O is for ONOMATOPOEIA

               "Holy polysyllabic Greek words, Batman!"

            A long fancy word, Onomatopoeia is the BOOM! BAM! POW! of writing.  Simply put, it’s the spelling out of sounds.  

            Oddly, I catch myself tossing out onomatopoeic words all the time.  In an earlier entry I told you that my learning curve tends to make me “go splat.”  When I rule out or cite something, I refer to it as getting dinged. 

            I’ve gonged options that don’t appeal to me. 

Hit it, Chuck. 
(image source)

             

           And the great part about onomatopoeia is that you don’t have to wield a striker or don a batsuit to use it.

I believe writers utilize onomatopoeia pretty effectively, plus we have an official weird license—a get-out-of-funny-looks card for when we have to perform unusual research or ask strange questions.  Or, say, drop an inexpensive ceramic platter out a window to document what kind of breaking sound it makes.  I’m just using that as—you know—*cough*—a random example. 

Okay, moving on…

            I did have another onomatopoeia experiment just this week.  One of my characters is going to get a little beat up in the not-too-distant future (please see C is for CONFLICT for rights to character provocation), and I needed to know what being hit with a saucepan sounded like. 

Yes, I’m a bully.  Luckily that’s part of the author package, too.

            Sooo, I moseyed downstairs to the kitchen, notepad in hand; weird license at the ready, to discover in what ways a saucepan could Ka-DONG!   

            I'll say that, similar to entertainment street acts, a crowd forms quickly when you're inexplicably beating on Revere Ware.  Within five minutes my cat, little niece and sister were all in attendance as I noted the various dongs result from hitting the pan with:  a serving spoon, a small melon, the bulb end of a turkey baster… (It’s surprisingly difficult to replicate a human noggin.)

     

    Granted the cat was drawn in by the funny noises, staying with the expectation that tuna would miraculously appear.  Little Niece was there to pet the cat.

       

              My sister was there to laugh at me. 

                          

And so is the beauty of onomatopoeia.   

                       
*Note: No siblings, nieces, felines, fruit or turkey basters were harmed in the making of this blog.

            Please join me tomorrow—P is for PLOT.

            Goodnight!  :0)