creative writing roald dahl

Roald Dahl On Writing: 13 Inspiring Lessons

If you’re a writer or creative, Roald Dahl on writing can teach you how to become productive and successful. Discover these 13 lessons.

Roald Dahl was one of the greatest writers of all time.

During his career, Dahl wrote over 17 stories for children alongside two novels and a series of short-story collections.

He accepted numerous awards for his work, including the World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award.

Many of his books were later turned into popular films, including The Witches, Matilda, Gremlins, and The BFG.

Dahl is also a writing hero, along with Ernest Hemingway and Ian Fleming.

I first came across Dahl’s writings when I was seven through books like The BFG, Charlie, and the Chocolate Factory, and James and the Giant Peach.

He was the first author who showed me what’s possible with the written word, and he inspired me to write.

Even today, any aspiring creatives with a lively imagination can learn from Roald Dahl on writing.

1. Not a Fighter Pilot? You Can Still Mine Your Past

2. face your fears about writing, 3. write children’s books on the side, 4. writing demands strong self-discipline, 5. take a break, 6. keep a journal, 7. try writing short stories, 8. use sensual experiences, 9. market your writing, 10. read children’s books, 11. go to your writing hut, 12. share your work widely, 13. practice a degree of humility, roald dahl on writing: the final word.

As a young man, Dahl worked for Shell in Kenya and Tanzania and spent his free time hunting. During the second world war, Dahl became a decorated fighter pilot and intelligence officer with the Royal Air Force.

He shot down at least two enemy Ju-88 planes, took part in the Battle Of Athens, and was one of the last pilots to withdraw from Greece during the German invasion.

When he became a writer, Dahl wasn’t afraid to draw on his old life for his new creative one. He wrote several short stories about his time as a fighter pilot and drew extensively on his previous careers in his novels and short stories.

Even if you’re not a fighter pilot, you probably have experiences that are novel to readers. Use them!

“A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom” – Roald Dahl

Dahl wrote dozens of short stories, books, and screenplays during his life, including the BFG, Matilda and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Even he worried about coming up with new ideas.

If you’re involved in creative work, accept these fears as part of the process, and then move past them. Just keep turning up and doing the hard work.

“A writer of fiction lives in fear. Each new day demands new ideas, and he can never be sure whether he is going to come up with them or not” – Roald Dahl

Dahl’s observation below is useful for creatives who are stuck in a disagreeable job.

If you feel like a creative stuck in a boring job, you can still thrive. Save your original thinking for the blank page or your first book. Write short stories and children’s books on the side.

If that’s not your preferred genre, work on another project. But, keep at it!

“I began to realize how simple life could be if one had a regular routine to follow with a fixed salary, and very little original thinking to do” – Roald Dahl

• Dahl, Roald (Author)
• English (Publication Language)
• 240 Pages - 08/16/2007 (Publication Date) - Viking Books for Young Readers (Publisher)

If you want to succeed as a writer, you will have to become comfortable working in your own company and keeping your own hours. Unlike other professions, nobody will demand you turn up every day and put the work in.

Sure it’s liberating to write without a boss. However, you must become even more disciplined and responsible for your craft.

“The writer has to force himself to work. He has to make his own hours, and if he doesn’t go to his desk at all there is nobody there to scold him” – Roald Dahl

• Come celebrate and join James Trotter and his friends - Grasshopper, Earthworm, Miss Spider - on an adventure inside a giant magical peach.
• A classic that has endured through the years

Working hard is one thing, but it’s important to take a break and have fun. A writer’s career can last a lifetime, so what’s the rush?

Intelligent, creative, and productive people know that making time for an indulgence, a side-passion, or even a little nonsense refuels our batteries and makes it easier to get back to work.

“A little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men” – Roald Dahl

If you want to become a writer, keeping a journal is a useful practice that can inform future works.

Dahl wrote two autobiographies: Boy: Tales of Childhood and Going Solo. Both books have echoes of a journal about them.

Journaling is ideal for developing ideas for future writing projects, documenting the writing process, and marking your accomplishments and setbacks.

“Though my father was Norwegian, he always wrote his diaries in perfect English” – Roald Dahl

Creative work is exciting, most of the time. It can take you to another place and provide a refuge from the day-to-day grown-up world.

It’s also difficult and demanding work that can leave you emotionally and physically drained at the end of the process.

Short-stories are a good option for a new writer as you can write them relatively quickly and move onto something new.

“Two hours of writing fiction leaves this writer completely drained. For those two hours he has been in a different place with totally different people” – Roald Dahl

• 112 Pages - 08/16/2007 (Publication Date) - Viking Books for Young Readers (Publisher)

One day, Dahl found himself stuck in traffic. Suddenly, he thought of a breakthrough for a story he was working on. Having no notepad or pen, he grew afraid he’d forget his idea before getting home.

