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Visit our Common Room to share book recommendations, ask questions, and connect with other Inklings and your membership mentors.

Visit our Studio to play writing games that will help you develop characters, build story worlds, develop plots, and more.

Visit our Workshop to build writing skills and to develop sparks of ideas into something that can work in your next writing piece.

Visit our Library to be inspired, and to learn from published authors about how to tackle various writing challenges.

Our theme for April is “The Sound of a Story”

The stories we read can captivate us through the written word and also visually through illustrations. But what about sound? How can sound play a role in the way we write or in the way we represent a story to our audience? And if, in the absence of illustrations, we must use imagery as our literary tool for inspiring our readers to see the story, how can we also help them to hear the story? Furthermore, it might be interesting to consider how sound or music can also be a part of our creative process.

Think about how a soundtrack, score and sound effects all contribute the emotional energy of a film or tv show, such as a moment of victory or triumph, or perhaps crushing defeat, a scene of melancholy or despair, or fear and anxiety, or love and hope. Sound and music are storytelling tools.

Just imagine what kinds of stories could be possible if we were to allow ourselves to be solely influenced and inspired by sound? Sound (and music especially) has the uncanny ability to preserve memories and illicit emotions. What if what we heard only with our ears was the motivator for a new creative idea?

What images might be inspired by the sound of screeching tires in the distance or the unsettling shatter of breaking glass? Or imagine a scene inspired by chirping birds and the sound of the breeze wisping through the trees. What about the sound of someone laughing? What could have caused that person to laugh? Was it something funny? Is it a laugh at someone’s expense? An expression of relief or perhaps villainous intent?

How can sound play a role in inspiring our creativity and in communicating the story more effectively to readers?

In your journal, try one or more of these writing dares:

“Soundtrack Story”

: Play a song and write a scene or story that comes to mind. *Consider trying this first with an instrumental song and then with one that has vocals.

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Onomatopoem: In honor of National Poetry Month, write a sound poem, either rhyming or in free verse (no rhyming or poetic structure required), that incorporates as much onomatopoeia as possible.

An onomatopoeia is a word that actually looks like the sound it makes

(Ex: "The root beer fizzed over the top of the mug." or "The glass jar crashed to the floor in a shower of shards."). If it helps, describe an event, memory or scene. Outside of onomatopoeia, feel free to also use descriptive words (like metaphor or simile) to convey the sounds of the scene.

"Writing a Sound" : Choose an object (like a blender or garbage truck) or action (like a falling tree, or waves crashing on the shore) and come up with as many ways to creatively describe the sound as possible. If it helps, choose 2-3 different examples of sounds and then describe the sound in three or more different ways. Using onomatopoeia is just one way to convey sound. The more ways you can come up with to write about sound for your reader, the broader your writing vocabulary will be and the more interesting your stories can become.

You can share your ideas for prompts related to our theme, and check out prompts from your fellow Inklings at this link.

Save the Date to meet March’s Featured Author, Jonathan Merritt!

April 22nd at 4:00 PM- 5:00 PM PT

W H A T ' S C U R R E N T & C O M I N G U P