David Walliams’ tips for becoming a children’s author: ‘Don’t get distracted by watching Gemma Collins on Loose Women’

Bestselling writer (and comedian) David Walliams, 49, on how to create winning children’s stories and inspire them to do the same.

Was there any one thing that made you suddenly think, ‘I’d like to write a children’s book’? 13 years ago?

I was reading a lot of children’s books that I basically knew the story but realised I’d never actually read. I bought an old edition of Alice in Wonderland. I was looking again at some of the Roald Dahl books and much as I knew the story of Peter Pan I had never read the book.

Then I got to thinking, ‘This world is such a wonderful world, writing for kids, if you can just get it right. Have I got a story that would speak to children?’

And I had this idea about a boy dressing as a girl and going to school, which was an unusual theme at the time for a children’s book. That got me on my way.

And as you say on your BBC Maestro course you don’t need any specific qualifications to start writing…

No, I remember someone once saying to me online, ‘You’re not qualified to be a children’s writer!’ I wondered what the qualifications were that other children’s authors had. There are none.

You can be JRR Tolkien, an Oxford don. You can be a single mum like JK Rowling. Judith Kerr started to write books to entertain her daughter. There is no single route to find your way into writing children’s books.

Do you impose a daily routine on yourself when you are writing?

You’ve got to regard it as a job if you want to get a large amount of writing done. Stephen King says he writes 2000 words a day and then stops. Sometimes I’ll write 2000 words but if I write 1000 words a day I’m happy.

A lot of people spend their whole life finishing a book that never gets finished. You have to think of it a bit like schoolwork in that it has to be handed in at a certain time, it has to be right and you have to work on it.

It’s very easy to be distracted by real life and going online and looking at things that you think are something to do with the book and then you find yourself down a rabbit hole and you’re watching videos of Gemma Collins on Loose Women.

You think, ‘Hang on I was researching Ancient Greece. How did this happen?!’

What biscuits do you reward yourself with when you complete a chapter?

It’s currently Jaffa cakes. I don’t have to bite into them. They can just go in whole. I think they are about 75 calories.

How do you think the world of children’s literature has changed since you first started writing?

It’s exploded in the past 10 years. The main person that’s changed things is JK Rowling. People just loved her story. The fact that she was a single mum sat in a café and she comes up with one of the most famous book series of all time.

I feel like generally children’s books have become a bit more grown up. I see more daring styles and methods that authors are using.

Mistakes, you’ve made a few?

When I started off I was very keen to set my books in the real world because the biggest thing at the time was and still is Harry Potter.

So a lot of people were trying to come up with The Next Harry Potter.. I thought ‘She’s done that brilliantly so don’t try to do that.’ I decided to have lots of references to real things. Unfortunately those references can change rapidly.

When I wrote The Boy in the Dress there was a reference to the Trisha Show, which Matt Lucas and I loved. So Trisha Goddard is in the book but obviously if you are 10 year-old now and reading it, that TV show’s not on anymore so you won’t know what I’m talking about. So I’ve learned that it’s probably more sensible to make up the references.

Has Simon Cowell tried to get a mention in your stories?

I did have a character based on him called Tyson Trowel. That was one of my World’s Worst Children about a girl called Stacey Superstar who can’t sing.

I had a lot of fun creating that but Simon thinks he should be picking up 50% of the royalties! He says the only reason people read my books is because he made me famous!

Why do you think Gangsta Granny is your best selling book?

I think the title is really good for a start. It’s an adventure story. It’s got comedy in it. It’s got some sad bits in it – all the thing I would try to put into any book I’ve written since. It’s often the way that there’s one that becomes the famous one.

What book are you writing now?

The one I’m working on now is set on a deserted island. I’m always trying to do things a bit differently. Sometimes setting a book in the past is helpful. The last one was set in London during the Second World War.

Awful Auntie was set in the 1930s. These things help me because they immediately throw up new ideas for stories. Also when you are writing a story, I don’t know if you want people to have things like mobile phones.

There’s something about a child finding a map in an old treasure box buried in the woods rather than just writing, ‘They Googled it.’

Your online BBC Maestro course teaches adults how to write children’s books. What inspired you to do a free Mini Maestro version for children?

It felt like the right time because children have been in lockdown and with no parties, after-school clubs and no swimming practice, we’ve more time than normal.

One of the things that I remember enjoying as a child was having time to myself in my room, reading books and trying to dream up ideas.

Right now people are more isolated than ever so what a wonderful opportunity for kids to get into really exploring their imagination.

There’s a prize draw with the Mini Maestro course. What do they win?

It’s difficult right now to actually meet up face to face so the prize for 20 winners aged 7-9 and 10-12 is an online one-to-one lesson for me to be a sort of tutor to kids and chat to them and help them shape their stories.

Whatever they want to ask me is fine. The course is free so as long as you can get to a computer you can log on and enjoy the course.

Do you think children often come up with more original stories than adults?

Yeah I think they do. Children are used to thinking very expansively. They’ll travel back in time to the land of the dinosaurs. If they want to go to Mars in their story or in a submarine to the deepest part of the ocean and find a mythical beast they can. They don’t have the barriers that grown-ups have.

When you’re a kid you are midway between the real world and the imaginary world anyway. I’ll watch my nephew and my son play.

One minute they are Batman, then James Bond, then a Pokemon monster. I’ve never met a child without a brilliant imagination.

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