Stay up to date with the Creators For Climate project through the newsletter. We’ll send you new in depth discussions on climate outreach, highlights from new podcast episodes, new tools and resources when they drop and showcase the work of other creators. *No bs, pinky promise.
Share
A Masterclass in Storytelling 🌍
Published about 2 months ago • 7 min read
Last weekend I finally saw Ocean with David Attenborough. Here’s the short recap I wanted to share with you:
Yes, footage looks great. Yes, you should see it if you haven’t already. But most importantly: it was a masterclass in storytelling.
So instead of sharing a review with you, I prepped a “creator breakdown” to see how we can adapt these narrative structures and storytelling tools into our own climate or science messages. No major spoilers ahead.🙋🏻♂️
📲 Building in public - Project update
Systems, flywheels and community
✅ On track - 🟠 In progress - ⭕️ Exploring
The past weeks were all about doubling down on the content systems and stress-testing them. Meaning: writing newsletters & LinkedIn posts and designing carousels while also running the Creators For Climate project full time. We're not quite there yet, but the standard operational procedure (SOP) is starting to write itself: ✅
I'm working on creating a new content flywheel, just for Youtube videos and the podcast. We're batching up some content so we can test what works and what doesn't. 🟠
While talking with starting science communicators, the topic of community kept crawling up. So I'm looking into a dedicated space for hosting our own Creators For Climate community. Interested? Tell me what you'd want in a community space! ⭕️
The Science Communication 101 course book is releasing next month! Join the waitlist to be notified when it drops 📮
🔨 The hammer and the dance 💃
PC: Jim Donnelly (left), Ben Jones - Ocean Image Bank (right)
As we’ve gotten used to from David Attenborough, Silverback Films and Open Planet Studios, this documentary didn’t try to overwhelm us with facts or data.
Neither did it rely on fear as the only storytelling vehicle, or this naive optimism we’ve seen in other docs. Instead, it created an emotional rollercoaster, triggering a range of feelings throughout the whole movie.
It’s a technique that some call “the hammer and the dance”
The hammer: Set up the story with some hard shocking truths to wake up the audience, to force them to confront the status quo.
The dance: Stories of hope that remind us why it’s worth fighting for change, looping with stories that show the hard work still ahead of us.
My notes after returning home from the theater. X-axis: timeline and duration of the documentary. Y-axis: intensity of positive and negative emotions perceived by the viewer.
I believe this interplay of emotional highs and lows was a very deliberate and strategic choice. One that holds the key to effective climate storytelling.
The movie didn't feel like a flat narrative of problems or solutions. It’s a dance between these extremes:
Pushing you to feel the gravity of what’s at stake,
But also the possibility of recovery.
A purely negative narrative can overwhelm. A purely positive one can feel naive. But this mix of despair and possibility keeps you invested.
Your takeaway: Show the hard truths, but also the path forward. More about this below 👇
👀 Show us what we don’t see
In movies, creators usually play with a few storylines at once. There's a main storyline, and then one or more smaller storylines to keep the flow and rhythm interesting.
For Ocean, this main storyline is showing the important topics we don’t see in every day media. The stories that aren’t picked up, but matter:
Quiet success stories: like local fishermen finding harmony with their environment, or nature that can rebuild itself without human intervention.
The catastrophic scale of industrial destruction: scraping away entire ecosystems (as seen in the trailer), or turning parts of the ocean into a floating factory (and again, scraping away an entire ecosystem).
The film gives a voice to these hidden stories, bringing them out of obscurity, for better or worse.
Your takeaway: Show the stories of people making change happen. If it works locally, it can work globally. That’s where real change begins.
👨🏻🦳 Personal witness statements
So remember that secondary storyline? That’s where our friend Sir David comes in.Throughout the film we get small flashbacks from David’s life, where he witnessed the good, the bad and the ugly. He ties the movie back to his personal journey.
“
“In my lifetime, I have seen…”
What’s so strong about these secondary storyline scenes is how they frame the story as a witness statement.
By lending his voice to the story, he brings what’s happening far away in the world to a closer psychological distance. And after almost 100 years, David has a lot to look back on.
It shows continuity: We all understand how changes affect a human life. It makes it concrete, taking the abstractness away from environmental issues as climate change.
It shows urgency: If David has seen these changes happen in the last 100 years, imagine what we’ll see in our own lifetimes.
It shows trust: It’s a lived experience, not just theory. We trust his voice, his words and his actions. The story holds more weight since we can connect it to David personally.
Your takeaway: Don’t be afraid to share your own witness statements in your content. It builds trust around your personal brand and makes your message more relatable. Share your emotions and struggles, but also your wins. Make it human.
