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Anyone who has been here for a while knows I'm not big on making resolutions for each new year. 2021 is no different in that regard; however, after the train wreck that was 2020, I do want to take the occasion to try and get things back on track.  The addition of Gumball to the family was perhaps one of the best parts of 2020.
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I began looking into the autism hashtags on Twitter in late 2018 and early 2019 between beginning to suspect I might be autistic and before seeking a diagnosis. Like most social media sites, Twitter uses algorithms to determine what to show you, even from the people you follow. So an interesting thing happened as I broadened my searches from just writing related topics to autism and ADHD.
Tweets and hashtags related to the own voices movement, most specifically those related to authors with autism and ADHD, began popping up in my feed. Before then, I hadn’t heard of such a thing. Today’s lesson covers a very simple form of figurative language. An onomatopoeia is a word that sounds like its meaning.
Examples would include words such as boom, bang, crunch, clatter, crackle, hiss, and buzz. Comic books and comic strips have made use of enough onomatopoeia it has become rather cliche. Who hasn’t seen a panel of a superhero punching a villain with a big “pow” written out in colorful bubble letters? In a manner of speaking, many of the paintings and literary masterpieces we consider classics are fan works.
Shakespeare is well known for taking the work of other writers and improving upon it when crafting his plays. When you get right down to it, what are Paradise Lost and Dante’s Inferno but fan fiction written about the Bible? Many of the earlier novelists took inspiration from each other’s work, often borrowing heavily from one another. Aside from portraits, what are the subjects of most of the famous Renaissance paintings we learned about in school? They either featured Bible scenes or scenes from Greek or Roman mythology. Alliteration is one of the less obvious forms of figurative language. It is much more about impact rather than the image produced, so it can be easy to overlook.
What exactly is alliteration? Alliterative text uses the repetition of initial consonant sounds for effect, which is to say, the author uses words that start with the same letter, or same consonant sound, in a row to make a phrase stand out. Tongue twisters are almost always alliterative. Sally sells sea shells by the sea shore. Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. Being both a homeschool family and a bunch of creatives, it’s no wonder summer is a busy time for the lot of us when it comes to our personal projects. During the break the kids and I all take advantage of the extra time to pour a few more hours each day into the creative pursuits we work on throughout the year. So it also tends to be a time of skill growth as well.
This is always a good thing, though both girls have found it to also be a tad frustrating. You see, they have a talent for more visual arts than me, and both have been progressing quickly. This is developmentally normal given their ages and the leaps in fine motor control and abilities to understand and think through complex sequences. However, this becomes a bit of a problem when working on large scope projects such as the comic series one is writing and the animation and game design the other is pursuing. By the time they finish a leg of the project, the art they are producing no longer looks like what they did at the beginning. It's the fifth Tuesday of the month, so it's time for a Blast from the Past post. The one I picked this time was part of a 30 day blogging challenge I did back in 2012. I've learned a lot about myself since then, and some things have changed. So I thought I'd have a bit of fun with it and point out where I was way off base with a few things and whatnot.
New comments will be written in green. Everything else is from the original post from January 7, 2012. Imagery is one of the more common and overarching forms of figurative language found in literature. It is utilized in virtually all forms of prose and poetry, and it is at the core of one of the most often given bits of writing advice: show, don’t tell.
What exactly is imagery? You may guess it is language meant to create a picture, and it is. However, it goes beyond that. Imagery is language that evokes the senses in order to better describe a scene or a character’s experience. Most often, this is talking about the “big five” senses: sight, taste, touch, smell, and sound. People look at writing as a solitary pastime, and in many ways it is. However, the best parts of the writing community are anything but solitary, especially so nowadays with the internet connecting us with ease.
When I was coming up and just starting to seriously look into publishing back in the mid to late 90s, being able to find an author’s address or email address was huge. Even back when the only internet access I had was the once a month trip to my high school’s computer lab, I managed to find Anne McCaffrey’s address on her website and write to her. Aside from our school librarian, she was the first person to ever encourage the writing dream. I found the boards on her website, and some other writer’s boards besides, in the following year or two, and through them, I found mentors. You can tell a lot about a person through their preferred art across the spectrum. Whether we are the ones to create it or not, aspects of our personality and thought processes influence the music, images, stories, and more we find ourselves drawn to throughout our lives. I think we lose a lot when we remove artistic education from our curricula and skimp in areas where our children could explore the arts. Of course, there are arguments insisting different art forms can boost and bolster academic performance, but even looking beyond that, art and art education has much to offer kids and adolescents.  |
In addition to working as a freelance writer, A. B. England is a novelist, all around geek, avid crafter, and a homeschooling mother of two.
She is an autistic creator with a love of mythology, fantasy, and all flavors of science fiction. SubscribeCategories
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Work QueYekara Series Book 2 Prewriting/Outlining 20% The Icarus Project Rough Draft Progress 77384 / 75000 Myth & Science Collection Planning Stages 38% Supers Collection
Planning Stages 23% Icarus Series Book 2 Sketched w/ Some Drafting Icarus Collection
Sketched Yekara Series Book 3
Sketched Myth & Science Collection 2
Intent Only at this Time Icarus Trilogy Book 3
Sketched Supers Collection 2
Intent Only at this Time Yekara Series Book 4
Sketched |