So, Dahl got out of the car, and with his finger, he wrote the word “chocolate” into the dirt on his vehicle. This was enough for Dahl to remember his idea, and later it became Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

He later said about his ideas:

“You work it out and play around with it. You doodle… you make notes… it grows, it grows…” – Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl understood that the best way to market and then sell books is to write a second, third, and fourth. He also increased his appeal by crossing genres.

Even though he first became famous as the author of children’s books like The BFG and   Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he refused to be pigeon-holed into one genre or towards catering to a particular audience.

He wrote poetry, published screenplays, and became a successful adult short-story writer.

Lesson: Ship and ship often, and when you do, don’t be afraid to promote your work and accept the recognition.

Many of Dahl’s books are for his children and grandchildren. He considered the people closest to him when he wrote, and he created a world for them on the pages of the Gremlins, The Witches, Matilda, and The BFG.

Reading children’s books is a great way of learning what makes for compelling writing. After all, children have a short attention span.

I recently re-read the BFG, and I was amazed that I still found the book engaging and funny. I was also captivated by the timeless illustrations of Quentin Blake.

If you’re a writer, you should consider who your ideal reader is, what they want, what they like, and what they dislike.

“Had I not had children of my own, I would have never written books for children, nor would I have been capable of doing so.” – Roald Dahl

Dahl was a disciplined professional who turned up every day and worked. He wrote for two hours each morning and evening in a 6ft x 7ft shed at the back of his orchard in Buckinghamshire, in the United Kingdom.

In his shed or “little nest,” Dahl kept a comfortable chair, a lamp, a system for storing his files, a wooden desk, and various writing utensils.

Each day after he wrote, Dahl ate a bar of chocolate and crunched the wrappers up into a ball (a ritual that makes its way into (Charlie and Chocolate Factory). He also covered the walls with pictures of his family, ideas for stories, and other personal mementos.

If space is an issue, try the local coffee shop, library, or getting up when it’s quiet where you live.

“I go down to my little hut, where it’s tight and dark and warm, and within minutes I can go back to being six or seven or eight again” – Roald Dahl

Dahl recognized that the world had become vastly smaller during his lifetime, and he lived life in a time pre-internet and pre-mobile phones.

Although this sense of fabulous may be lost, if you get into the habit of sharing your work, the idea of other people reading it doesn’t have to feel exotic. Today, you can create something, publish and share it with the world.

Don’t let perfectionism hold you back!

“Nowadays you can go anywhere in the world in a few hours, and nothing is fabulous any more.” – Roald Dahl

Many famous writers enjoy getting into fights with other writers or talking about how important or grand their work is.

Dahl wasn’t afraid to put his profession in perspective and, even though his two autobiographies are anything but boring, he could hardly be accused of being self-aggrandizing.

Roald Dahl’s take shows that writers and creative professionals should tell honest, captivating stories rather than explain how important their work is.

“An autobiography is a book a person writes about his own life, and it is usually full of all sorts of boring ideas” – Roald Dahl

There’s one problem with heroes.

Their achievements are so lofty and so unachievable that it can hurt to wander through Dream Country for too long.

After all, how can anyone compare with a fighter pilot and the author of some of the greatest children’s books of all time?

When this happens to you, put down your hero’s work.

Say goodbye to Willy Wonka, if only for a little while, lest you become a perfectionist.

Start writing fiction or non-fiction of your own. Make mistakes, and keep at it until you finish. Cultivate a habit of shipping, promoting, and starting again. Learn what’s going on inside your reader’s mind.

For me, as a grown-up, that meant moving past Dahl’s books and trying to write children’s fiction. I tried working as a short-story writer for a while and even published a novella for my first book.

Then, I turned to non-fiction, but I still count Dahl as an inspiration.

A writing career is funny like that.

Still, to borrow a line from one of Dahl’s most popular books Charlie and the Chocolate Factory , go find your “golden ticket.”

Roald Dahl on how to create interesting characters, his daily routine and writing process, and seven tips for fiction writers.

A brief overview of Roald Dahl before delving into his own words:

This post is a collection of selected quotes and excerpts from secondary sources used for educational purposes, with citations found at the end of the article.

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7 Tips For Writers

1. You should have a lively imagination. 2. 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. Not everybody has this ability. It is a gift and you either have it or you don’t. 3. You must have stamina. In other words, you must be able to stick to what you are doing and never give up, for hour after hour, day after day, week after week and month after month. 4. 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. 5. You must have strong self-discipline. You are working alone. No one is employing you. No one is around to give you the sack if you don’t turn up for work, or to tick you off if you start slacking. 6. It helps a lot if you have a keen sense of humour. This is not essential when writing for grown-ups, but for children, it’s vital. 7. You must have a degree of humility. The writer who thinks that his work is marvellous is heading for trouble.

