Writing sounds

SamScribble said:

One of the best exponents of expressing sounds that I can recall was Anthony Burgess. And I seem to recall that one of his 'Enderby" novels was right up there. Unfortunately, I can't remember which one. Damn it, I'm going to have to read them all again.

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Please post here when you do remember.

jomar said:

Why fret about writing sounds? The pros I read don't force the sounds...they describe what happens and the reader fills in the blanks.

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Because:

• I am not a pro
• some situations require fewer words for higher tension

robertreams said:

I was asked to edit a manuscript in which, each time someone felt intense sexual feelings they were written as "Ugh"

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Someone getting off on humiliation p'raps?

StrangeLife said:

Cartoons can be a good inspiration for writing sounds...

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Why was there a slurp in the midst of all that crash-boom-bam? An explosion and a slurp sound... must be an adult cartoon.

All I know is that releasing sound allows an orgasm to rock to inclusive perfection.

In all honesty, writing the sounds is amateurish at best. A good writer will describe the sounds being made, eg: ...the wet, sucking sounds of his cock, as he pulled the thick shaft from her..., the sound of our sweating flesh slapping together rapidly as I thrust into her as deep and fast as I could...her deep moaning grunts let me know she was reaching that moment of perfection, where all the senses cried orgasm at once.

Writing sounds works for comics and that's it. Describe sounds in detail with the action and readers will have no problem knowing just what sounds are being made.

sweet_lusciousdesire said:

All I know is that releasing sound allows an orgasm to rock to inclusive perfection.

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Chanting also helps intensify those good vibrations.

RoyceConnors said:

In all honesty, writing the sounds is amateurish at best. A good writer will describe the sounds being made, eg: ...the wet, sucking sounds of his cock, as he pulled the thick shaft from her..., the sound of our sweating flesh slapping together rapidly as I thrust into her as deep and fast as I could...her deep moaning grunts let me know she was reaching that moment of perfection, where all the senses cried orgasm at once.

Writing sounds works for comics and that's it. Describe sounds in detail with the action and readers will have no problem knowing just what sounds are being made.

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As luck would have it I am an amateur. But I exercise some measure of control and refrain from using them liberally throughout the story.

A detailed description won't work if you're trying to break the narrative or punctuate a scene. So apart from saying it's a bad idea, do you have any sounds to share... Hmmm?

Nope, sorry, I don't write comic book sounds in stories.

Ooooooh-eeeeeee-aaaaaah works great for anal entry though, lmao

I'm an amateur as well and that was one of the first things I learned not to do in writing. Second was to figure out how to describe those sounds properly to fit the moment. Now there's a fun challenge.

As someone who has written a novel about the beginning of spoken language, which was absurdly hard for a variety of reasons, I have to agree with Mr Zappa's famous pronouncement that 'Writing about music [or any sound] is like dancing about architecture.' I'd try reversing the process - speak the sex scenes out loud, record yourself, transliterate, then cut and polish. Then what you are left with - if anything at all - will at least be accurate.

I was actually looking for a list of onomatopoeic words that one instantly recognises for the sounds they're meant to convey as well as commonly used sounds in writing that are accepted as an industry standard. I just want to have a handy reference guide.

It's like knowing the word is 'purple' vs 'a colour intermediate between red and blue'.

what about grunting in pleasure?

Uhng! Uh!

What about talking while giving a blowjob?

Rmmmfff!

Thoughts?

subdued_passion said:

I was actually looking for a list of onomatopoeic words that one instantly recognises for the sounds they're meant to convey as well as commonly used sounds in writing that are accepted as an industry standard. I just want to have a handy reference guide.

It's like knowing the word is 'purple' vs 'a colour intermediate between red and blue'.

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[My bold.] It is for us. Colour schematics differ according to cultural perceptions - famously, the ancient Greeks had no word corresponding to blue, and would describe both sea and sky as 'bronze'. Insofar as there are certain spectrum and wavelength characteristics of colours one can be objective about them relative to others, but few of us base our perception of colour on wavelength, and our perceptions are 'coloured' (forgive me) by our cultural precepts.

