What a book about a hippo eating cake can teach us about writing

Our roof leaks.
Drip!
Drip!
Drip!

Last night when I was reading my son’s favourite book - There’s a hippopotamus on our roof eating cake - it occurred to me that the first page uses two of the most basic and powerful writing techniques: Alliteration and Onomatopoeia.

Alliteration

Alliteration is the use of repetitive consonant sounds in a phrase or rhyme – as in ‘Drip! Drip! Drip!’. It is used widely in the media. Newspapers love tongue twister headlines: Local loser finally lucky in love. Bloggers too use the technique to spice up post titles: Twitter tweeters try TweetDeck. You get the idea.

Alliteration also gives content structure and creates interest. It’s especially useful when speech writing, with everyone from Winston Churchill, John Kennedy and – more recently – Barack Obama delivering historical speeches laced with cleverly crafted content. (Sorry, couldn’t help myself.)

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia describes words that sound the same as the action they are describing. Think boom, bang, drip, zap, meow, and fizzle. Or ‘baa baa black sheep’, ‘snap, crackle, pop’, and The Bells by Edgar Allan Poe.

It’s a great technique when describing a scene as it adds a layer of sound to your words:

The radiator hissed and gurgled as the old car clanged and banged into the driveway.

Just make sure if you are using it when script writing that it’s easy enough to say aloud. You’ll lose the impact of the words if they are too hard to pronounce together.

Learn more

For more weird and wonderful writing techniques, my favourite refresher is Daily Writing Tips.

I also came across an interesting breakdown of Obama’s victory speech by David Straker that shows how simple methods, combined with the right words can create such a powerful moment in history.

Enjoy.

Tagged as: Language, Words, Writing tips