We all know the traditional three-act structure: an inciting incident, a driving want, and a protagonist who fights back against all odds. It's as old as, well, Aristotle. But what if the dominant story form we’ve relied on for decades is actually working against us when it comes to the climate crisis?
Join script consultant, Head of Screenwriting at NYU Tisch and screenwriter Jessie Keyt for a provocative and practical conversation about why traditional narrative structure can be problematic for climate storytelling—and what we can do instead. Drawing on more than 20 years of teaching and the study of Western narrative structures, Keyt interrogates the traditional paradigm’s emphasis on hero-centered stories, proportional causality, and linear time, and demonstrates how this paradigm inadvertently perpetuates petroculture values.
She’ll discuss the relationship between story and structure and introduce alternative narrative frameworks, including biomimetic structures, to make the case that if we want a different world, we need different stories.
Jessie will then be joined by screenwriter and producer Dorothy Fortenberry (The Handmaid’s Tale; Extrapolations, the first scripted television drama centered entirely on climate change) for a conversation about what these ideas look like in practice. How do working writers navigate the tension between the structures audiences expect and the ones the climate moment demands? And what might it look like if we got it right?
This 75-minute virtual presentation, discussion, and Q&A is part of a series of monthly workshops related to topics within the recently -launched Sustainability Tool Kit for Producers.
Participants:
Jessie Keyt
Jessie Keyt is a writer, film scholar, and international story consultant. She co-authored Alternative Scriptwriting: Contemporary Storytelling for the Screen and is the Head of Screenwriting and an Associate Arts Professor at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where she teaches a graduate-level master class on “Writing the Climate Change Script.” She has taught screenwriting at Columbia University, Sundance, and La Fémis, and has led climate storytelling workshops for Sundance, the Torino Film Lab, and the Venice Biennale. She is the co-founder of Global Rise: Stories for the Future, which works with creatives across media to examine the interdisciplinary role of science, humanities, and imagination in crafting rich climate narratives. She holds MFAs in Writing from Columbia and NYU, and her creative work has premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival and been supported by MEDIA II, Sundance, Nicholls, and the Vermont Studio Center.
Dorothy Fortenberry
Dorothy Fortenberry was the co-showrunner and an Executive Producer of the climate change anthology series Extrapolations at Apple TV+. She also served as a writer and an EP for the upcoming Apple TV+ series Nocturne (slated to premiere in 2027). She spent four seasons on Hulu’s award-winning adaptation of The Handmaid’s Tale as a writer/producer, for which she received multiple Emmy nominations, the PGA Award, and two WGA Awards. Before Handmaid’s, Dorothy was on the writing staff for the first three seasons of the CW hit series The 100. As a playwright, she has had her plays performed across the country, including the Humana Festival of New American Plays, IAMA Theatre, and Ensemble Studio Theater. As an essayist, she writes politics and culture for publications including The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and Slate. For the past several years, Dorothy has worked with the WGA, PGA, NRDC, Good Energy, and other groups to encourage more climate-conscious storytelling and sustainable production practices.
RSVP is required.
This event is presented and hosted by the Producers Guild of America.