Climate Emotions & Characters

My fellow New Englanders were more grumbly than usual this past spring. Week after mildewy week, a relentless downpouring of rainwater was matched only by the voluminous outpouring of people’s complaints. There was even a robust discussion on Reddit titled, “Rhode Island… the new Seattle?” By season’s end, our collective patience was wrung out, our spirits waterlogged.

Amidst the cloudy skies and cloudier dispositions, my father organized a family luncheon. Trekking to the restaurant a couple towns over – windshield wipers swinging furiously, wheels ka-chunking over puddled potholes – my eager anticipation gave way to a growing sense of unease. GPS continuously diverted me from the normally straightforward route. Flooding alerts popped up on my phone. Closing in on my destination, a sea of brake lights came into view. A police cruiser was parked perpendicular to the road blocking us from careening into the dangerously high water beyond.

I turned around and drove back home, eyes blurred with tears. How many more times would I get the opportunity to experience my extended family all together, I wondered. This unexpected and abnormal flooding brought to the surface what I’d already been feeling – worry, sadness, fear. Climate change, it turns out, doesn’t just heighten weather systems and related effects, it also amplifies our emotions.

After reviewing 57 studies about climate change and mental health, Yale Professor of Public Health Sarah Lowe found an association between depression, anxiety, grief, worry, frustration and climate change. These emotions weren’t just related to “acute” events such as floods and wildfires, but also with the slower, broader onset of climate change. For all of us, climate-driven emotions are becoming a part of life, so it follows that those emotions will affect the stories we tell. As we feel, so do our characters.

Robust Character Development

Emotions are crucial to character development. They create dimension and inform point of view. That, in turn, drives motivation and, thus, the plot. Emotions are the catalyst to conflict and necessary to resolution. They push characters apart or bring them together, both internally and externally. Even in plot-driven stories, how a character feels is an essential aspect to storytelling. Having our characters respond to the climate-altered world around them is just another layer to consider as you flesh them out.

A Rainbow of Emotions

Fortunately, climate-related emotions aren’t just limited to feelings that bum us out. As seen on the Climate Emotions Wheel, people confronting climate change and related issues can also experience empowerment, empathy, hope, gratitude, inspiration, and interest. There’s a whole rainbow of emotions to work with as our characters navigate their story worlds. (Psst, you can work with the climate emotions wheel to navigate your own feelings, too.)

Truth Telling

If stories are set in the modern day, characters who reflect our feelings about the myriad effects of planetary heating bring a contemporary truthfulness to the work. No matter the genre – comedy, adventure, romance, thriller, et cetera– we can create an experience of authenticity when we ground our work in reality. Don’t worry, you don’t have to belabor the point. Even a nod to truthful, climate-related emotions will be relatable to most.

Behavioral Shifts

Emotions inform behavior, not just in your characters but in the audience as well. Yeah, it’s lofty to think that a film or TV show will cause viewers to change a habit or take an action, but evidence points to this being so. Most of us don’t write stories to manipulate audiences, but we do write them to inspire, so why not consider how your characters’ feelings about the climate might affect someone’s behavior in the world? Who knows, maybe it’ll even make a positive impact.

Reducing Loneliness

Let’s face it, many of us are lonely. In fact, American loneliness has even been referred to as an epidemic, with 1 in 3 Americans feeling lonely. Ouch. Part of what we love about films and TV shows is that seeing our deepest concerns, fears, worries, and hopes on screen makes us feel less alone. Currently, there’s not much content that reflects ecological grief, climate anxiety, or hopeful futures. Your characters could be part of remedying that.

Overlooked Voices

Though climate change is a global issue, it’s not happening at the same scale or pace for everyone. Historically excluded people in countries around the world have been experiencing climate effects for a long time. These issues include loss, displacement, health issues, food insecurity, and much, much more. Writers with historically excluded identities and people who write characters that are from historically excluded groups elevate important perspectives. Better understanding these characters’ feelings helps us better understand the world.

Helping Yourself

Our characters are born of our own subconscious minds. Wild, right? If you consider how they’re feeling about the climate crisis, you might discover what’s percolating below your own surface, so to speak. Writing climate emotions in characters can help us process our own feelings. Maybe if our characters come out the other side of the story feeling more hopeful, resilient, adaptive, or centered, then we can too.

Untapped Possibility

Climate-related characters are often reduced to stereotypes – the annoying environmentalist, the greedy politician, the furious activist. Consider that there’s a wide-open playing field for exploring character emotions. Humanizing people can upend expectations in all sorts of ways that hook the audience. Maybe your next script features a relatable environmentalist, an endearingly panicked politician, or a hopeful climate activist.

Vive La Résistance

Lest we forget, the climate crisis is caused by human activity and perpetuated by oil and gas stakeholders. The situation we’re in is not normal. Humans are adaptable, and as such have the tendency to normalize abnormal circumstances. We adjust, adjust, adjust until – boop! – acceptance. To radically paraphrase this social science study, people normalize ecological decay “to restore the feeling of an ordered and unspoiled reality” due to “a longing for the continuation of an undamaged normality, which is in fact already clearly recognizably in decline.” How can we shift to a sustainable world when we continue to deny our plight? This is where you come in, screenwriting superhero. Write us characters who feel the weight of what’s being done to us, characters who persist despite everything, characters who empower all of us to turn it around.

Working with climate-related emotions in your characters doesn’t require you to be any more educated about climate change than you already are right now. You only need to be observant and self-aware. Identify your feelings, then get your characters to do the same.