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I'm gonna answer from experience as a reader, instead of a writer. When you make your character shriek you usually want to send a shiver down your reader's spine. There have been many suggestions...
Answer
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T09:10:34Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37090 License name: CC BY-SA 3.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
xDaizu
·
2019-12-08T09:10:34Z (almost 5 years ago)
I'm gonna answer from experience as a reader, instead of a writer. When you make your character **shriek** you usually want to send a shiver down your reader's spine. There have been many suggestions about describing the shriek instead of using an [onomatopoeia](http://www.dictionary.com/browse/onomatopoeia) and they are great, but if you have your heart set on using it, or it's more appropiate for your medium because you lack a narrator (like it can often happen in comics or videogames), I've always found "AIIEEEEE" to have a particularly strong impact: [](https://i.stack.imgur.com/Uq34w.jpg)[](https://i.stack.imgur.com/HK3Zu.jpg) When I read the question title: **"How do I write a shriek?"** I immediately thought of the first time I saw this onomatopoeia: It was in the videogame _"Monkey Island"_, and the expression got burned in my impressionable kid mind. Graphic adventures (and 90's RPGs) were a lot like books or comics. They communicated a lot of character with just wording and a few pixels, and there was an impact in that onomatopoeia that I just hadn't experienced before with any other written scream, and I couldn't explain why. * * * _Note: Unfortunately, I couldn't find an image of that exact moment of the game, will edit if I do._
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2018-06-20T11:49:07Z (over 6 years ago)
Original score: 4