I just really need help with this one sound, a dog barking. I can't get it right. You see, using something like "He barked at the intruder" doesn't work because it's in graphic novel form. The type of dog barking is a big/medium dog, a German Shepherd if you want to get specific. So any ideas?
I did a bit of searching and ran across a site called "Derek Abbott's animal noise page". I didn't post a link to it because that is frowned on here. You'll have to Google it.
Gruff, gruff Woof, woof Ruff, ruff But why can't you use a square box and describe or say the dog barked?
Dogs in Turkey go: How! How! (except the 'w' is slightly harder than in English pronunciation). Howzat? And sheep go: Maay! Maay! (only we spell it 'mee') It's very enlightening to learn how non-English-speakers hear basic sounds and it gives lots of ideas. E.g. Here, a baby's cry is said to be like 'ungaa' which sounds much more like the real thing to me than 'waa'! I'd better stop here...
Onomatopoeia is actual WORDS that sound like what they represent. Both howl and bark qualify as onomatopoeia, as does whine. What graphic novels use is not necessarily words. More often they are simply phonetically rendered sounds, like Grrrrrrrr, with the letters following a descending arc that suggests a lowering pitch. Size, color, and angle of the word is an important part of the effect. So several repetitions of Bark in a scattered placement at different sizes coulsd suggest several dogs barking (with some Yaps and Woo woofs thrown in for good measure.) You may need to listen to a particular dog to best judge how to phoneticize it.
for a large, angry dog, i'd do, 'grrruff!' with or w/o hyphens between 'r's and probably in caps, with successive letters 'growing' if you know what i mean...
