How To »Weatherproof« Your Storytelling

How does Climate Change Affect Your Narrative(s)?

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Changes in our worldview and our view of humanity inevitably shape our storytelling.

Anyone who misses out on the constant change in mentality will eventually feel antiquated. Clever storytellers, however, are on the trail, sometimes even ahead of it. They use it to revitalise their storytelling and charge it with relevance – which I have already pointed out in my article on innovation in the crime genre (and elsewhere).

Hardly anything will shape the contemporary view of the world and humanity as much as: climate change.

The fact that we are already in the midst of polyphonic ideological upheavals that accompany climate change is proven by the increase in search queries on corresponding topics on popular search engines.

This interactive globe visualizes the nature of these investigations, showing which climate questions were most frequently asked in different cities on earth. 

Climate change is challenging us to take a stand.

Although Central Europeans have so far been less affected by the consequences of global warming than, for example, Asia, it would be a mistake to sing hopefully about future fine wines and fragrant coffees from Saxony, Germany – unless with satirical intent, as the cabaret artist Rainald Grebe did. Similarly, it would be wrong to simply ignore the threat of climate change, as numerous characters in the Netflix film Don’t Look Up (2021) do in the face of a comet hurtling towards planet Earth.

[Graffiti by British street artist Banksy on the subject]

Climate change will not only challenge us through extreme weather events, »climigration« and geopolitical conflicts. It should – and will – inevitably shape our narratives, on a global scale. Based on the change in mentality that is already emerging, I have developed schonological forecasts for the upheavals to be expected in storytelling, which I will unfold in the following.

* For inspiration to make your own stories weather- and future-proof, I offer you activating questions that you can ask your stories in addition to my forecasts. You will find them – like this text – framed.

Climate change brings narrative motivation, the need for storytelling and the potential for conflict, …

It is already evident that global warming brings with it plenty of potential for conflict: countries in the Global South are demanding, with some justification, to catch up with the wealthy industrial nations from their standard of living, and also to be compensated for the fact that they are victims of emissions that have been and are being blown into the atmosphere far away.

As a result of floods, storms, desertification, earthquakes, species extinction, but also overpopulation, scarcity of resources, disputes over drinking water, food and raw materials, growing migration movements are to be expected.

At the same time, conflicts are developing between beneficiaries of climate-damaging economies and reformers, between generations, between those who do not want to miss out on an agréable but environmentally harmful lifestyle and those who fear that things will become uncomfortable sooner than expected anyway.

Environmental activists have chosen and continue to choose controversial forms of protest that attract attention, but also harbor potential for conflict – those who love art will find aesthetically unattractive if there are human appendages attached to beautiful paintings. And mashed potatoes, cream or tomato soup as an ingredient for the pictorial structure of a Monet, van Gogh or da Vinci is also more of a disfigurement than appetizing.

[AI-created image on the topic: defacement of art by climate activism]

However, there may even be a risk of radicalization to the point of veritable ecoterrorism, as described by Kim Stanley Robinson in his novel The Ministry for the Future (2020) {*}: Here, the terrorist group Children of Kali attacks coal-fired power plants, assaults air traffic with drones and even takes the World Economic Forum in Davos hostage.

Conflicts, however, have always been a basic ingredient in suspense dramaturgies, so that the change in mentality caused by climate change opens up plenty of narrative potential – and perhaps even more narrative needs in order to measure the human dramas and to negotiate and understand the latent and erupting battles.

In addition, the conflict-ridden initial situation is accompanied by an urgent need for action, the „ticking clock“ is clacking louder and louder in view of the danger of crossing ecosystem tipping points and missing the „last second rescue“ and thus a „happy ending“.

In view of the urgency, the narrative motivation to enlighten, admonish, warn and inventively search for and promote solutions arises as if by itself.

… but previous narrative formats do not fit to climate change

In his widely acclaimed essay The Great Derangement (2016) {*}, the novelist Amitav Ghosh wrote that the form of the classical realist novel is not suitable for narrating climate change.

Ghosh cites the following reasons for this circumstance:

• The classical-bourgeois novel tells of what happened in the past and what is taking place now, but not of the future.
• In addition, it devotes itself to the realistic depiction of society and the everyday, excluding the „improbable“ – such as extreme natural events.
• Its conventional format is being disrupted by the global dimensions of climate change and its long-term nature.
• With its focus on the individual, the classic novel makes it impossible to tell about something that affects the whole of humanity.

