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Watch the video and think about the answers to the questions.
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Corli-Anne Brebner: Thank you for agreeing to this interview today.
Andy Griffiths: Pleasure.
Corli-Anne: Why did you become a writer?
Andy: Because for as long as I can remember I've been writing, just always picking up a pen and creating little cartoons or ...
It started with a get well card to my dad.
He was sick when I was six years old and I wrote him a get well card which he still has, but it turned into a little book.
It said, 'Dear Dad, get well soon'. And you turned the page, 'or you are doomed.'
And then you turn the page and it shows his body going into a hole in the ground and then maggots and worms are attacking him, and it's quite amazing
to me to look at that now and 40 years later I'm still writing the same types of thing.
But I've just always enjoyed getting a reaction from someone, whether it's laughter or shock or total confusion.
Corli-Anne: Where do you get your ideas from?
Andy: I don't know. They're always, they're always just there.
And when I think I, I know I have to tell a story to someone and I'll think about what sort of story would they like.
So, that starts it off. And if I'm writing for kids I just remember when I was a kid the sorts of stories I liked, which were mainly horror comics,
horror stories and 'Mad magazine' were really big.
And I think if you can see that in the work now, it's a combination of horror and stupidity which is just coming out.
And, and ideas, I get very inspired by things I read too, and I'll want to write something like that to have the same effect -
Dr Seuss books for instance. If I'm reading those to my daughter, I'll think, 'oh I love this you know. I just want to be in that world.'
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Corli-Anne Brebner: When starting a new book, where do you begin the writing process?
Andy Griffiths: I'll start reading about what I'm writing about.
For instance, I'm doing a book on, it's based on a classroom and the kids in the school are going to find out that there's treasure
buried somewhere in the school yard.
And so at the moment I'm reading a lot of books on pirates.
So, I find the internet really good.
So I'll type in 'pirates' and 'buried treasure' and I'll just soak myself in all the language and the terms and I'll be noting them down,
so that when I go to write, it all starts coming out.
And I'll translate the pirate stuff into the school yard.
So, movies, I'll watch movies, read books, and just start writing and see what happens when I write and that'll tell me what I need to find out,
if I go, oh, I'd like to know more about how you bury a treasure.
Corli-Anne: You obviously have a lot of ideas. How do you decide if it has merit?
Andy: I'll write it down and if I'm involved in it that's a good sign.
If I'm a bit bored or I'm finding it difficult, that tells me that there's something wrong with it.
And then when I've got the piece that I think is good, my wife is an editor and so I'll let her read it, and she's very fast at telling me if
something's a bit waffling along or it's, I think it's funny but no-one else does, that happens.
And then when we're both happy with it, when we both enjoy reading it, I'll take it out to a group of kids and read it to them
and see if it has the effect that I want. And I know instantly if it's going to work.
But I can't always guess it.
I'll write something that I think is brilliant and when I test it out in that situation they'll just stare at me and they won't get it.
Corli-Anne: How do you maintain your sense of humour?
Andy: Again that's always been there.
It's just a natural bent to try and find another way of looking at things.
That's all I think humour really is.
It's seeing the things everyone else is seeing but from a different point of view.
I watch a lot of comedy DVDs and I go to stand-up comedy.
We have a great comedy festival in Melbourne and so for a month I will go and see two, two comedians every night and just let it soak in and
I'll steal their good jokes and, I mean there's a lot of that in writing.
You take what other, what works and make it your own.
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Corli-Anne Brebner: You mentioned that your wife helps you with your work. Who else contributes to your work?
Andy Griffiths: I guess the writers that I love are always present.
And that would be people like Dr Seuss, books like 'The cat in the hat', and 'One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish'.
To me are these just beautiful works of simplicity and endless invention and entertainment.
And so I'm always trying to write as good as that.
Other books like 'Alice in wonderland' and 'Through the looking glass' were very influential, and 'The magic faraway tree'
by Enid Blyton, 'The wishing chair'.
I just, they're the sort of works I'm always trying to get close to.
Corli-Anne: What work habits do you have when you are writing?
Andy: I try to sit down every day. By about 9:30 I'll be at the desk and there'll be a half an hour of just messing around.
And listening to music is really inspirational and important for me.
I'll try and write quickly. That's actually how I learnt, was to set a time limit of say five minutes, and if I'm writing about pirates I'll write
for five minutes, non-stop, as fast I can, everything I, whatever comes out and some of it might be just nonsense but some of it will
have a little germ of an idea.
But I just blurt it out and then I read it back and take what's useful and then start working with that.
Corli-Anne: Where do you go from there?
Andy: From there I will, I'll start trying to tell the story.
And I'll often start a story 20 different ways and it might take me a few days to find the opening line that works.
And then I might try and plan it out. I'd say, OK, if the kids are looking for treasure, how would they do it?
