We have a tropical storm, wannabe hurricane, headed our way.  Outside it is dark and the wind soughs through the wet leaves in the trees.  The birds are quiet, but the cicadas sing.

I’ve been thinking how important sound is.  We know, instantly, on entering a room how comfortable the people in it feel with each other by the kinds of sound we hear.  We listen in the night for a sound out of place.  When I visit the beach I try to rent close enough that the sound of the surf will roll in and out of my dreams all night.

Yet in my stories and writing I sometimes forget to write in a single sound aside from conversation.  Hopefully I catch it in my rewrites, but even then I think I’ve failed to fully realize the impact sound has on us, and the mood-setter it is.  Especially changes in sound, or sounds we aren’t used to. 

In my Takers story he notices the sound of a bird early in the story, but I don’t think I have anything by way of sound written into the later scene when he opens the door to look out into the night.  In my Keela story there are few if any references to sound even though she leaves in a tide water, spends a night in a mangrove forest, and has pivotal moments on the beach.  Right now it reads like a movie with the captions on and the sound turned off.

So, I’ll keep adding sound when I do rewrites, but I’m setting myself a goal to include more noises in the first write, too.  Just as I would write in visuals from the first words.

Right now, I’ll listen- so I know the sounds of a tropical storm.