How To Create Interesting Characters

When you’re writing a book, with people in it as opposed to animals, it is no good having people who are ordinary, because they are not going to interest your readers at all. Every writer in the world has to use the characters that have something interesting about them and this is even more true in children’s books. I find that the only way to make my characters really interesting to children is to exaggerate all their good or bad qualities, and so if a person is really nasty or bad or cruel, you make them very nasty, very bad, very cruel. If they are ugly, you make them extremely ugly. That, I think, is fun and makes an impact. 1

Daily Routine

Dahl always kept regular hours. He went to his shed twice a day, 7 days a week. He wrote for two hours in the late morning, and another two hours in the evening. Stressing the importance of this daily routine, he maintained that ‘writing is not inspiration, it’s keeping your bottom on the seat.’

He chose two hour blocks for creative work as he ‘never works too long at a stretch, because after about 2 hours you are not at your highest peak of concentration so you have to stop.’

His full morning routine in his own words:

I wake up and I listen to the morning news on the radio, either at 7:00 or at 8 o’clock, quite often 7:00. Then about five mornings out of seven, my lovely wife goes and gets the breakfast and brings it to me, and about two mornings out of seven I get it for her, which is a sort of nice compromise. We sit in bed and eat our breakfast and read The Times. We order two copies of The Times because that’s the only paper we like reading, so we have one each. I then slowly get up and I have a bath and I lie in it and do a lot of thinking. At 10 o’clock my secretary arrives with the mail that she’s open the day before, and we go through them very fast and very efficiently. Then at 10:30 I fill a thermos with hot coffee and take a mug in my hand and walk up to my work hut which is away from the house up in the apple orchard. I go into this splendid room which I really enjoy because it’s so comfortable. There is an armchair, I don’t sit up at a desk. I lie back in an armchair and I put my feet up on a trunk which I filled with wood to make it hard. The trunk is tied to the legs of the chair with bits of wire, so that I can put my feet on the trunk and push and it won’t go away. I take a writing board which I’ve made myself and I put it on the arms of the armchair, and underneath it I put a roll of thick paper so the writing board slopes exactly where I want it. I have six pencils and I sharpen them and I pour myself a coffee and I feel very comfortable. 2

Getting Ideas

It starts always with a tiny little seed of an idea, a little germ, and that even doesn’t come very easily. You can be mooching around for a year or so before you get a good one. When I do get a good one, I quickly write it down so that I don’t forget it. I don’t dash up and start to write it. I’m very careful. I walk around it and look at it and sniff it and then see if I think it will go. Because once you start, you’re embarked on a year’s work and so it’s a big decision. 1

Why He Wrote Short Stories Instead of Novels

I think I had a very strong feeling that it was my  metier , you know. And if you find that you can do something, you don’t rush off and try to do something else. I think I was probably right. I’m not a novelist, and, on the whole, the pure short-story writer is not a novelist. The short-story writer has got to get everything so tight, so close, and so concise. It’s the opposite of a novel. The novelist can spread himself or herself. They can take a page or two to describe the fucking landscape, can’t they? You can’t do that in a short story. 3

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What’s It Like Writing A Book?

When you’re writing it’s rather like going on a very long walk, across valleys and mountains and things, and you get the first view of what you see and you write it down. Then you walk a bit further, maybe up on to the top of a hill, and you see something else, then you write that and you go on like that, day after day, getting different views of the same landscape. The highest mountain on the walk is obviously the end of the book because it’s got to be the best view of all, when everything comes together and you can look back and see everything you’ve done all ties up. But it’s a very, very long, slow process. 1

His 5 Books To Take To A New Planet

1. Price’s Textbook of the Practice of Medicine . Reason: A professional medical textbook covering the description, diagnoses and treatment of virtually every known disease or illness. 2. The Greater Oxford Dictionary 3. The Pickwick Papers  by Charles Dickens 4. A book containing all of Beethoven’s Piano Sonatas 4. Johann Sebastian Bach’s B Minor Mass 4

How To Keep Your Readers Entertained

My lucky thing is I laugh at exactly the same jokes that children laugh at and that’s one reason I’m able to do it. I don’t sit out here roaring with laughter but you have wonderful inside jokes all the time and it’s got to be exciting, it’s got to be fast, it’s got to have a good plot but it’s got to be funny. And each book I do is a different level of that. The fine line between roaring with laughter and crying because it’s a disaster is a very, very fine line. 1

I have such a terror of boring the reader, of having the reader close the book and say oh god isn’t this boring, isn’t it slow. I always condense my work and when I’m rewriting it I try to cut out every possible sentence which doesn’t mean anything or isn’t useful because I have this terror of the reader throwing the book away. 2

