Footsteps

[ratsy]

Hey all, I am working on a story and I want to describe the sound of boots on a wooden floor. The MC is hiding in an abandoned store, someone walks in and i want to describe the sound...is it a klunk? Clop?

Clop, clop, clop; the footsteps thudded in my ears, my heart beat raced with each drop of his boots.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Thunk thunk

Clop is more a tiled surface?

I have bare upstairs wood floor. But the kind of boots?
Riding boots with heels that tap?
Flat "snow" boots?
Hobnailed boots?
Commando or workman rubber soles?
Wellie boots?
Posh flat sole and narrow heel ladies boots?

All sound different.

 

[ratsy]

Well, I'm no cobbler so I don't know what kind of boot! I suppose I was thinking of a cowboy boot or something hard soled.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

A soft click for cowboy boots, to my mind.

 

[HareBrain]

A heel-and-toe effect could give an impression of slow, sinister seaching: klunk-tap, klunk-tap (or better words of your choosing).

 

[ratsy]

If I merge Springs and HB together I get a 'click-tap, click-tap'

I like it.

Then my MC stabs the guy...too bad it was his brother following him!! or was it??????

tune in next time to find out....

 

[Jo Zebedee]

No, Hb's way too skinny to merge with me! Although I could nab his very lovely leather jacket as a merging of sorts.

 

[tinkerdan]

All these sound descriptions make me wonder what a novel written by a foley artist would sound like.

 

[J Riff]

Clop is... horsey, I looked it up. This's a hard one. Klud, clunk.... Tromp.
Step, stomp, good luck>>)

 

[ratsy]

This is what I have at this point. I agree clop is horsey

Click-tap, click-tap, click-tap; my heart banged against my ribcage harder with each step.

 

[J Riff]

That sounds like high heels, or a tap dancer.
Clump.. clump.... thump (pulling out thesaurus.... nothing.)
there's a page discussing 'the sound of footsteps' and they can't figure it out either.*

 

[Juliana]

Click-tap works fine for me. Clop makes me think of the three Billy Goats Gruff (yes, I know they were trip-trapping but I've always imagined it as a clop sort of noise!).

Edited to add: will you describe the boots at some point? If the reader knows its a cowboy boot, the click-tap makes perfect sense.

 

[HareBrain]

Killer In Tap Shoes! Great idea for a story.

I agree the exact sound is a bit hard to come by. If you give me a few minutes I could take up the carpets and get myself some cowboy boots.

 

[ratsy]

Killer In Tap Shoes! Great idea for a story.

I agree the exact sound is a bit hard to come by. If you give me a few minutes I could take up the carpets and get myself some cowboy boots.

If it's not too much trouble

 

[TheDustyZebra]

Cowboy boots on a wooden floor is a klunk or a klud or a clomp or *possibly* a tap, but I don't get a click for that. HB's klunk-tap would work.

I don't have any cowboy boots, but there are plenty of cowboys and wooden floors around here.

 

[ratsy]

Hey Dusty, do me a solid. Head to your local saloon, grab a pint of whisky, and by the end of the pint, you will have the perfect sound from the cowboy boots on the wooden floor. Then scan and email me the napkin notes and I'm set!

 

[TheDustyZebra]

A pint of whiskey? I will have the perfect sound from a head hitting a wooden floor.

 

[ratsy]

hahaha, yeah I was going to say we would have the perfect sound of a woman falling off a stool

 

[barrett1987]

Don't use clop. Click, thunk, thud, stump, thump, combine two? heel/toe thud,click?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It depends on how he's walking -- cautiously, deliberately, etc. -- on whether it would be heel-toe or flat-footed (or close enough to flat-footed that the two sounds merge) and how loud the sound would be.

But it also depends on what's under the wooden floor. Is there a foundation directly under the floor or are you thinking of something like a loft with an empty space directly under the floor? In the latter case it might be a hollow sound.

I've just made the experiment. When I walk barefoot across my wooden floor (planks over a plywood sub-floor supported by joists with a foot of air underneath) I can hear the floor creak in places. But when I put on boots very similar to cowboy boots and walk at a normal pace, the sound is somewhere between a clop and a slap, and loud enough that I can't hear the floor creak. But my house is about 80 years old; if it were a considerably older house and the floor was really creaky, perhaps the MC does hear an occasional creak.