It must have been the usual scene of the children asking the father for a story and the father saying not tonight, maybe tomorrow. So the children invented something called the rushing out story, “Daddy don’t tell us a proper story just tell us a rushing out story,” said Roald Dahl’s children to him and Roald Dahl fell for the bait. He began a story by their bedside and by the time he got to the door was a bit into it…and then he had to finish it sometime!
Roald Dahl says he began writing for children for, “More or less the usual reason which is that one has one’s own. I tried to tell a story at night, a made up story, most of them pretty bad, but now and again you tell one when you see a little spark of interest and it is there the next night and they said tell us more about that thing…you know you had got something there. This went on about a peach that got bigger and bigger and I thought why do I not write it and I did…the well is running dry now…”
Dahl used to write short stories before he began writing for children. “It is very demanding…what do I write? For quarter of my waking hours I am completely immersed in a dotty world of fantasy and you come out in a kind of moony state. To my mind there is no doubt that to write a children’s book of comparable quality to a fine adult novel or story is more difficult… goodness knows why.”
Dahl lost his father and sister when he was very young and was brought up by his mother who told him stories filled with fantasy. At the age of nine he went to a boarding school which was located beside the Cadbury chocolate factory. The children got to taste a lot of chocolates and it was Dahl’s dream to make the most delicious chocolate bar when he grew up. Well, he almost did with his story inspired thus; “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”.
Dahl says, “It (his story writing) always starts with a tiny little seed of an idea, a little germ and that even doesn’t come very easily. You can be mooching around a year or so to get a good one. When I do get a good one, mind you, I quickly write it down so that I do not forget or let it disappear like a dream. When I get it I don’t dash to write it. I am very careful. I walk around look at it, sniff it…”
The reason why writing for children is difficult, Dahl says is, “When you are old enough and experienced enough to be a competent writer and you are ready to write a book for children, by then you are usually pompous and adult grown up and lost all your jokiness and unless you are a kind of undeveloped adult and you still have an enormous amount of childishness in you, and you giggle at funny stories and things….I laugh at the same things children laugh at and that is one reason why I am able to do it. A story has to be exciting, it has got to be fast, it has to have a plot but it has to be funny…it just has to be funny.”
Dahl lets you into a secret on how to write for children, “Every writer in the world has to use characters that have something interesting about them and this is even more true for children and I find the only way to make characters interesting for children is exaggerate all their good or bad qualities and so if a person is nasty or bad or cruel you make them very nasty, very cruel, very bad. If they are ugly you make them extremely ugly…that I think is fun and makes an impact.”
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