Screenwriting

I used to do it for money, yes. Because it is a lot of money. And it’s such a beastly job, that no one would ever write film scripts except for money. Or unless you wanted to defend your own property. And even then you can’t, because they get hold of it and do what they like. I did  Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ; I thought I was defending it, but in the end they buggered it up. Here you have a best-selling book, an enduring book, and they bugger the film up. Well, there’s no excuse for that–it’s just bad film-making. I hate film directors. The only nice experience I had was doing a James Bond film,  You Only Live Twice . I liked that. It was a nice director, and they left you alone, and they followed the script. It was lovely.  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang  was ghastly. Once you get a rotten director, or an egocentric director, you’re dead. But they pay a lot, so you take the money and run. 5

Writing For Children Is Hard

To write a children’s book of comparable quality to a fine adult novel or story is much more difficult. When you’re old enough and experienced enough to be a competent writer and you’re ready to write a book for children, by then you’ve usually become pompous, adult, grown-up and you’ve lost all your jokiness. So 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 jokes and things, I don’t think you can do it. 6  

Writing Short Stories – Plot Vs Mood Pieces

I’m judging right now a short-story competition, a very serious big one, and there’s not one single short story I’ve read so far with a plot. They’re all mood pieces. You know: I went down to the kitchen and my wife was there and she had a saucepan and we had a little row and threw the carrots out the window and the dog came in and – they’re concentrating on their writing, and not on the content. Well, the average reader doesn’t care about the writing. They want something which will keep them reading, wondering what’s going to happen next. None of these stories says what’s going to happen next. And then to finish it satisfactorily, so the reader says ha ha, I wouldn’t have guessed that, how fantastic, how fascinating, ooh, golly! That’s jolly hard. My advice to people writing for your magazine would be–well, we assume you can write a bit, but remember that writing is only half the battle. The plot is the other half. And then putting it right. People who can write very well, like John Updike or Virginia Woolf, think they can get away with just writing. But you’ve got to have the plots, or people won’t care. 5

Why A Writer?

Reflecting on his years as a writer in Boy: Tales of Childhood , Dahl asserts that writing is draining but worth it for the freedom it offers.

Two hours of writing fiction leaves this particular writer absolutely drained. For those two hours he has been miles away, he has been somewhere else, in a different place with totally different people, and the effort of swimming back into normal surroundings is very great. It is almost a shock.… A person is a fool to become a writer. His only [reward] is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul, and that, I am sure, is why he does it.

Dahl cites Rudyard Kipling, Charles Dickens, William Makepeace Thackeray and Frederick Marryat as having a huge impact on his work. Talking to Twilight Zone Magazine in 1983, he went into more detail about further influences:

D. H. Lawrence, for some of his sentences and phrasing, not for his construction–his use of words. And Hemingway, for his construction. The master, really, of modern writing. It seems to me that the universities, especially in America, make the trends, deciding whether somebody is in or out of favor. Hemingway was out of favor for a while. They’re completely wrong. He’s been a greater influence on modern writing, on English literature in this century, than anyone else who ever lived. He taught all of us the value of the short sentence, using adjectives very, very carefully–in other words, hardly at all unless you really wanted it to mean something. And you didn’t keep saying “wonderful” because it became meaningless. They’re great secrets, those, and nobody ever did it before him, they just didn’t. You can read the writers who came before him, people like Galsworthy and Bennett and even Mark Twain, although he was a very fine writer, they all threw these adjectives around. Hemingway had far greater impact. A page of Hemingway at his best has more power than a page of Twain. Or a page of Dickens, come to that. Dickens just threw adjectives around like peanuts. Although he was rather marvelous, because of it. 5

His Transition Into Children’s Books

I spent the ensuing 20 years {from when he started writing} just writing short stories for adults, nothing else. Then I began to have my own children and tell them stories in bed and I probably ran out of a plot for a short story. I was telling one to my small children in bed and this one they seemed to rather like about a peach that got bigger and bigger as it grew on the tree. I thought well by golly why don’t I have a go at writing this myself, I’ve nothing else to do. So I sat down and gave it a go I enjoyed it enormously, I found myself loving doing it, you know, and that became James and the Giant Peach . 6

Dahl insisted that having to invent stories night after night was perfect practice for his trade, telling the  New York Times Book Review  : “Children are … highly critical. And they lose interest so quickly. You have to keep things ticking along. And if you think a child is getting bored, you must think up something that jolts it back. Something that tickles. You have to know what children like.” 7