They'd go to one kid who might have, he's got all the gadgets so he's got a metal detector and so I'd work out how that works.
I might go and do research on metal detectors then and make lists of what they might find.
So the story, through all of this the story gradually emerges in my head.
But often it's not finished until, you know, I get right to the end, I can't think of the end and I'll give it to my wife and she'll go,
well you could try this. And I'll go, yeah, that's it. So it's trial and error over weeks and sometimes months.
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Andy Griffiths: Now when I write it's a lot like playing. And sometimes I actually do pick up objects and play with them.
And, I'm going to tell you a story.
This is a baby. It's a bad baby who jumps out of its cot and runs down the street.
And what I do when I've got a character doing that, I'll think, what's the worst possible thing that could happen next?
And, because readers love it when things go wrong. And in this case, if I've got Godzilla, I'll think, they, it meets Godzilla.
Now here I'll stop and I'll think, what is the audience expecting to happen at this point?
And before I've even done it I know that most of the audience would be expecting to see the baby get stomped on and then put in the dinosaur's mouth
and shaken backwards and forwards until its head comes off.
So I put a lot of work into thinking, what's the opposite of what the reader's expecting?
And in this case it's not the dinosaur eats the baby, but the baby eats the dinosaur. If a baby's going to eat a dinosaur, it has to kill it first.
And it can't just pull a machine gun out of its nappy because really no-one would believe that a baby has a machine gun.
So how does that happen? It can't just run at it and head butt it and expect the reader to believe that.
I think, what weapons does a baby have that are truly powerful?
And obviously that's their nappies.
And in fact all it has to do is take its nappy off, the dinosaur is blown backwards through the air and that lets the baby run up behind it,
take its nappy pin and poke it in the eyes.
Again I'll think, what's the reader not expecting to happen would be the baby feels sorry for the dinosaur and tries to give it
mouth-to-mouth resuscitation or emergency heart massage.
And while I'm doing or exploring that possible option, I'm looking at that thinking that looks like the baby's on a trampoline
and I'll get excited because there's a whole other story that I haven't seen - not the dinosaur eats the baby, not the baby eats the dinosaur,
but that the dinosaur adopts the baby and takes it home.
Now, what's the opposite to that is what my next question will be - not the dinosaur adopts the baby but the baby adopts the dinosaur.
So you see, we've got four different stories now rather than just the dinosaur eating the baby.
I'm going to finish on the most unexpected story of all and in fact the most beautiful, is that they could be coming along the street,
they see each other and fall in love.
They get married and have children. And the really interesting question there is what would those children look like?
The great things about toys is we can explore by taking, removing that head and placing this head and there we have a whole new character
and a whole new set of possibilities for our story-telling.
Of course it could end up with the character looking like that too, which is a whole other story and quite unfortunate.
So that's how I tell a story. I'm playing and exploring all the different possibilities.
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Think about a ‘what if’ idea that would make a good story.
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Corli-Anne Brebner: What message do you want young readers to take from your books?
Andy Griffiths: I try to write books that are so kind of different to other books.
I want them to take that message that there's no rules in the imagination, that you can think up anything you want.
There's no-one, there's no police in your imagination. And you can do all things that you've ever wanted to do and explore the ideas.
There'll be situations where I'll be thinking, what if you did this?
What if you glued up the doors of the shower with silicone glue and filled up the whole cubicle with water?
You know, wouldn't that be fun? And, so I don't do it in real life but in a story I'll explore it and I'll say I am in the shower.
So there's a great freedom and, so yeah, I just want kids to realise that that imagination is there and it is in everyone. It's not just me.
Corli-Anne: What tips would you give to young writers who aspire to write professionally?
Andy: I think there's two things. Read as much as you can. I think that's incredibly important to both me and the other writers I know.
We're all voracious readers and so a lot of, you're just seeing what's possible and soaking it in that way.
And also to get a journal of some sort.
And I recommend a very cheap exercise book like 50 cents from the supermarket, not a nice, gold, leather-bound journal because
then you'll feel like you have to write gold letter great thoughts and writing is really about just getting it out there.
So a cheap journal and to write a page or two every day, because writing is like footy, it's like training for football.
You know, you go to footy training and you kick the ball and you run and get yourself fit. And a journal is the same practice.
So every day if you're putting thoughts into words and you're writing down jokes that people have told you or what happened in the classroom
this morning or you're writing a memory of something that happened, or a fantasy of something you would like to happen.
You cut out newspaper articles that amuse you or interest you for some reason, pictures. So it's sort of a scrap book, memory book, everything.
But I just set a rule of one or two pages a day and you'll find actually if you just do that you start finding you need to do three or four pages
a day, so. So that journal becomes a huge repository of ideas that whenever you need a story you can start looking through your journal
and there they all are.
Corli-Anne: Thank you for speaking with me today.
Andy: It's a pleasure.
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