Ghosh indicts the fact that the novel fails in humanity’s task of conveying the coming changes and thus helping to cope with them. The failure to do justice to climate change is, according to Ghosh, a failure of imagination and culture.

The bestselling author does not overlook the fact that there is a popular genre that is dedicated to the future and also to improbable events: science fiction. This, however, is only a symptom of how alien the subject actually is to the classic novel. To Ghosh, it seems that the topic of climate change is perceived by the literary imagination as somehow kindred spirits to extraterrestrials or interplanetary travel.

In fact, science fiction tends to be spurned by serious literary criticism or is only discussed in passing. Another obstacle is probably the concern that art could only become activism when dealing with the virulent topic and thus possibly uninteresting from an aesthetic point of view.

But is that true?

No matter how we position ourselves on Ghosh’s views, »climate fiction« (»Cli-fi« for short) is indeed a growing genre – and the topic has not only been negotiated recently, with the advent of massive journalistic coverage of climate change.

In particular, the audiovisual narrative media – cinema, television, streaming films and series – which are often more committed to the spectacular than, for example, literature – have taken up the topic, for example in the genre of disaster films and science fiction, for example in Emmerich’s The Day After Tomorrow (2004) {*}, the miniseries The Swell (Als de dijken breken) (NL/B 2016) {*} or The Swarm (2023, TV series, based on Schätzing’s novel {*}).

But the subject has also been dealt with in literature for a long time, for example in J.G. Ballard’s The Drowned World (1962 ) {*} or Ursula K. Le Guin’s The New Atlantis (1975) {*}. Since the 1990s, Dirk C. Fleck has been writing books that tell the consequences of climate change (Palmer’s Krieg, 1992, Go! Die Öko-Diktatur (1993)), the German newspaper taz even called Fleck the „father of the eco-thriller“. At the same time as Fleck, Octavia E. Butler published the novel The Parable of the Sower (1993) {*}, which set the tone for cli-fi.

Writers such as T.C. Boyle (A Friend of the Earth, 2000 {*}), Margaret Atwood (Oryx and Crake, 2003 {*}), Cormac McCarthy (The Road, 2006 {*}), Ian McEwan (Solar, 2010 {*}), Ilija Trojanow (EisTau, 2011) and Claire Vaye Watkins (Gold Fame Citrus, 2015 {*}) have also worked on climate change as a subject. At first glance, the feared disasters and their social consequences seem worth telling. However, I expect narrative innovations also in completely different areas.

The Schonological Prognoses:

1. Recoding of Genres and Narrative Situations

First of all, established constellations, situations and »master plots« are recoded, the change in mentality reinterprets them.

Let’s take the world’s most famous book {*} and its stories: an audience sensitized to the climate crisis will understand the expulsion of a human couple from paradise, the fertile Garden of Eden, out into a wasteland where they have to work by the sweat of their brow to survive differently than more carefree generations before.

When we read how an odd fellow sees storms approaching and builds a boat to save not only his family, but also the earth’s animals from imminent destruction by a deluge, we interpret this ecologically today.

And we can currently very well imagine the end of our world in the apocalypse as caused by climate change.

* Are there characters, master plots, myths, situations in your story that (could) take on new meaning in the light of climate change?

2. Nature as Character

Whereas nature, especially in turbo-capitalist systems, was simply a resource, dead material and inanimate commodity, the change in mentality is now pantheistically breathing life back into it.

Under the emerging gaze of pity, nature becomes an actress, on the one hand transforms back into the maltreated „Mother Earth“, even becomes the „care case Gaia“, who threatens to fall into a coma and for which resuscitation measures must be prepared.

On the other hand, nature rears up in its vulnerability and becomes angry, very angry. As a nemesis, she seeks revenge on humanity, wants to atone for her guilt and torments it with earthquakes, storm surges, fires, hail and storms.

In order to illustrate this role of nature, however, it is also appropriate to have plants or animals act antagonistically – and not just in isolated cases, but in a mysteriously concerted, cross-species and communal manner.

When animals and plants, which otherwise hunt, fight and eat each other, suddenly try to put an end to humans together, mysterious unease sets in. It is noticeable that humans are perceived as a danger by the non-human creatures of the common habitat »planet earth«. Thus, a paranoia scenario unfolds, in which humans are isolated, cannot trust plants and animals in their environment as usual, or lose control over those who have always been dangerous to them.

* Does your story take place in an inanimate setting or does the surrounding nature have its own character? * Does this animate nature protect, reward or punish your human characters – depending on their actions? * Is this nature as a character pitiful, vindictive, or both at the same time?