How He Got Into Writing

Well I was working in Africa when the war broke out. I left my job and joined the RAF and learned to fly in the Middle East. Halfway through the war they wanted people who had been in combat to publish stories in the American papers to give Britain a boost. A man was sent to me, a famous writer called CS Forester who wrote Captain Hornblower stories, and he said I will take you out to lunch and you will tell me your most exciting adventure in the RAF and I will write it and it’ll be published, because I can always get them published, and it’ll be good for Britain, so I said lovely. I was terribly excited to go out to this famous writer, I’d read everything he’d written and we had lunch and halfway through lunch we had roast duck and he was trying to eat his and I was trying to tell him the story and he was trying to take notes. I said look, I’ll go home tonight and scribble this down roughly and send it to you and you can put it right. When I got home in the evening and started writing it, it sort of went very nicely and I felt the story growing under me. So I wrote it and sent it to him, didn’t expect here anymore. A week later I got a letter from him saying I was expecting you to send me notes. You have sent me a complete story. Did you know that you were a writer. Here is a check for $1000 from The Saturday Evening Post and they want some more. 2

His Wide-Ranging Interests

I love pictures and have always collected pictures even when I couldn’t afford to buy them and now I have some good ones, lovely ones. I love wine and have several thousand bottles in the cellar. I love furniture, especially 18th century English furniture. I loved cultivating plants, especially for kids. We have a good snooker table in the house and we play three times a week and that’s played with my local friends. Sunday is a long session. I mean we start at 6:30, four of us and we finish about 11:00. 6

8 Rules He Applied To All His Children’s Books

1. Just add chocolate 2. Adults can be scary 3. Bad things happen 4. Revenge is sweet 5. Keep a wicked sense of humour 6. Pick perfect pictures 7. Films are fun…but books are better! 8. Food is fun! 8

How He Would Like To Be Remembered

I could quote Oscar Wilde – “ When I am gone, let it be said that my sins were scarlet but my books were read. ” 9

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Download a summarised cheatsheet of this post along with creative challenges inspired by the artists methodologies here .

Next up: Charles Villiers Stanford on how to be original .

• Interview with Roald Dahl from Scholastic Book Clubs.
• Thrillmaker – a chat with Roald Dahl , YouTube.
• February 1983 issue of The Twilight Zone Magazine , RoaldDahlFans.com.
• The Book of Lists 3 – by Irving Wallace.
• Roald Dahl’s Writing Routine, 1982 , YouTube.
• Roald Dahl Biography , Notable Biographies.
• Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rule Book, TV Special.

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Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with The BFG: How to Write Splendid Settings

Sections: Information | Description  | Covers

Information

• First edition: Puffin, 2019
• Illustrated  by:  Quentin Blake

Description

Bring your story alive in a whoppsy setting! Explore adjectives, imagery, similes and more with the BFG.

These fun activities and writing tasks help to develop language and vocabulary skills, giving you the tools you need to write your own story. Learn how to set a scene, appeal to the senses and write detailed descriptions of your setting.

Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing sparks creativity, builds confidence and inspires young writers through the wonderful worlds of these best-loved stories. Filled with top tips and ideas boxes, each book introduces techniques and methods to help you plan and write a phizz-whizzing story of your own!

• Inspire your young writers
• Moderate writing online

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• Teaching and Learning

The ultimate list of Roald Dahl writing ideas - with examples!

• by: Anna from Pobble
• On: 4, Sep 2020
• Teaching and Learning (98)
• Pobble Power (31)
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• Printable resources (11)
• Parents (8)
• Competition (4)
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Roald Dahl is one of the world's most famous and beloved authors whose stories brim with magic, mischief and mayhem. His books are used as inspiration for writing lessons in classrooms around the world. If you’re looking for fresh ideas to bring the magic of Roald Dahl into your pupils writing we can help. On Pobble you’ll find thousands of teaching ideas to help with your lesson planning.

Here are a few of our favourite Roald Dahl writing ideas to try in your class: 

Dream writing 💡 What would your class put inside the BFGs jar? What goes into an incredible Phizzwizard or a terrible Trogglehumper? Creating dreams (good or bad) is great for generating adventurous vocabulary. See an example on Pobble .  

Wanted! 💡 Which of Roald Dahl's villains will your class write a wanted poster for? The Grand High Witch? Miss Trunchbull? Or Mr Wormwood perhaps? Wanted posters are a great way of writing in a fun format and an opportunity to include lots of interesting similes. Here’s an example of a Mr Twit wanted poster.  

Narrative poems 💡 The Oompa Loompas are known for their catchy songs containing words of advice. A great basis for a lesson on narrative poetry:

“ In class we looked at the narrative poems sung by the Oompa Loompas. Using a character from Roald Dahl's hidden Charlie and the Chocolate Factory chapters, the girls worked in groups to produce their own verses for a narrative poem. The lines had to have 8 syllables and verses were made up of rhyming couplets.”  Have a read of an example.

