Tip Tuesday #130

Tip Tuesday features writers' tips on craft, research, querying, blogging, marketing, inspiration, and more. If you'd like to send in a tip, please e-mail me at agentspotlight(at)gmail(dot)com.

Today's tip comes from Kristin Lenz who contributes to the YA Fusion blog. This week she's reviewing The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide To Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi. The authors are the team behind the popular blog, The Bookshelf Muse. A few weeks ago, Natalie participated in the Random Acts of Kindness Blitz to celebrate the book's launch. The Emotion Thesaurus is full of writing tips, so read Kristin's review here to get the inside scoop on this resourceful guide. Kristin's tip:

Here's an online dictionary that might be familiar to comic book writers, and it will come in handy for any writer who's trying to spell a sound. The Written Sound is an entire website devoted to onomatopoeia and how to write the sound of things.  For example, flumppf: sound of a wad of mail as it falls from a letter-box, or kish-kish: the sound of ice skates during a game of hockey, or Kaaahhkkk: sound of a cat coughing up a hairball. Can you guess what makes this sound? schwump schwump schwump schwump. (Windshield wipers of a car during heavy rain.)  You can search under categories of sounds such as human, animals, explosions, movement, automotive, weather, or music.  Imagine you are plucking the strings of a bass guitar: dirnt, dirnt, dirnt - this one has an interesting story about its origin.  There are also plenty of humorous examples that make the site worth browsing just for fun, such as badonkadonk. I'll let you look that one up, and I dare you to use it in a story!

Kristin Lenz