Tips and Tricks
Weaving In Climate Change: A Cheat Sheet
Ideas to keep in mind while approaching this vital new aspect of your storytelling.
An open-source digital guide to portraying climate change
on-screen, including story inspiration, cheat sheets, character profiles, solutions, and projections into the future.
If climate isn't in your story, it's science fiction.
Dorothy Fortenberry
Writer & Producer, The Handmaid's Tale
Cast of Characters
The Why
The Villain's Backstory
The history of the fossil fuel industry and the power of PR.
The Why
Greenhouse Gaslighting: Fossil Fuel Industry Narratives
Here are some fossil fuel industry narrative tactics so that you can learn to spot them, analyze them, and—as writers are wont to do—subvert and confront the hell out of them.
Logline: Scandal
Political Drama
A huge protest against an oil pipeline is raging outside the White House. When a famous Indigenous youth activist, Melanie, receives multiple death threats, Olivia wants to help but has a conflict of interest: Melanie has uncovered that President Grant’s campaign donors are major funders of fossil fuel pipelines.
Start Here
Character Profiles
There are infinite ways a person can be connected to the climate crisis—so many that it would be impossible to catalog them.
Character Profile
Clark
A 38-year-old oil executive subverts success from the inside
Character Profile
Sam and Otter
Interspecies Alaskan friends losing their way of life
Character Profile
Karen and Barbara
Sibling nurses, transformed by a hurricane
Character Profile
Leilani
A Hawaiian voyager juggling motherhood and saving her homeland
Character Profile
Ronnie
An incarcerated Marine finding purpose in fighting wildfires
Climate Mental Health
Characters
Processing Climate Emotions
We can use our own grief as an opening to great stories. And by telling these stories, we can share our grief and not hold it alone.
Right now, we’re in desparate need of new stories for our species that are not constantly centralizing our own importance.
Adrienne Maree Brown
Writer
What's Next and Resources
Self-Care Tips for Writing About the Climate Crisis
Since we know it can be overwhelming to be steeped in it, here are a few practices that might help.
Suffering from climate anxiety, depression, or grief isn't a mental disorder — it's a mark of one's connection to the world.
Dr. Britt Wray
Climate Psychologist
Logline: Bojack Horseman
Animated Comedy
BoJack goes to his high school reunion, only to discover all the monarch butterflies he was in drama club with have died. (Written by BoJack Horseman writer/producer Elijah Aron.)
Spotlights
Case Studies of Modern Climate Stories
The Climate Lens™ in Action: Case Studies
What follows are examples of climate storytelling in films, TV, and novels that are already out there. Some of these contain full-on climate-driven plots, some are brief mentions, and some are awesome experiments in facing reality through fiction
Our Present
Climate Migration
Climate impacts and disasters are pushing more and more people to leave their homes and face the unknown.
Tips and Tricks
Modeling Climate Solutions On-Screen
The most practicable and inspiring climate solutions you can start integrating into your stories.
Storyteller Interviews
Climate and Black Storytelling Traditions: an Interview with Aya de Leon
Aya de Leon: climate novelist, slam poetry artist, activist, and teacher, whose work spans the last three decades. Her work is concerned with feminism, climate justice, and racial justice, highlighting BIPOC female characters who fight hard to define themselves in a world set on putting them into boxes.
Logline: Preacher
Comedy
Logline: Jesse Custer makes an uneasy alliance with Hitler, who, now that he’s taken over for Satan, is pissed that global warming lets the Damned not mind the fires of Hell as much. (Written by Preacher creator/EP/showrunner Sam Catlin.)
Our mission is to inspire, support, and accelerate stories in scripted TV and film that reflect the world we live in now—a world that's in a climate crisis.
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