Cracking characters 💡 When it comes to wonderful Roald Dahl characters there are almost too many to choose from. His characters offer an abundance of writing ideas. Use Dahl’s characters as a basis for writing character profiles, or character descriptions using figurative language. Alternatively, your class could create their own characters inspired by Roald Dahl’s crazy and colourful creations. Search character descriptions on Pobble.

Sweet creations 💡 Willy Wonka is renowned for his incredible sweet creations. Can your class create their own? They could plan, design and describe a brand new chocolate bar or sweet! “We started off by thinking about how a characters' name can influence their looks, personality and behaviour. We then moved onto looking at creating sweets/chocolate bars inspired by the wondrous world of Willy Wonka. The children presented their weird and wonderful creations to the class.”  See an example here.

Roald Dahl biographies 💡 Who was the man behind the books? What got him into writing and how did he become an author? Get your class researching and writing a biography of the great author. His story may just encourage your young writers to pick up their pencils more often. There are lots of examples of biographies written by children on Pobble, search ‘Roald Dahl biography’ to see examples.

Points of perspective 💡 It’s common to write from the perspective of the protagonist, but what about the lesser known characters? How did Bruce Bogtrotter feel about his time at school with Matilda, or Grandpa Joe about his visit to the Chocolate factory?  Here’s an example.

Postcards  💡 Pick a character from a Dahl story and ask the children to write a postcard from their perspective. Where are they sending the postcard from, what’s happening on their adventure? “The children became either James or Charlie and wrote a postcard or letter to the other, telling them all about their respective adventures; James in the peach and Charlie to Willy Wonka’s factory.”  See an example.

Reviews 💡 We all have our favourite books from Roald Dahl’s extensive collection. There are heaps of book reviews on Pobble and plenty based on Dahl’s works. Not only will writing book reviews help children demonstrate a deeper understanding of a text they also give you the opportunity to understand the children’s comprehension of the stories they read. Search 'book reviews' on Pobble to see lots of examples.

Letters to the man himself 💡 What would your pupils say to Dahl if he was still with us? Would they thank him for the stories, ask him a question or share their favourite quotes? Writing a letter to Dahl is a great way to share their thoughts on the great man's books, but also develop their letter writing skills. See an example here.  

Word inventions 💡 Did you know Dahl invented over 500 words? As a quick writing warm-up your class could have a go at making up their own words. How many can they invent? For a longer piece of writing, they could include their inventions in a story or poem! 

Marvellous medicines and revolting recipes 💡 Dahl’s books are perfect for teaching instructions. Your class could describe how to make fresh mud burgers, Willy Wonka’s Nutty Crunch Surprise or even Bird Pie. Alternatively, they could create their own perilous potion.  "As part of our English work looking at Roald Dahl's The Twits, we have created our own recipes for Twit Soup - a delightfully disgusting soup to feed to Mr Twit so he wont play any more pranks on his wife!”  Have a read of an example.

Practical jokers 💡 Roald Dahl believed it was essential to make children laugh. His stories are full of horrid pranks and funny tricks. Can your class come up with a funny joke in the style of Roald Dahl and write about it? Here’s a fun example.  

Still looking for more ideas? Search ‘Roald Dahl’ in our ginormous bank of children’s writing on Pobble to discover more ideas or find a piece of writing to share as a WAGOLL or exemplar.

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Creative Writing with The BFG

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This fabulous book based on Roald Dahl's   The BFG   is just the ticket for all those aspiring writers out there.

Creative Writing with The BFG is positively jam-packed with fun illustrations by Quentin Blake, and focuses on the creation of splendid settings in your own work of fiction.

Ever wondered how writers decide on names for their made-up places? What made Roald Dahl decide how to furnish The BFG's home? What words can be found to make a setting really come alive for the reader? This book is bursting with exercises to really get those creative juices flowing!

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Roald Dahl’s Creative Writing with The BFG: How to Write Splendid Settings Paperback – January 24, 2019

Bring your story alive in a whoppsy setting! Explore adjectives, imagery, similes and more with the BFG.

These fun activities and writing tasks help to develop language and vocabulary skills, giving you the tools you need to write your own story. Learn how to set a scene, appeal to the senses and write detailed descriptions of your setting.

Roald Dahl's Creative Writing sparks creativity, builds confidence and inspires young writers through the wonderful worlds of these best-loved stories. Filled with top tips and ideas boxes, each book introduces techniques and methods to help you plan and write a phizz-whizzing story of your own!

• Reading age 7 - 11 years
• Part of series Roald Dahl
• Print length 32 pages
• Language English
• Dimensions 8.31 x 0.16 x 11.73 inches
• Publisher Puffin
• Publication date January 24, 2019
• ISBN-10 0241384575
• ISBN-13 978-0241384572
• See all details

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Puffin (January 24, 2019)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 32 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0241384575
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0241384572
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 7 - 11 years
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 5.3 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 8.31 x 0.16 x 11.73 inches
• #898 in Children's Composition & Creative Writing Books
• #4,966 in Children's Classics
• #7,290 in Writing Reference

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hep-i-book'a

A lazy perfectionist in the kitchen and on the road, petroskoi or petrozavodsk, capital of karelian republic.

