Part 1: The servitude of storytelling
Part 1
Writers, servants to their stories
Addressing environmental issues in our fiction – organically, effectively and in line with market constraints – is extremely difficult. So difficult, in fact, that we hardly ever do it, even though these issues are the most important of our century.
And yet, many of us consider ourselves to be sensitive, concerned, and keen to produce stories that have meaning… And just as many of us write fiction that in no way reflects this sensitivity. Or even worse.
Ali G Indahouse, 2002
Why is that? Do we reallydo we really grasp what what we're saying? The values we convey, the messages we send, the representations we create?
At the start, yes, surely. We begin a project as the sole masters on board. We know what we want to say, we do our research, we set a course, we get on with it. And we naively imagine that the story will obediently follow our intentions, like a boat drifting downstream…
Except that once we pass a certain point – and we know this because we’ve all been there – the boat starts doing its own thing.
The story begins to take on a life of its own, with its own demands. A particular plot point isn’t compelling enough. A certain character isn’t complex enough.We have to make hundreds of tiny decisions quickly and find the right solutions finding solutions that work. And then come Version 2, Version 3, feedback, requests, deadlines, Version 4 – we think less, clichés take hold, as there’s no time to make them more nuanced…
Our biases point us towards tempting shortcuts that save us the energy we need to tackle new problems:
Resource:
We lost a set, we have to cut… Time is speeding up, the pressure is mounting, the boat is in the rapids, and we’ve now become servants to our text. We’re fighting to stay afloat, to hold on to our convictions; we accept a few compromises just to keep our heads above water…
And it is only later – sometimes much later – that we realise that our story may say things we stand by and are proud of, but that it also says other things that do not reflect who we are, or even go against our own values.
The truth is that we never have complete control over what we’re telling. Admitting this – just as with alcoholism – is the first step towards taking a step back, which can allow us to regain some control. The other truth is that a screenplay is not merely an explicit statement. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be writing screenplays, but speeches. The narrative and the characters must take the lead. The real challenge lies in avoiding clichés, simplistic portrayals and pre-determined plotlines.
It’s a cliché to talk about the black president in *24*. Viewers are said to have first accepted this idea on screen before accepting it in reality by electing Barack Obama. Listening to the commentators, one might conclude that *24* got Obama elected. But on closer inspection, perhaps *24*, a conspiracy-theory-laden series if ever there was one, which justifies the use of torture, actually paved the way for Trump? Unbeknownst to writers, who were no doubt convinced of their progressiveness. This is why it is vital to remain humble about our work and its impact.
Once we have accepted this state of servitude (sometimes painfully), we might think it useless to spend any energy trying to escape it, at least to some extent.
After all, fiction remains fiction; art does not reflect reality, and it would be pretentious to think that our modest writings truly have the power to change people or influence the course of events.
Yet we, the writers at Nouvelle Séquence, are deeply convinced that we, have a role to play – one that is not quite as insignificant as it might seem – in the cultural battle that is raging.
Can fiction really change us?
As a screenwriter, do I really have any power? A responsibility? Or even a certain duty?
What studies show is that fiction does not radically transform behaviour. And thank goodness for that: if a single film were enough to profoundly change people, we would be extremely susceptible to influence, which would be very worrying.
On the other hand, studies do show that fiction has a significant impact on behaviour. A flu epidemic was brought under control in the United States thanks to episodes of *ER* in which the characters conspicuously wash their hands. In parts of Brazil where people watch telenovelas in which the characters use contraception, the number of children per family has fallen…
Fiction could therefore help to change social norms.
When it comes to environmental awareness, our position at Nouvelle Séquence is not that a single film will change everything, but that the repetition of representations – otherwise known as narrative convergence – helps to normalise certain behaviours and desires.
That is precisely the aim of this toolkit. To tell the story of today’s world and the immense environmental challenge we face, we have sought out concrete, effective tools to identify our unconscious biases, our reflexes and our cognitive shortcuts, so that, scene by scene, character by character, we can regain a little ground in our stories. Because writing mindfully means being willing to grapple with your narrative, and not letting it drift, by default, in the direction it wants to go.
Collectively, we have the power to shift the Overton window.
Did you know?
In politics, the Overton window refers to the range of ideas that a society considers acceptable at any given time (for example, waste sorting was not within the Overton window in 1963). The same principle applies to fiction.
Overton window
Unthinkable
Radical
Accptable
Sensible
Popular
Policy
Popular
Sensible
Accptable
Radical
Unthinkable
This is all the more true of the serial format, which allows the Overton window to be shifted gradually over the longer term.
How can the Overton window be shifted?
Maintaining an acceptable margin of prediction
Fiction is the status quo (the norm, the ordinary) with an acceptable margin of prediction from that norm. When watching a work of fiction, the viewer has a ‘prediction window’: what they deem plausible, coherent and credible. This applies to characters, events and even genres (a zombie in a fantasy series falls within the window; in a naturalistic crime drama, it falls outside it).