It seems paradoxical that human narratives on the one hand fear the revenge of nature, but on the other hand also long for it as a just punishment for human guilt.

It is precisely this paradox that the literary scholar Eva Horn points out in her book Zukunft als Katastrophe (Future as Catastrophe) {*}: an „apocalypse mania“ is rampant in contemporary cinema, and numerous doomsday fantasies can be seen on the screen, which pick up on the fears and dreams of contemporary audiences. These stories of illness and healing are bizarrely told by a „being who is himself the disease“ and thus dreams of „his own extinction“.

In the light of man-made climate change, guilt and atonement are once again intertwined, only in ecological terms. This ecological amalgamation of guilt and atonement is noticeable in an unmistakable …

3. Upheaval in Plot Design

Peter Rabenalt complains in his book on Filmdramaturgie (film dramaturgy) {*} that in popular storytelling it is often only the intervention of an antagonistic character that sets the story in motion.

My prediction: Sustainable plot design will reflect on ancient virtues, namely the Poetics {*} of Aristotle. Because: In this case, it is the main character himself who (at least co-)causes the catastrophe of the tragedy through a misstep, a guilt.

It is to be expected that this (co-)guilt will experience a renaissance in the Anthropocene: While popular protagonists were not part of the problem for a long time, this is no longer the case. All of us who persistently defend our standard of living and cannot afford to change cherished but environmentally damaging habits are part of the problem, not the solution.

Probably because of this knowledge, we exhibit the bizarre behavior of dreaming of our own extinction: When humanity is no more, according to the dream fantasy, nature will reclaim its habitat and transform it back into a new, idyllic Arcadia.

* Are characters in your story overly careless about their contribution to environmental destruction? * Does your story blame environmental destruction solely on antagonists? * Can your main characters be given an inner conflict that makes them fluctuate between a sense of guilt, repression, comfort and suffering from it?

4. Change in Character Design

In The Science of Storytelling {*} – for which I have written a review –, Will Storr unfolds that Western storytelling is based on the fact that in ancient Greece, individuals had to earn their living as a kind of ancient solopreneur and that winners of athletic competitions were highly regarded. Even poetry was run as a competition, and winners were chosen by acclamation. This is how the solitary heroine figure was created, who persistently pursues his goals, defies resistance and defeats antagonistic characters.

This character type was driven further by the economic and game-theoretic homo economicus, the idea that people always acted rationally and intently for their own advantage, always choosing the most lucrative option for them personally.

Now, it is precisely this same homo economicus that has come under fire for some time (cf. Schirrmacher’s Ego. The Game of Life (2014) {*}), as there is increasing evidence that humans act anything but rationally and certainly not always to their (long-term) advantage – of which climate change is perhaps the best example.

Accordingly, characters who, like homo economicus, are only concerned with their own advantage, can no longer become protagonists of the plot. They can only be considered as antagonists.

Homo sapiens, the „knowing man“, is called upon to choose cooperation over confrontation if he does not want to become homo suicidalis.

In view of the mentality shift caused by climate change, a variety of changes are emerging among human personnel.

The Anthropocene not only contains the conflict of „nature vs. humanity“, but also the conflicts that arise from the positioning and behavior of human personnel. Since climate change is man-made, it is always a moral issue in narrative terms. In this respect, it can be read as a crime story.

Thus, as in a crime novel, the human dramatis personae are initially grouped into a triad of 1. victims, 2. perpetrators and 3. investigating-enlightening characters, who are searching for justice.

Because they are the first and most affected group, people of the Global South have an important role and voice.

Since, in addition to the question of investigation and guilt, disasters and conflicts lurk, break out and escalate, the positively connoted characters are not only victims, investigators and atoners themselves, they also seek to protect and save plants, animals and people.

Due to this constellation, characters who represent science are particularly suitable as heroes, as they have been warning of the consequences of environmental destruction for decades.

Perpetrators, on the other hand, are recruited from companies that cause emissions, cover up their (co-)guilt or embody those political forces that block important measures or simply do wrong.

Accordingly, character stereotypes as we know them from anti-capitalist narratives are returning – greedy corporate personnel who are only interested in their own advantage –“evil Inc.“ has already become a widespread cliché – as well as politicians looking for their own advantage or who are corrupt.

In the escalating situation, however, perpetration does not only extend to active participation in the destruction of the environment, simply ignoring or denying the danger is also an indication that a correspondingly acting character belongs to the antagonistic forces.