My second trip to Petrozavodsk , the capital of Karelian Republic in the North of Russia, has proved once again my first impression of a very provincial and yet welcoming city. In fact this visit has been one of the most rewarding as far as my job goes. But of course there was a travel part to this journey which was almost completely left out during my first time in Petrozavodsk 2 years ago .

Petrozavodsk is of exactly the same age as St Petersburg and was founded by the same super-active person, tsar and then emperor Peter the Great. Actually,  Petrozavodsk is a shortened version of Petrovsky Zavod , the Factory of Peter, as there was this factory founded to make metal things for the Russian fleet.

People had populated the area long before the new settlement appeared on the shores of the Onega lake, well, in fact, thousands of years earlier, so the region has enough to show and tell about its indigenous people and their culture, the Karelians. The language is very close to the Finnish language and – if not widely spoken – it is still preserved in the region. Petrozavodsk is Petroskoi in Karelian and that’s what you read written on top of the Stalinist railway station building when you arrive from St Petersburg.

Karelia for me is all about forests and stones. It’s a pity in this time of the year you don’t see much when travelling with an overnight train. When we arrived in Petrozavodsk it was so early in the morning we had to wait at the station (which had free wifi and actually there’s wifi all over the city for free!) till it got less dark and we could go have breakfast on the 4th floor of an ex- mica factory (dating back to 1930 but now shut down) with a view over the old roofs of the city. We were the first customers but I must say that Na Kryshe (On the Roof) cafe proved to be ready with tasty buttermilk oladyi (pancakes) served with oblepikhovoye varenye ( sea buckthorn jam) and a pot of milk Oolong tea. And that was a very economical breakfast!

Out of all the cities I visited so far this autumn I think I liked the haunted Kaliningrad with its ever present past the most. Whereas Chelyabinsk left very negative feeling and it was not for nothing that I kept coughing each time I went outside there, Petrozavodsk left a rather positive impression on me. It’s a small very low rising (unless you visit one of the suburbs) provincial town with some preserved old houses and an embankment where you can catch a hydrofoil to get you to the famous Kizhi island which has become an open-air museum for wooden structures. We arrived too late in the year to get there but I hope I will see Kizhi soon. At least I don’t mind seeing Petrozavodsk in a better weather!

Petrozavodsk itself is an open-air museum for old houses, be it wooden barracks or Stalinist imposing buildings along the main arteries of the city. It used to be a very St Pete-like city, I mean the houses were really old, both built in stone and those in wood. Like this hospital building which can be seen from the Onega Lake embankment:

Well, the war swept away most of the old city and there came the 1950s when the new rationalizing plans which brought new buildings for the better future of the Soviet Petrozavodsk. And oh boy what houses!

This is the house where the central office of Post of Russia is (no postcards!). Actually sometimes the buildings housing Post of Russia are one of the best in the cities I’ve visited (like in Vologda). But then it rarely affect the quality and the swiftness of the service…

Another grand Stalinist house forming the ensemble of the central square:

With these Stalinist buildings you just have to remember to look up from time to time – to discover all those details and (decaying) balconies which I actually try to avoid these days 🙂

And then – in stark contrast – there is this type of houses – we saw several of them:

or these barracks – people still live there, mind you…

the same house from the other side – and with the wood for the long winter…

and this is the entrance to one of the wooden houses opposite those barracks

and how about this one?

the wall is just oh so decadent!

However the city has a number of 19th and early 20th century wooden houses all gathered together near Onega embankment that form a separate district of historical and architectural value. Take a walk along the Onega Lake embankment starting from the square in front of the Theatre and then turning left. But do not walk fast however windy the day might be!

The embankment is yet another open-air museum (and how does one fit in all this in such a small town?!) – this time of various successful and not that very successful sculptures and statues. The one from the beginning of the post called the Statue of Fishermen (a gift from Minnesota) looks really nice against the colourful sunset sky and the lake while the tall figure of Peter the Great (19th century) has actually been removed from its original place twice throughout the Soviet period. And guess who stands in Peter’s place now in the middle of the central square? You’ll find it out later in the post.

And with this small stone house begins the district full of old wooden houses, in one of which we entered to warm ourselves up a bit and from which we went out with some embroidered souvenirs. They also have some natural products like shampoo and soap, made without any preservatives and all that stuff.

This is the hospital church:

And this is one of the most expensive hotels in the city spoiling the view on the old town. ‘Spoiling’ because as I said the city has very small amount of high-rises in its historical center, so this weird construction can be seen from far away.