If the prediction gap is small: predictability, boredom. If it is too large, the window closes: rejection.
Discussing the environment in fiction is credible. On the contrary, a contemporary work of fiction that ignores the climate and environmental crises of the 21st century depicts a world that does not exist!
Harnessing the power of identification
Fiction activates another powerful cognitive lever: the authority/notoriety bias. This is because the reception of a message depends largely on its messenger.
Attachment to a character and the emotion they generate have a specific quality: they temporarily widen this window. A viewer who likes a character will accept from them – from their world and their choices – things they would not accept from a stranger. Identification suspends part of one’s judgement.
This is the unique power of fiction. Not to convince in an abstract or theoretical way, but to create the emotional conditions in which a behaviour, a value or a reality that was previously out of the picture becomes acceptable, because it is embodied by someone the viewer cares about.
But how can we harness these incredibly powerful tools? One thing is certain: talking about environmental issues isn’t difficult. However, incorporating them organically is extremely difficult.
Where do we stand as writers ?
This was one of the first questions we asked ourselves, and one we put to the cognitive scientists we met.
What stance should we adopt as screenwriters? What would be the best approach to raise awareness and encourage viewers to adopt behaviours in line with today’s environmental challenges?
Descriptive approach: Describing the world as it really is, particularly its shortcomings.
Risk: showing behaviours or speech that one does not agree with, at the risk of normalising them.
Prescriptive stance: Showing the world as we would like it to be.
Advantage: establishing new norms.
Disadvantage: showing a world that does not exist, at the risk of being out of touch and evading reality.
Alarmist stance: Showing the world as it might become if things get out of hand.
Advantage: raising awareness.
Disadvantage: preparing our imaginations to accept the worst.
The good news is that none of these approaches is better or worse than the others. All three are necessary. It’s a question of balance. Striking a balance between alarmism and hope, problems with solution, prescriptive characters but with realism.
This is our first essential ingredient: the right balance of hope.
Did you know?
Cognitive sciences
Cognitive science studies how the human mind works: how we perceive the world, how we make decisions, how we remember things, how we experience emotions… And how all of this influences our behaviour.
It draws on psychology, neuroscience and linguistics to understand the mechanisms of thought.
a. Hope: the main weapon
1. A pool of anxiety and learned helplessness
It is easy to provoke a reaction of rejection among viewers (and broadcasters), given the highly anxiety-inducing nature of environmental issues. In cognitive science, this rejection has a name: disattention. And disattention leads to disengagement.
To better circumvent this, it is necessary to understand its origins.
- Lack of mental bandwidth: ‘the pool of anxiety’
When we become aware of planetary limits and the consequences of climate change on our daily lives, there is plenty to be anxious about.
However, cognitively speaking, we have a ‘pool of worry’. When it is full, we can no longer cope with any additional worries, and whatever overflows is simply not processed.
The ‘pool of worry’ helps explain, amongst other things, this phenomenon of ‘disattention’ when it comes to climate issues: the brain will prioritise immediate and tangible worries (‘I’ve run out of food in my fridge’) over vague and distant concerns (‘the Earth is becoming uninhabitable’).
This also explains why young people seem, at first glance, to be more sensitive to environmental issues (and therefore prone to eco-anxiety). They simply have more mental space to devote to these issues, because their ‘pool of worry’ isn’t already filled with practical concerns.
The bias of learned helplessness
Through repeated experience, we have learnt that we have very little influence over the course of events: repeated failures have led us to believe that we have no control over our environment; we become resigned and abandon all hope of contributing to change. This powerlessness turns into anxiety, which then leads to demobilisation.
It is a bias we all have on various subjects: to take a completely random example, screenwriters who no longer even hope to sign their contract before they start work.
The only possible response to these obstacles is hope.
2. What is hope ?
In a story, traditionally, we like it when there’s a hero, a goal and an antagonist. We like the resolution to be clear, with the problem solved by the end of the film thanks to the heroes’ decisive action.
Unfortunately, when it comes to climate change, nothing can be this straightforward. Worse still, it would even seem that trying to force the issue of climate change into these parameters only serves to obscure the problem, distort it and render it incomprehensible.
So in our case: what exactly do we mean by the word ‘hope’?
Fiction acts as a mental projection of the ways in which we deal with our anxieties. It is a simulator.
In a work of fiction, the viewer does not come to grapple with the problem itself: they come to rehearse a strategy for dealing with it.
A character enduring an extreme heatwave or losing their home in a flood does not merely provoke fear. They provide a tried-and-tested coping scenario, which the viewer internalizes without even realising it, and which they will be able to draw upon the day they are confronted with it.
The right balance of hope is therefore essential for the simulation to work and to engage the viewer. Too little hope will reinforce the ‘learned helplessness’ bias and lead to demobilisation. Too much hope (a brilliant geek will find a magic formula to reverse global warming) will distract them from realising the scale of the problem and lead to disengagement.
