What it boils down to

Front cover of The Twits – Ladybird Readers Level 1. (Dahl: 2021)

‘The Twits are not nice people.’

This is the opening line of my 2021 adaptation of Roald’s Dahl’s The Twits (1982). It’s a Ladybird Level 1 graded reader for children learning English as a second or other language.

Where Dahl fills six chapters with rich, funny and expressive descriptions of the awfulness of his story’s eponymous couple, my opening sentence has six words. It was terrible, in a way, to reduce Dahl’s lively text to a such a simple statement, but also gleefully fun and satisfying, as indeed the entire writing job proved to be.

My task was to condense Dahl’s 112-page novel to a word count of between 100 and 200 words, limiting the grammar and vocabulary I used in order to make the story accessible for a child with an A1 level of English on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) - a young beginner, in other words. Six factors that made it an enjoyable project were:

1) the brilliance of Dahl’s storytelling,

2) being able to select the Quentin Blake illustrations for each page,

3) imagining the target audience getting pleasure from the graded version,

4) finding ways to distill the tone, characters and plot of The Twits given the extremely limited range of vocabulary and grammar I could use,

5) the way it chimed with my love of writing other short forms, especially haiku and microfiction,

6) and finally, knowing that despite my simplication of the novel’s language to fit the linguistic constraints I was briefed with, its creative essence would always be none other than Dahl’s.

~ ~ ~

essence (noun) = the basic quality or qualities that make / makes something what it is

condense (verb) = to make something more concentrated

distil (verb) = to extract the essence or central meaning of something

boil down to something (phrasal verb) = to become simplified to the most fundamental elements

~ ~ ~

I write in my journal on a regular basis. There, I let my language sprawl. My words, notes and sentences are exploratory. I repeat myself, sometimes, make lists and go off at tangents. For me, this rambling free-writing is a necessary means of working things out, investigating things happening in my personal and professional life, celebrating successes, lamenting sadnesses and addressing difficulties. It’s for my eyes only. 

For journal writing to have a therapeutic purpose, Thompson (2011) recommends using the ‘feedback loop’. This involves reading back over a journal entry and writing a short statement about the content of what you’ve written (e.g. ‘When I read this, I notice / realize / feel / remember / have a sensation of…’) I find it a useful practice, a way of seeing and paying attention to what my free-writing boils down to.

Once I’ve found the essence, I can sit with that awhile, and turn it over and around in my mind, like a boiled sweet in the mouth. Before long, the essence begins to diffuse and evolve into something new, and is often the starting point for further reflective writing or a poem.

This is an important part of my creative process - growing text, reducing it down, then building it up again. My experience of ‘grading my language’, first in the English language teaching classroom, and later when authoring English Language Teaching (ELT) materials, has undoubtedly influenced this process. It has fed into into my poems, too, whose sometimes messy or fragmented content I strive to tell in language that is spare and simple.

References

Dahl, R. (1982) The Twits. London: Penguin Random House

Dahl, R. (2021) The Twits – Ladybird Readers Level 1. London: Penguin Puffin

Thompson, K. (2011) Therapeutic Journal Writing. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers