{"id":2751,"date":"2021-04-15T07:42:51","date_gmt":"2021-04-15T06:42:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/?p=2751"},"modified":"2021-09-18T15:13:45","modified_gmt":"2021-09-18T14:13:45","slug":"how-to-tell-a-story-to-save-the-world-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/how-to-tell-a-story-to-save-the-world-1\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Tell a Story to Save the World 1<\/span>Toby Litt<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the next five months Writers Rebel is exclusively serialising Toby Litt’s <\/em>How to Tell a Story to Save the World, a short book about storytelling, heroism, climate collapse and hope.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Normally, when people come along to a creative writing class, they are hoping to learn how to write better stories, not how to stop the planet being killed.<\/p>\n

A couple of years ago, I was teaching a\u00a0Guardian<\/em>\u00a0Masterclass on \u2018Storytelling Secrets\u2019. Among those attending were three representatives of an international environmental activist network. They were young, casually stylish, energetic and exhausted. To save a few words, I\u2019ll call them the Greens.<\/p>\n

When the time came to speak individually to the writers, the Greens asked if I could speak to the three of them together but for three times as long. \u2018Fine,\u2019 I said.<\/p>\n

We met, and the Greens explained the reason they were attending \u2013 they felt their message about climate change was no longer getting across. They needed to change that message into a story<\/em>, and a good story, a moving, powerful story, in order to grab people\u2019s attention. Specifically, they had a story about polar ice-melt.<\/p>\n

I really wanted to help them. Environmental degradation horrifies and preoccupies me. That changes in the timing and nature of the seasons have happened\u00a0within my short lifespan is appalling.<\/p>\n

Where some of this thinking has lead me is into what might be call \u2018Storytelling\u2019s Dirty Secrets\u2019. That\u2019s what the bulk of this book is about, and I\u2019d already thought a small part of it through back then.<\/p>\n

I tried to give the Greens a shorthand version of my reasoning.<\/p>\n

The problem any environmental group faces is this: In order to create moving, powerful stories, they need to create sympathetic central characters. In order to change people\u2019s behaviour, they need Heroes and Heroines to act as role models.<\/p>\n

But \u2013 and it\u2019s one of the biggest \u2018buts\u2019 I\u2019ve ever laid down \u2013 it seems to me that\u00a0the most environmentally degrading force in existence is Heroism.<\/em><\/p>\n

It seems to me that\u00a0the ultimate cause of environmental degradation is that almost all of us, whatever we do and whyever we do it, regard ourselves as sympathetic central characters.<\/em><\/p>\n

Here is a trivial example. Another kind of butt.<\/p>\n

Meet Paul<\/strong><\/p>\n

As he drives back from work, Paul enjoys a well-earned cigarette. When it\u2019s mostly gone, he winds the window a crack and flicks away the butt.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t matter where Paul\u2019s cigarette butt lands \u2013 on Streatham High Road or in a field of summer-dry corn in Sussex. The act may have different consequences, the cigarette could smoulder out in the gutter or start a forest fire that burns a town, but for Paul it\u2019s the same act.<\/p>\n

Once the cigarette is out of the moving car, it is out of Paul\u2019s story. And the only reason \u2013 I would argue \u2013 that Paul has no problem with flicking away the butt is because it feels to him a Heroic act.<\/p>\n

You hate Paul, don\u2019t you? You can see no defence for what he does with that butt. But Paul doesn\u2019t hate himself. He might feel guilty, but not for long. He has more important things to do.<\/p>\n

If you stopped Paul to ask whether he was proud of what he\u2019d done, he might admit that it was probably a bit out of order or he might tell you to fuck off and mind your own business. But, at the moment he performs it, the act is incidental to his Heroic onward journey. He may not even notice what he\u2019s doing. His chosen soundtrack plays. Paul is not stopped, not questioned. Paul\u2019s story, in which Paul is the sympathetic central character, flows onwards.<\/p>\n

Paul is his own sympathetic central character because everything in the culture surrounding him is always telling him that he is a sympathetic central character. Every advert. Every story.<\/p>\n

The only reason the world functions at all, Paul is told, is because of Heroes like you. Councils, companies, corporations, countries – all groups of people, however internally organised, need Heroes to lead them. Without a leader, any group will collapse into uselessness.<\/p>\n