In fact, hope is much more than a message to be conveyed: it is a tactical weapon that one must learn to wield.
‘You have to use hope like a golf club to beat your opponent.’ Kim Stanley Robinson
It’s not so much that the problems will disappear overnight. It’s that we stand a chance of achieving at least something. Small victories and successive gains of control, which restore hope in our power to act. A polluter brought to justice, an animal saved… In this respect, fiction can play a role.
But hope, beyond these small victories, is also the promise of a better life.
The green transition will not be sold as a moral obligation, but as a way of living better, more intensely, with more flavour, joy, coolness, a sense of belonging, connection and pleasure.
What we can do, at our own level, is therefore to make these choices appealing, to embody their tangible value, to show that what is simple or resilient can also be beautiful, funny, exciting and, above all, bring us a sense of serenity. And that there are many benefits to moving away from a lifestyle that destroys the environment.
Alongside hope lies a second essential ingredient for tackling these issues: grounding.
Alcarràs, 2022
b. Grounding in everyday life
Grounding transforms data into sensation, and a distant threat into everyday friction. It is what brings the subject to life narratively.
Did you know?
Anchoring
(screenwriters obviously already know this, but perhaps other readers don’t)
Anchoring is a narrative’s ability to link an abstract issue to a concrete, lived, immediate experience. It’s not about explaining the principles of global warming; it’s about showing a character who can no longer sleep because the temperature never drops below thirty degrees at night. It’s not about condemning pesticides; it’s about showing a child who’s had a sore throat every summer since he was born.
The human brain does not attach much importance to abstract and distant matters. We tend to prioritise the questions and answers that are immediately available in our minds – that is, the most recent, the closest to us, and the most recurrent (in cognitive science, these are referred to as salience, frequency and proximity).
Did you know?
Salience – the scientific term for anchoring
Salience is also known as vividness. The aim is to show that the climate issue is a real constraint that deprives the characters of something (security, their relationship with other species, the preservation of their beloved places, etc.). Salience can also be sensory (such as forest fires for the Corsicans). The idea behind salience is therefore to bring the issues down to an immediate, close, concrete and physical level. To seek out the temporal, spatial and emotional proximity of the effects and consequences.
And salience can be found absolutely everywhere. Don’t believe us?
📌 Concrete examples:
In a procedural drama set mainly in a police station?
A heatwave alters the working conditions for police officers. It makes the regulation uniform difficult to bear, increases crime… Cases of violence against women are on the rise and police holding cells are overflowing.
In an action film?
A chase between a petrol-powered scooter and an electric one. The electric one makes less noise and accelerates faster from traffic lights: immediate, tangible benefits for the hero as he outruns his enemy.
There is also the fact that our brains prefer short-term, readily available rewards rather than long-term benefits. In practical terms, we’d rather earn €500 tomorrow than €5,000 in five years. And when it comes to short-term benefits – let’s be – the ecological crisis can wait.
This is why it is essential to focus on grounding these issues in reality, in everyday life.
We need to highlight the immediate and tangible consequences for health, purchasing power and safety: phrases like ‘in 20 years’ or ‘for the planet’ simply don’t get past the cognitive barrier. Worse still, people can sense the author’s intentions, which risks provoking a rejection.
WARNING: ‘The Mercedes Effect’
Conversely, a lack of grounding is very quickly picked up on by the viewer and risks causing them to reject outright the narrative as a whole.
We have called this ‘The Mercedes Effect’ because the following anecdote illustrates the point so well:
‘I’m a farmer and I’ve seen *Les Algues Vertes* (a film about pesticide pollution in Brittany, ed.). At one point, the head of the FNSEA (an agricultural union, ed.) turns up in a Mercedes. That’s just not realistic ! The FNSEA people drive French cars. I’ve never seen an FNSEA person bloke driving a Mercedes. That film is complete rubbish!”
– an attentive viewer
Here, the antagonist’s lack of connection to reality undermined the film’s entire message. After all, it is primarily through the characters that we ground these issues in reality.
“I saw a film where they showed an organic farmer pushing a wheelbarrow. Utter nonsense. I switched the telly off straight away.”
— an organic farmer
To avoid the ‘Mercedes Effect’, there’s only one solution: a genuine understanding of the subject. This requires in-depth research, but also talking to people on the ground.
Did you know?
Consulting experts who study the sectors we’re covering can sometimes provide a vital complement to those on the ground, who may have a limited perspective. Sociologists and demographers are crucial on this issue.
⚠ Warning:
Didacticism. Seeing a screenwriter at work rather than a character
The audience is very astute and is on the lookout for the writer’s intentions. The more overt and black-and-white the message in a work of fiction is, the more the viewer will distance themselves from a character they don’t believe in, and the more they will see only one thing: the screenwriter’s intentions.
The audience resists as soon as they sense an attempt to ‘correct’ them. Feeling manipulated, they will therefore reject the work outright. And we’ll have only ourselves to blame.