![]() One of the main issues is the overuse of onomatopoeia. It falls under the important skills of word choice and showing versus telling.īefore we discuss the right ways to use onomatopoeia, let’s talk about some of the problems with this tool. Onomatopoeia can be a powerful literary device when used effectively. Maybe there’s a creaking door or a sizzling sausage on the skillet. You have probably used onomatopoeia in your writing without even realizing it. If you tell your kid not to splash in the bathtub, you’re describing not only the action of splashing but also the noise water makes when you splash. A hum is a low, close-mouthed noise, and it sounds a lot like the word hum. ![]() It’s any word that sounds like the word it describes. I was walking to work when-bang!-a piano dropped out of a window directly in front of me.īut onomatopoeia includes plenty of other words.Crash! I jumped at the noise and looked up to see my cat staring guiltily at a broken vase on the floor.In other forms of fiction, these words often appear as standalone sentences or interjections. The panels describe sounds through bubbles with words like crash, bang, pow, and zap. The most easily identifiable examples of onomatopoeia are in comic books. In many cases, its only meaning is to describe a sound, like kapow! Onomatopoeia is a word that describes a sound. The overall consensus is that it’s okay to use sparingly, but there’s not a lot of discussion on how to use it effectively. My colleague was not alone in his opinions of onomatopoeia. If you spend time searching through writing and literature forums, you’ll find that the use of onomatopoeia is a contentious subject. ![]() One was almost angry as he argued with everyone else. I have a sentence in an early chapter of my second book, The Consort’s Journey, that describes the “clip-clopping of the horses’ hooves.” When I presented this chapter to my critique group before publication, five of the six writers commented on how much they liked that phrasing. I soon learned that a lot of writers-and readers-hate it. There wasn’t a lot of focus on onomatopoeia, but I eventually learned that onomatopoeia is more nuanced than a comic book-style interjection. My senior English teacher gave us a four-page list of literary devices to memorize and learn to identify. There were anaphora and parallelism, litotes and hyperbole, assonance and consonance. “It’s a word that describes a sound, like crash and bang.” We didn’t get much deeper than this cursory explanation, but the young writer in me fell in love with this funny word.Īs I got older, I learned more about the exciting world of literary devices. Not long after, my elementary teacher explained this literary device. There was a popular commercial of a little girl spelling the word in a spelling bee, so it was already on my radar. I remember the first time I learned about onomatopoeia.
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