational’ sort of way.
“It will send you back in time,” Edward Sr. had said, more than once. Which honestly sounded pretty flippin’ fantastic to him right now, as did finding those pesky vermin.
So, he kept ascending, each stair creaking at different decibels underneath his feet, his pace and rhythm slowing steadily the higher he got.
He paused at the second stair to the top, bending his ear to determine where he should go next. But he was only met with silence.
Nothing.
A void.
Having come this far, however, he wasn’t going to turn back. Not until he located the origins of that blasted scratching sound.
Traversing the final step with a groan that echoed down the hallway, Edward was now on the landing.
Still, nothing…
…
… scratch
..
… Scratch
…
… SCRAAATCH
…
…
Bang!
A door on the left, halfway down the hall shot open. And what emerged struck Edward dumb… or was it who?
Either way, it was impossible to concentrate above the clicking climax of nails heading directly toward…
whoosh-woosh
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE….
💬 Join the Dialogue
Onomatopoeias are much more difficult to include in fiction than it seems. Yet I did enjoy drafting this piece, as it made me think of Edgar Allan Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart, which I recommend reading this spooky season, if you haven’t read it already.
Writing this piece also made me realize how much I favor writing what characters see over everything else they’re sensing, making it a more reflective writing experience than I had originally anticipated.
Go ahead and try it out. You might be surprised how often you want to describe what a character sees over what they’re hearing, tasting, feeling, or smelling.
❓What specific everyday sound instantly puts you on edge or breaks your concentration when you are working or reading?
📖 Reading Recommendations
Fiction: The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe
Nonfiction: The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World by R. Murray Schafer