This time, I’m looking at two hugely influential screenwriting manuals – Syd Field’s Screenplay and Christopher Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey. Through the gap between them, we see the idea of heroism emerge and start to dominate the very idea of ‘a good story’. Like all film producers say, ‘The audience needs to knows who to […]
Read More… from How to Tell a Story to Save the World 2
Toby Litt
How easy is it to be conned? The short answer is that it’s as easy as falling in love. Here’s how I know. I’d always been involved in socialist and environmentalist organisations but I’d been out of the mix for a while. In 1992, when my story starts, I was recently divorced, unemployed, and alone […]
Read More… from How far will the police go? As far as they like.
Anonymous
In June 2019, Carola Rackete, captain of the boat Sea-Watch 3, entered the port of Lampedusa and thereby defied the new Italian law against entering territorial waters. By doing so, she saved the lives of forty refugees who, in the intense heat, were suffering from thirst and threatening to throw themselves overboard – though […]
Jay, what a treat to fire you questions. As you know, I think Why Rebel is a wonder – and, really, it answers this first in itself – but all the same it is such a central question for you, for me, for so many writers: How do you square the urgency of the CEE (Climate and […]
In the next five months Writers Rebel is exclusively serialising Toby Litt’s How to Tell a Story to Save the World, a short book about storytelling, heroism, climate collapse and hope. Normally, when people come along to a creative writing class, they are hoping to learn how to write better stories, not how to […]
Read More… from How to Tell a Story to Save the World 1
Toby Litt
In Horizon, the final book from the acclaimed environmental writer, Barry Lopez, who left us on Christmas Day 2020, we are taken on a trip he made in 2012 to the Canadian High Arctic. Lopez was working as a guide and lecturer on a Canadian ecotourism vessel, where he would rise at 5:00 a.m. to […]
Katherine Angel has described your new novel, Cold New Climate, as tackling both “personal and global catastrophe”. Can you tell us a bit more about the novel and how you approached these themes? The novel came out of a sense of curiosity about myopia and entitlement. At the outset, Lydia is dissatisfied and bored in […]
Read More… from Q & A with Isobel Wohl
Including an extract from her debut novel, Cold New Climate
Every time I look out at the ocean through the window of my San Felipe home I wonder: is it over? Until the scientists are able to get their hydrophones back in the ocean, there’s no way to know, for certain. These underwater microphones filter out the distinctive ultrasonic clicks of Mexico’s vaquita porpoise, and […]
Over many years working in ocean conservation, I’ve met people in fishing communities from Cornwall to Scotland, celebrity chefs, MPs, journalists, students, and scientists. We’ve discussed catch quotas, fishing gear, microplastics, aggregate dredging, by-catch, super-trawlers, and harmful state subsidies. I’ve learned about marine litter, EU law, dead zones, longlines, ghost fishing, beam trawling, and ocean […]
Read More… from Our Oceans: Are we looking at it all backwards?
Deb Rowan Wright
I lay on my side on the empty beach, the cold radiating through my body as it rested on the stones. This close to the ground I could see that the dark matter between the stones consisted of grains of plastic and ring pulls, strands of seaweed and shards of glass. The corner of a […]
This is the email we will send to George Eustice MP. (You can personalise the message by scrolling down to the petition and clicking on the eye to read/edit. Personalised messages are more effective.) The fate of insects and humans is tightly intertwined. Without pollinators, our crops fail. Without worms and beetles, our soils are […]
I joined XR back in January 2019 and since then I’ve taken part in numerous XR actions, locally and nationally, and been arrested. But during the pandemic, an increasing sense of futility has kicked in. What difference do these actions really make? On a bad day, they can seem, as Roger Scranton has put it, […]
Author of Bailey’s Women’s Prize for Fiction shortlisted novel ‘The Bees’ Laline Paul shares her thoughts on zoomorphism, ice, and how stories open new worlds of possibility. You are one of the few writers who has written for adults from the perspective of non-human creatures. What led to you make that leap of the imagination, and how do people […]
Read More… from The Natural World Is In Our Keeping
Laline Paull
Mexican poet, novelist, environmental activist and journalist Homero Aridjis makes an impassioned appeal on behalf of the vaquita, the world’s rarest marine mammal, as it balances on the brink of extinction. Please sign this petition to show your support. […]
Read More… from Save Mexico’s Vaquita Porpoise
Homero Aridjis
Grass In a courtyard of black tree-like columns, fragile young pasture carpet covers cracked ground. Deer and rabbits congregate silently to eat pale shoots. Under hoof and paw and shoot lies wreckage. Once proud Douglas fir trees, ancient cedar, hemlock and white pine; what was rich and diverse forest is now blistered earth and […]
Dear Earth, put us on probation. You are doing this already with the pandemics that you send us. Try and test us, put us through the suffering we deserve. Too often we have been saved by the benevolence of the universe; and because salvation like that has come easily to us, we do not learn. […]
Content warning: this essay contains descriptions and an image of animal suffering some readers may find distressing. Having retired to Phuket in Thailand in 2003, my wife Gill and I were keen to make a positive difference in our adopted home. Having long been aware of the terrible suffering of the ever-increasing stray dog population, […]
Read More… from The dog and cat meat trade in Asia
John Dalley
A year ago, my son Raphaël Coleman, aka #IggyFox, died suddenly of an undiagnosed heart condition. Here’s what I have learned, and what he taught me. Even in the most crushing grief, we are hard-wired to survive. The moment a human heart is broken, microscopic seeds of new life begin to germinate. This is your […]
‘Small Axe’ writer Courttia Newland shares an excerpt from his new novel, ‘A River Called Time‘ (Canongate, 2021), and speaks to Writers Rebel’s James Miller about Afro-Futurism, dystopia and the ecological movement. A River Called Time: An Excerpt He sank into the silence, grateful for the life that surrounded him on all sides, an unseen […]
The incredible story of Yaku Pérez, an indigenous water defender who, after being jailed and nearly assassinated for his activism, is among the top three candidates in Ecuador’s presidential election, taking place on February 7th. #YakuPresidente #ClaroQueSePuede, #YakuEs […]
Mary Wollstonecraft is best known for her pioneering writing on human rights, feminism and education. But one of her lesser-known works contains a startlingly prophetic insight into humankind’s impact on the environment. By @BeeRowlatt How did you first become aware of the natural world’s vulnerability to the impact of humans? Did it come as an […]
Read More… from Mary Wollstonecraft as environmental prophet
Bee Rowlatt