Five days into NaNoWriMo2014 and oddly enough one of the things I am finding most challenging is putting the sounds in my head onto the page. Without giving too much of it away, my story is largely based on a character who cannot speak in a way that we humans can understand.
As I am playing the story out in my head I am making certain noises and expressions that I cannot figure out how to put on the page. When I was a kid I thought words like onomatopoeia sounded dirty and where funny to say but it turns out that this word and its definition will either make or break the story I am writing.
onomatopoeia
1. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) the formation of words whose sound is imitative of the sound of the noise or action designated, such as hiss, buzz, and bang
2. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) the use of such words for poetic or rhetorical effect
Think about it; just take a second to be cognizant of all the ways you express emotion through sounds. Everyone does this so differently that you can't really put it into words. But there are some universally recognized words in literature that express sound. Take an easy one, 'Pow'. You get a mental image or can easily associate that sound to some context. But what about something like the word sigh? Short from writing 'Sally sighed' it is difficult to express the noise of something sighing. And I've found in the case of onomatopoeia, subtext is king. You have to be able to describe the situation in appropriate detail to make those words work as you want them to.
Sounds and body language can be just as powerful as words but in the writers world those things have to be expressed with words. I've had to search for terms to use as I write for this character and I have found that the alphabetic combinations are not doing my mental sounds justice.
It falls back on me, the writer, to creatively and thoroughly describe scenes, contexts, and background for the limited options of onomatopoeia to make sense and create the impact that I want them to. This was a unique challenge I didn’t see coming but I know the practice under the insane expectations of NaNoWriMo will serve me well in other works later on.
26 days to go!
Write on -T
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