🌍 Playing with scale
One of the narrative tools they adopted really well is the use of scale. They are not afraid to zoom in & out to help us understand, well.., the scale of the causes, impacts and solutions.
It’s an intentional moving between intimate details and the global picture:
A close-up of the life of a whale or a local fisherman on his boat.
A wide view of entire ecosystems at risk, or industrial ships that can decimate miles of ocean overnight.
But also Organism vs ecosystem Cause vs impact Industry vs survival Small actions vs global stakes
This rhythm helps people connect the dots: small actions matter, but we need big system changes too. This rhythm also shapes two other themes in the movie that are pitted directly against each other:
The power of over-industrialization
The power of rewilding nature
Without going into too much detail (or spoilers), the movie is showing us what happens when we give nature space to recover vs. what happens when we over-exploit beyond the capacity of the system.
Your takeaway: Use scale to show how local stories fit into global issues, and how our choices ripple outwards.
This was also part of our first podcast with co-host Charlie. He told us how documenting local projects can ignite ideas or support on a global level (sounds familiar?).
🌱 Hope has to be earned
As they say: last but not least! Putting it simply, the film doesn’t offer false hope. With what's at stake, that's not a small feat…
The movie shows us that life rebounds faster than we imagined. But it also shows how quickly that hope can vanish if we don’t make the active decision to protect nature.
So instead of giving us this over-optimistic “everything will be fine”, or overly dramatic “humanity is lost”, it paints a very real and sober version of hope:
Hope is grounded in reality: Nature can recover, but only if we protect it.
Hope is conditional: It depends on our decisions. Will it work out? Only if we take it seriously.
Hope is motivating: It transforms despair into determination. We CAN, if we CHOOSE to.
Your takeaway: Offer real hope, backed by action. Help turn a “why bother?” into “what can I do?”. And for that, you can use the other narrative structures we talked about above!
🐠 The 'Ocean' playbook
Recap time! Here’s how I’m thinking of using these tools in my own work (and how you can, too):
Wake up, or shake up, the audience with the stakes. What can trigger a deep personal, emotional response? What's your hammer?
Show the audience what they normally don’t see about your story subject.How can you play with success and failure?What's your dance?
Let them feel the personal stakes by sharing your own perspective. How can you make it very real, very core to their identity? What are you witnessing?
Occasionally, pull back to reveal the bigger picture. How can you move beyond the details of your own story? What's the bigger impact?
Give them a glimpse of what’s possible when people act. How can you offer real hope, not just dreams. How can this hope activate the viewer?
Even if you’re creating a 60 second TikTok, IG reel or writing a short LinkedIn post, you can use these narrative tools to make climate topics feel urgent and relatable. Good luck! 🤞🏻
🌊 Further reading
If these insights sparked some curiosity on your end, and you’ve watched the movie (of course), I highly recommend reading “Rewilding the Sea” by Charles Clover. (no ad)
This book starts where the movie ends. It’s a testament to how communities and ecosystems can heal when given the chance. And it does this by sharing more unheard stories ☺️
📓 Creators For Climate Resources
And that's it for today. Below is the updated list of resources you can access and where you can download all the documents. That includes:
Join the waitlist
The 'Science Communication 101' course book is coming out soon. Join the waitlist to be notified when it's released?
Building a knowledge hub for climate changers... and creating content about our 🌍
Stay up to date with the Creators For Climate project through the newsletter. We’ll send you new in depth discussions on climate outreach, highlights from new podcast episodes, new tools and resources when they drop and showcase the work of other creators. *No bs, pinky promise.
After 2+ years of testing, surveying and 7 rewrites, the Science Communication 101 workbook is now live for everyone! In short, it's a guide to help you get started with sci com. If you share climate ideas, teach or study science, or just want to boost your science posts, this guide can help. P.S. If you were on the pre-release waitlist or already grabbed a copy: huge thanks!! You’re the reason this project made it out into the world.Scroll down to learn more, and to claim the newsletter...
Imposter syndrome has been showing up a lot lately. I’ve heard it at nearly every event, panel or Q&A I’ve been part of. So in this entry, let's have a look at what goes on behind the scenes.You can hear it in the questions after a talk, in the quiet conversations while networking, across YouTube, LinkedIn and podcasts. Sometimes it’s direct. Other times it’s buried in the subtext. That’s why I wrote this entry. It’s a reflection on lessons learned from other creators, science communicators...
If you’re new here, or are just starting out with science communication, this entry is for you. I'll be sharing the path that led me from marine biology to creative storytelling, and the core framework I now teach to scientists to start their own communication journey. That framework is divided into two parts: 1. starting from your strengths and 2. connecting with the people who matter. Plus a quick look at my new workbook, built from the lessons I learned the past 15 years. 📲 Building in...