Heroes go on quests. The quests of Heroes are righteous. It is righteous of Paul to return from work. Paul\u2019s work pays for things Paul needs. Paul may have cute children. Paul\u2019s children need things. Paul\u2019s partner may also go to work. Paul\u2019s partner goes on quests.<\/p>\n

Now, let\u2019s relocate Paul. He\u2019s no longer driving his car down the road. He\u2019s now in charge of a truck that\u2019s at the frontline of deforestation in Brazil. Once the trees have been felled, by other Pauls, our Paul drives the huge dead trunks away down dirt roads.<\/p>\n

In this case, rainforest-Paul may not be so comfortably off as cigarette-Paul. He may have very little chance of employment other than for the logging company. However, when he justifies his actions to himself, it will be in terms of Heroism. Either he is Heroic enough, in providing for himself and his family; or he\u2019s not Heroic enough \u2013 not Heroic enough to refuse to take part in massive environmental destruction.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s put Paul somewhere else. The virus has arrived, and Paul \u2013 who lives in a big city – is deciding what to do. From what he\u2019s learned from all the stories he\u2019s consumed, now is the Hero\u2019s time to step up. It\u2019s possible that Paul will go straight out and panic buy pasta and toilet rolls. He\u2019ll do the tooling up montage. It\u2019s also possible (though I think less so, given his cigarette-chucking) that Paul will put notes through his neighbours\u2019 doors, and ask if he can do anything for them. What Paul is unlikely to do, in either case, is first of all join together with other people in order to respond to the crisis collectively. He will believe that groups are an inefficient way to get things done. He\u2019s a lone wolf. He\u2019ll fly solo.<\/p>\n

Solution<\/strong><\/p>\n

As I was speaking to the Greens, who weren\u2019t looking particularly happy, this is what I tried to say:<\/p>\n

In order to get their message about polar ice-melt across to Paul they will need to speak to him in a language he finds sympathetic. They will need to avoid alienating or angering him. And so, they will try to tell him the most moving, powerful story they can. They will tell him the story of a different kind of Heroism. That it is Heroic not to flick your cigarette butt out of the window of your moving car as you return from work. It is Heroic to put it in the ashtray. Or more than this, that it is Heroic to give up smoking. Or even more than this, that it is Heroic to take the bus. Or even, that is Heroic to change your workplace, so you don\u2019t have to commute. Or even, that it is Heroic to change the kind of work you do and to change the kind of society you do it in.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What the Greens should do right now, but cannot, because it risks being so undermining, is say to each of us directly:<\/p>\n

You are not a Hero. Your acts are not righteous. Neither are ours, individually. Our individual illusions of Heroic righteousness are catastrophic.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What they should say, but cannot, because it would alienate almost everyone, is what needs most of all to be said:<\/p>\n

You are not a sympathetic central character because exactly what centre are we talking about? There are either seven billion equally important centres, in which case if they all behave like you we are screwed, or there are no centres, in which case we might just stand a chance.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Backstory<\/strong><\/p>\n

This book is an attempt to say what needs to be said.<\/p>\n

I am writing it now because, more and more, I have come to see stories as the source of the problem.<\/p>\n

As Climate Change has become Climate Crisis and then Climate Emergency, I have been unable to forget my exchange with the Greens. It was, at the same time, the most I\u2019d managed to say and entirely not up to the job.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

On that day, I\u2019d been employed to teach people to tell better stories. But on what basis was I doing that? My own experience was in there, and other things contributed, too. If I advised a student to cut this character or speed up this section, in order to make their whole story better, what kind of better was I guiding them towards?<\/p>\n

Where do the ideas that dominate What Makes a Good Story<\/em> come from?<\/p>\n

The answer to this question was obvious: Hollywood.<\/p>\n

The greatest investment that has ever gone into telling stories that satisfy the largest possible audience has taken place within a very small area, and has been conducted by a very small group of people. They have all been working, directly or indirectly, for the Hollywood studios. Their simple aim has been to create blockbuster movies, to repay the investors who have financed those movies. They have had other aims, some of them noble, but what the studios have paid these people for has been to entertain.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll give you three examples of where Hollywood storytelling has influenced all storytelling. These have become the truisms of script conferences and creative writing classes. You have no doubt already come across them:<\/p>\n