Roald Dahl's Ideas to Help Aspiring Writers

I think I may have said already that I never read children's books as a child. The only one that was forced on me was Little Women which, to this day, I still dislike. I just couldn't like any of those girls. Meg, whose greatest aspiration was building a family (are you kidding, did she not want to read, work, paint, travel?); Beth, whose prolonged, bed-ridden Dickensian demise was the stuff of tear-jerking nightmares (could she not have fallen off a horse and split her neck?); Amy, whose air-headedness, pardon my worldliness, could have been done so much better (in fact, it was, in Legally Blonde) and finally Jo, the one who should have fired me up and whom, instead, I found so off-putting with her lack of grace and subtlety that I just couldn't believe Laurie had a crush on her... Why oh why reading this stuff, I thought, when I could read what adults read, say Dracula? Thus I skirted everything supposedly child-friendly, eager to grow up and read 'better stuff'. 

And so it went that it wasn't until my early twenties that I discovered Roald Dahl. I had always been aware of him, attracted as I was by the magnificent drawings on the covers of his books (oh the awesome Quentin Blake...!), but of course I had been very careful to avoid it, because that was stuff for little children. Clearly. As I turned twenty-four or so I bought The Roald Dahl Treasury and have since read all of his books for children, then I also bought the CDs. Matilda is my favourite. 

When I started reading this book, and I began from The Giraffe and The Pelly and Me, I felt positively thrilled. Oh the deliciously surreal images conjured up by the author! Who can forget the bathtub sailing through the air and landing on the ground with a splintering crash? Next to the porcelain lavatory pan with the wooden seat still on, of course? Little Women? What's that?!

But the Treasury isn't all about imagination. Today I am sharing with you some of Dahl's ideas to help writers. Enjoy and then do just as he says!

***

Notes and Clippings

I collect pictures of people because I find them helpful when I'm trying to describe characters in my books. When you are creating characters you've got to see the eyes, the nose, the teeth and then the whole general expression of the face. Every little detail is important.

I also find it useful to jot down interesting facts that I come across and that might be useful for my future work. On the inside of the back cover of my notebooks there is a chart listing the number of breaths per minute and heartbeats per minute of various animals. 

Begin collecting pictures and facts that you might think might be useful for your future writing. 

Enthrall Your Reader

The reason I collect good ideas is because plots themselves are very difficult indeed to come by. Every motnh they get scarcer and scarcer. [...] There must be an element of farce. The wilder the better. You must always go a bit further than you initially meant to go. [...]

In every book or story there has to be somebody you can loathe. [...] The fouler and more filthy a person is, the more fun it is to watch him getting scrunched.

Whether it is with a group of characters or an idea for the plot, begin to write. Everything develops under the pencil as you begin to write. It really does. Once someone said to Stravinsky, a great composer, "Maestro, where do you get your ideas? In the bath? Shaving? Or, exploring the woods in the moonlight?" And he responded, "At the piano."

Charlie's Story

One of the most difficult books for me to write was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. At first I got too carried away describing horrid little children, which is always fun. I had 15 children in the first draft. I gave the manuscript to my young nephew and said, "What do you think of this?" He read it and then came back and said, "Uncle Roald, I think it's rotten. I don't like it at all."

So I rewrote it all over again. You'll find when you rewrite you pick out the best material from what you have written.

Comments

[Amelia]

some great ideas here. I love the idea of collecting images of people so you can describe them well. As a visual person this is a fabulous concept!

Amelia.x

[creative children]

Nice post about Roald Dahl's Ideas to Help Aspiring Writers for all creative children, it helps a lot in how to guide our child's in their creativity stage. hope to see more soon, Thanks!