Positively drawn are people from eco-activism and life reform circles, possibly also religious-esoteric-nature-mystical ones, those characters who have a stronger connection to nature than economically minded utilitarians. In other words, those who have been warning and admonishing for a long time, who preach renunciation and a return to a natural way of life or even prophesy the approaching downfall.

Since younger people will be more affected in their lives than older people, generational conflicts are escalating in addition to geopolitical ones. Precisely because they are younger and more affected, childlike, adolescent and young adult characters often act more radically and fanatically.

Due to the urgency of change, it is precisely this radicalism that forms the other side of the coin: figures with fanatical ideology, who even try to make themselves heard with acts of terrorism or (want to) establish a dictatorship in order to become responsive, show that, regardless of the required speed, a balance must be found between velocity in implementation of eco-measures and the need for social justice and individual freedom.

There is no doubt that all those characters who represent ›democracy‹ are coming under pressure. After all, negotiations and compromises take time – which is becoming increasingly scarce.

* Are your characters grouped along the newly formed lines of conflict outlined above? Is it possible to avoid overly stereotypical representations and incorporate ambivalences? * Is your story too „eurocentric“? Can perspectives of the Global South be articulated?

5. New Constellations: Cooperation instead of Competition

„The healthy man has a thousand wishes, the sick man only one.“

Indian proverb

The Indian proverb also applies to humanity as a whole: the more climate change threatens the species as a whole, the more it will be driven by the desire to simply survive. It is to be hoped that this ever-growing desire will level out the conflicting particular interests and enable all those affected to stand together.

It is hoped that people will be increasingly united by the common desire to survive and defy the climate crisis. The persona ingrata is the oversized human hero who passes all tests alone. The scale of cataclysms and catastrophes requires stories about ensembles. Competing lone wolves give way to collaborators who have to work together over long distances.

In climate narratives, instead of solitary saviours of the world, tragically failing, at best ›repairing‹, lightly escaping (anti-)heroes fight for their survival or to avert the supposedly inevitable after all, to persuade enemies to reconcile in order to collectively ensure the survival of humanity.

* Does your story tell of a heroic main character who single-handedly defeats his opponents – and does this do justice to the conflict situation? Isn’t it better told from multiple perspectives as an ensemble piece? * In your story, can cooperation be portrayed as more profitable than overcoming adversaries in competition, confrontation and conflict?

6. New Constellations of Humans, Animals and Other Beings

Individualistic competition is giving way to the abandonment of collective cooperation – and not only among people. The cooperation expands into an anthropo-a-centric „species egalitarianism“ that embraces fauna and flora.

Animals – if they are not part of avenging nature – change from threatening strangers or enslaved utility creatures to confidants and companions, they are viewed from the perspective of the pitying gaze as fellow creatures, as companion species.

As the discourse flattens (human) particular interests, non-human actors demand their right to be told and to tell themselves.

But it is not only animals that have their say, but also plant beings, creatures from fables, fairy tales and nature myths, who cross genre boundaries, characters that end, curb and undo the overexploitation and inadequacy of humanity. An example of this character type is the alien rescuer figure „Klaatu“ from The Day the Earth Stood Still (USA 1951/2008) {*}.

Animals, plants, hybrid creatures, nature spirits, shapeshifters, swarms – raise their voices, sometimes incomprehensible to humans, reject them or incorporate them into a symbiotic community – dystopian as the appropriation of humans by the ant colony in Phase IV (UK/USA 1974) {*} or utopian in a peaceful coexistence of equal creatures who cherish and care for our blue planet.

* Do animals – even plants or fungi – tell their own story in your narrative? * Is the antagonism of humans and animals problematized and/or a new coexistence of the species designed? * Are there other beings populating animate nature that symbolically tell of a different way of dealing with it?

Future Is What You Make It

One thing is certain: storytelling will change in the course of the mentality shift that climate change is forcing. The voices of those admonishing, warning and calling for a joint effort to slow down and limit global warming are getting louder.

Your narration will be »weatherproof« if it does not, as Ghosh accuses the classical-realist novel, remain blind and ignorant of the changes that are looming everywhere, which will bring with them shifts in plot structure and dramaturgy, character design and constellation as well as the choice of subject.

Climate change calls on storytellers to admonish, warn, inform, motivate and inspire, requires visionaries to become inventive and creative, to show new ways of what human life could and should look like in the future.

I hope I was able to inspire your own storytelling with my predictions and thoughts.

Sincerely yours,