How much more ambiguous and subjective, then, are sounds? What we hear depends almost entirely on the sounds we regularly use - one person's inchoate roar is another's perfectly intelligible word since, apart from a fascinating and universal period in infancy known as phonemic expansion where we try out every possible phoneme, our 'sound palate' is limited to the language(s) we know. Even in strongly related languages, such as French and English, a dog's bark is transcribed as 'Woof' in English but 'Woah' in French. Even pitch is perceived differently based on our upbringing and associations. Sometimes even accent and dialect within one language will change common non-verbal sounds, according to the dominant phonemic features of the accent.

All that is to say that not only is there no such universally accepted onomatopoeic alphabet, but that there could not be one. It's a little like the suggestions for a simpler English spelling which surface from time to time: they always founder on the variety of pronunciation of almost every word. A phonemic spelling of bath or grass would, for me as a Southern mRP speaker, be 'barth' or 'grars' - for a Northerner they would remain 'bath' and 'grass', for a US southerner it wouldn't be far off 'bayuth' and 'grayus', and so on.

Short answer - I don't think it's doable. Sorry.

subdued_passion said:

Please post here when you do remember.

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It was Inside Mr Enderby (1963) - originally published under the pseudonym Joseph Kell.

subdued_passion said:

Why was there a slurp in the midst of all that crash-boom-bam? An explosion and a slurp sound... must be an adult cartoon.

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The sound of a brain hitting the wall of course. You need to watch more zombie movies...

I prefer not to type out the sound, they never look/sound right to me. if you describe the action and tone, the reader should be able to form a more accurate sound in their head than the one you could write out on the page.

I should probably start a thread asking what people think about writing sound versus describing them in stories, maybe then I'll get some sounds to add to my list.



@SamScribble- Thank you for the name. I will look it up at some point.

@Strangelife- Shouldn't brain hitting the wall be more of a squishy sound? Unless of course someone has rocks for brains.

@sethp- "Rmmmfff!" sound like someone with their mouth full and not like someone really working a penis. Maybe rmmfff-rmmfff rmmfff-rmmff?

Aw, poor Subdued. Not getting enough attention on the GB?

subdued_passion said:

I should probably start a thread asking what people think about writing sound versus describing them in stories, maybe then I'll get some sounds to add to my list.



@SamScribble- Thank you for the name. I will look it up at some point.

@Strangelife- Shouldn't brain hitting the wall be more of a squishy sound? Unless of course someone has rocks for brains.

@sethp- "Rmmmfff!" sound like someone with their mouth full and not like someone really working a penis. Maybe rmmfff-rmmfff rmmfff-rmmff?

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So, what would be the acceptable LIT punctuation for adding the sound of a camera shutter clicking? (It's a polaroid camera. Yeah, I'm old school.) Here's the sentence:

She searches for the perfect angle, and ends up down on one knee. Click.

This happens several times in the scene, each time after the sentence ends. Would the "click" be inside these: (Click), or these, as demonstrated in an earlier post, [Click] or italicized, or what? I don't want to bog the scene down with extra verbiage indicating the picture has been taken.

Thanks

SikFuk said:

So, what would be the acceptable LIT punctuation for adding the sound of a camera shutter clicking? (It's a polaroid camera. Yeah, I'm old school.) Here's the sentence:

She searches for the perfect angle, and ends up down on one knee. Click.

This happens several times in the scene, each time after the sentence ends. Would the "click" be inside these: (Click), or these, as demonstrated in an earlier post, [Click] or italicized, or what? I don't want to bog the scene down with extra verbiage indicating the picture has been taken.

Thanks

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Haven't found any authoritative guidance on that, so I think any of these would be fine, as long as you did the same thing for all asides like this: Click. (Click). Click.

The square brackets wouldn't be good. Those are used exclusively in publishing for editor's notes on the author's writing.