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‘The job of a children’s writer is to try to write a book that is so exciting and fast and wonderful that the child falls in love with it.’

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Have you got what it takes to be an author? You might well have – it’s just that you don’t know it yet!

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Believe it or not, Roald Dahl only found out he could write by accident. At the age of twenty-six he was ‘discovered’ by C. S. Forester, author of the Captain Horatio Hornblower stories. From that moment, he never stopped writing.

But it’s not easy. These are the qualities Roald Dahl suggested you will need if you are going to become a writer:

  1. image ‘You should have a lively imagination.
  2. image You should be able to write well. By that I mean you should be able to make a scene come alive in the reader’s mind.
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  1. image You must have stamina. In other words, you must be able to stick to what you are doing and never give up.
  2. image You must be a perfectionist. That means you must never be satisfied with what you have written until you have rewritten it again and again, making it as good as you possibly can.
  3. image You must have strong self-discipline.
  4. image It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humour.
  5. image You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvellous is heading for trouble.’

imagePoint 4 is crucial. Roald Dahl spent many months writing Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and, as you know, there was a first draft, then a second, then a third, and so on. Some bits were added in, other bits taken out. With each rewrite, the story would get better and better.