In climate narratives, world-building is the container for how audiences understand and feel about the climate crisis. A dystopian world frames climate as catastrophic and overwhelming. A world where communities adapt and problem-solve frames climate as a challenge humans can meet with resilience. The world you build determines the degree to which your audience feels paralyzed or empowered.

Three Key Dimensions of Climate Worlds

1. Setting: Time and Place Create Meaning

The same city can feel completely different. La La Land’s Los Angeles versus Nightcrawler’s Los Angeles. Nora Ephron’s New York City versus the New York City of Taxi Driver. For climate stories, the choice of setting is loaded with meaning.

  • When is this story set—near future, distant future, or present day?
  • Ask your team: What emotional aspects of the setting do we want to capture?
  • How has climate change transformed this specific place?
  • What remains familiar?
  • What has become unrecognizable?

2. Level of Reality: From Realistic to Expressionistic

Where does your story fall on the spectrum? The Road (starkly dystopic) versus Beasts of the Southern Wild (magical realism)—both are climate stories but operate on radically different registers. When working with your creative team, discuss where on the ‘level of reality’ your story primarily resides, as this will inform the options available to your characters within the world you have established.

3. Tone: Lightness Versus Darkness

Pure darkness risks overwhelming and paralyzing your audience. Pure lightness risks trivializing the crisis. The sweet spot: finding moments of light within darkness—hope, humor, human resilience. Consider where humor can emerge authentically and whether satire is a useful tool for your project.

  • What moments of beauty or connection exist despite hardship?
  • How do communities find joy and meaning in adaptation?

World as Character

The world you build is not just a backdrop; it’s what shapes your characters, informs their choices, and reveals their nature. When you know your world completely, you can make specific, surprising, true choices—not clichéd ones. And that specificity transforms climate storytelling from abstract crisis into human truth.

World-Building Exercises

Below are a few sample exercises you can share with your team to arrive at a fuller picture of your world. Be willing to be surprised.

The Daily Routine

Pick a character and write their entire day from waking to sleep.

  • What do they eat?
  • How do they commute?
  • What climate-related frustrations do they encounter?
  • What does your character experience through each sense (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch)?

The Go Bag

  • What’s in your character’s emergency evacuation bag?
  • How does it differ based on social class, access, disabilities, and family situation?

The Map with Consequences

  • Draw a simple map of key locations.
  • Add one geographical feature (river, mountain, border) and write how it has shaped conflict, trade, or relationships.

Values

  • What are the top 5 values of your world?
  • What defines success?
  • What are the 5 most grievous sins and their punishments?

The Sound of Climate

  • What does your climate-changed world sound like? Fewer birds? More sirens? Constant fans?
  • Write a scene where a character notices a sound that has appeared or disappeared.

The Solutions Safari

Research three real climate adaptation strategies (e.g. floating architecture, underground cooling, rewilding, indigenous fire management). Visit one if possible.