On the last day of our stay we left our hotel and went for a walk in the sun, heading towards the local history museum where we wanted to spend some quality time. It was sunny but rather frosty and we had quite a lot of time before the train back to St Pete – that was not an overnight but a rather fast Siemens train with comfortable seats which takes 5 hours.

When we came to the end of this wall we realized that was the Industrial Museum (which we skipped) occupying the old factory buildings. We thoroughly enjoyed this urban art on the walls!

So in the end we spent an unusual for an average visitor lot of time at the local history museum . Recommended by the way! There’s even a chance to listen to some Karelian folk songs and incantations or get a copy of Karelian recipes (will try some of them for sure!). Karelian cuisine is based on what the wild nature gives you and so some of the exhibits at the museum were dedicated to it.

And yep, here’s your Lenin right in the middle of Lenin Square (apparently), where Peter the Great used to stand until the 1930s came. And the Square itself has a very curious story to tell – it changed its name so many times I got lost when counting them. Well, they definitely embellished the look of the square whatever name you call it in the recent years. But as soon as you go into the back yard of the museum, you find yourself staring at this wrack of the “state-preserved” building:

The museum will also tell you about the brief period of the Finnish occupation of the city (1941-44) when the same Square which used to be Round Square (:) was renamed into Administrative Square. And oh, remember those Karelian forests that go on and on and on? Well, with the forests you have a strong culture of gathering or foraging and that means you have all the tools for berry picking or hunting for mushrooms 🙂 Here’s what you can see at display at the museum:

This thingy with spikes is to pick berries in a fast and efficient way. Everything made from wood and bark of the trees… Perfect! Just as this proto-rucksack for carrying all the treasure the forests can give:

After that we just could not have missed the local food! So we headed to the same restaurant opposite one of the best known symbols of Petrozavodsk (hotel Severnaya where I stayed last time – definitely NOT recommended, if only to see the inside of that super-red Stalinist buildings with white columns) where I ate 2 years ago . The restaurant is called Karelskaya Gornitsa and is although quite pricey and tourist-oriented is a nice place to imagine yourself travelling back in time.

But you see, last time we went to the Finnish part of the restaurant and this time we entered the Karelian part, which I found out when we were already leaving the place. All the time we were there I was wondering why I cannot recognize the place at all =) And then they explained to me there are two entrances leading to two parts of the restaurant. So we’ve made a better choice this time entering the Karelian cuisine part!

There I sampled thew most fluffy and almost yogurt-like thing called tolokno (oat flour which contains all the bran usually removed when making the regular flour) mixed with blueberries (hence the colour) and also a rye blin (pancake) filled with millet. This type of rye or barley pancake is called skantsy or sulchiny and is traditionally filled with porridge (they are either baked or fried, sweet or sour) . We drank cowberry mors (juice) which is almost always the best choice when it comes to traditional non-alcoholic drinks in Russia.  

For some Karelian recipes , see my post on kalitka , traditional Karelian rye boat-like pie which is also enjoyed in Finland and in the North of Russia.

So, to wrap up Petrozavodsk, here are my checklist points:

• decent postcards – failed
• post office – found
• market – failed
• local history museum – done
• dairy products and baked stuff – sampled
• local specialit é s – as far as the vegetarian stuff is concerned – tasty! And my Mom said that her fried fish and rich mushroom soup were really good!
• old town – seen and admired

Here you can hear the official hymn of the Republic of Karelia (actually a song from 1963). It was played on the train when we were leaving Petrozavodsk without unfortunately seeing all the beauty of the Karelian woods and lakes…

By the way, I am going to the dark-dark Arkhangelsk in two weeks! Hope this time I will get hold of the authentic sochni of Arkhangelsk…

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4 thoughts on “ Petroskoi or Petrozavodsk, Capital of Karelian Republic ”

Great atmospheric pics!

I love this kind of posts and pictures. Amazing!

Thank you, Abel! Now I will have to get back to some cooking posts as well 🙂

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ALLEN ORGAN INSTALLATIONS

The petrozavodsk state academy of music petrozavodsk, republic of karelia, russia.

The Petrozavodsk State Academy of Music is an independent music institute with approximately 100 faculty members and 500 students. The Academy has become a center of excellence for training music professionals, concert activity and musicological research in North Russia. Its more than 4000 graduates work in Russia and in many countries around the world.

This Allen organ was installed in the newly dedicated and acoustically superior Great Hall of the Petrozavodsk State Academy of Music in Karelia, Russia. The three-manual console was finished to match the stage's floor and shell. In addition to authentic pipe sounds, the instrument provides modern musical sounds through Vista Navigator™.

Click here to see this organ as an Organ of the Week