Roald Dahl And The Character In The Filing Cabinet

When you're writing stories, how do you think up your characters? Maybe you're like Jacqueline Wilson, who said that she got the idea for Tracy Beaker when she was having a bath! Or maybe characters just pop into your head? JK Rowling says Harry Potter just popped into hers!

Other writers base their characters on people they know, but let's hope Roald Dahl didn't do that when he was thinking up all those horrid children for Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. He sat in his writing hut and invented spoilt and snooty Veruca Salt and greedy Augustus Gloop, and the rest.

It turns out that Roald Dahl was even better than we thought at inventing characters.

But some of his nasty pieces of work didn't make it out of his filing cabinet into the final book!

© Jan Baldwin

The Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre has Roald Dahl's writing hut on display, and you can explore it on their website too.

The writing hut, and the rest of the museum, has an archive - a collection of images, manuscripts, bits of writing and letters - which tell us all about Dahl's life and how he wrote.

© Ray Rathbone and Bremner and Orr Design Consultants

Here at Show Me, we're very excited about one little bit of Dahl's handwriting which you can read in the archive. It's a verse about a character called Miranda Mary Piker. Dahl had even planned out her nasty end (she'd get made into… oops nearly gave it away then!).

© Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre

But he didn't include Miranda in the final draft of 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory'. Maybe he had too many characters? Perhaps someone told him that Miranda wasn't such an interesting character as Augustus or Veruca? But we think Miranda sounds like a great character for a story.

© Ray Rathbone and Bremner and Orr Design Consultants

So here's a challenge for you: read the verse Roald Dahl wrote and then write a chapter about her? Then you can send it to us - we'd love to find out how she gets made into… well, you'll find out when you've read Dahl's poem about her.

And next time you're writing a story, why not think up more characters you need and test them out on your family and friends? That way, you'll end up with only the best, worst or funniest people in your writing!