TURNBERRY

I’ve been thinking about storytelling and the art of suspense.

I don’t want to get too technical, but I do wonder how to pace things well so that you create empathy for a character, add in some action, but also build the drama at just the right speed.

So I created the start of just about as simple a story as I could think, about a straightforward enough character - a caterpillar with special dietary requirements... The aim, I think, is to use this character to experiment with storytelling in different scenarios...

Turnberry: Part 1

Turnberry was a caterpillar. In fact he was a very ordinary caterpillar, who didn’t like anything quite so much as he liked eating. Then only problem was that Turnberry was allergic to leaves - all kinds of green leaves. They made him sick.

So poor old Turnberry had to make do with doughnuts, cakes, custard tarts, Bourbon biscuits, and ice cream.

“I’m on a special diet,” he would tell his friends, looking on mournfully as they munched on lovely juicy rhubarb and sunflower leaves.

One day, as Turnberry was trying to eat a square of battenburg from a plastic tub he’d brought in, he accidentally dropped it.

“Oh no! My battenburg cake!” he cried. The other caterpillars just looked blankly at him. The cake disappeared through the leaves and thumped to the cool earthy soil below.

“Well, I suppose I should go and get it,” he huffed, and gradually he started to shuffle down the stem, through the succulent looking leaves, to where the sunlight was hidden by the deep green canopy.

There was the tub, and there was the cake, scuffed with bits of earth and mud. Turnberry looked around. It was cold down there, on the ground. Caterpillars didn’t normally come this far. He knew he’d have to get back to the sunlight.

Just as he was shoving the muddy bits of crumbly old cake back into the plastic tub, Turnberry stopped, as though he’d felt a shadow fall suddenly over him. A moment passed.

“Hello Turnberry,” said a deep, sudden, rumbling voice. It was above him, like thunder and rain all at the same time, powerful, gigantic, cold, hammering into the earth below.

Carefully, and above all, very slowly, Turnberry twisted around in the ice-cool shade cast by the stranger, the stranger who somehow knew his name. 

And there, looking up, Turnberry froze.

-

I don’t really have a clue what’s going to happen next. The question is: does this make you want to read on? Is there enough empathy there? Who is the stranger? Do you want to find out what happens to our little hero?

Storytelling is hard, but I’m kind of wondering whether keeping it simple and paced is the best key to it.