Every great story begins with an ‘inciting incident’.

That’s the moment when the ordinary world cracks, when the hero is shaken awake. The ring is left on a hobbit’s mantelpiece. The message flickers from Princess Leia. The sky burns, the monster rises, the truth is revealed. It’s the moment the story really starts.

In my new novel Godstorm, it’s when a child is abducted during a climate-induced hurricane.

But reality rarely fits the strictures of excellent storytelling. We need to make it do so.

For climate, that’s going to mean moving on from the inciting incident we’ve been stuck in for literally decades, our story stalling, and action waiting for us to move on.

For too long, climate communicators have treated science as our inciting incident.
We’ve believed that if we simply presented the charts, the models, the melting ice, then people would leap from their sofas, grab their cloaks and swords, and set out to save the world.

That worked for some. The bold, the believers, the already-converted set off at once. But for everyone else, the call to adventure has been… ignored. Or worse, politely declined.

Because we’ve forgotten a crucial rule of storytelling: the inciting incident only matters if the audience knows they’re the protagonist.

The Call We Keep Refusing

Every good story has a moment of refusal. Luke doesn’t want to leave Tatooine. Frodo says, “I’m not made for adventures.” Katniss just wants to keep her sister safe. The refusal is human; it’s the trembling before transformation. As an author, that’s juicy material full of human turmoil, and excellent fodder for emotion-tugging prose.

That can only last a page or two before the reader gets bored.

But the climate story has been looping in that scene for thirty years.

We keep sounding the alarm, waving the graphs, replaying the warnings. We’ve become the anxious mentor in the hut, shouting “the world is ending!” while the potential heroes stare into their phones, waiting for someone else to pick up the quest.

It’s not that people don’t care. It’s that we never truly invited them into the story.

We’ve told them what’s happening to the planet, not excited them with the adventure.
We’ve shown them villains, but not given them agency.
We’ve cast them as audience members, extras, or at best “conscious consumers.”
In gamer lingo, they’re non-playable characters: moving through the climate world, affected by every update, but never handed the controller.

NPCs Don’t Save The World

Climate doom has been a powerful narcotic. It numbs guilt and pain, and it flatters the ego, because if the world is doomed, then our inaction is no longer cowardice, it’s resignation. And that’s so much easier to live with.

But NPCs don’t write myths. They don’t plant forests or overthrow empires.
They simply watch the game unfold until the credits roll.

And yet, look at what we’re surrounded by: real, breathing, feeling human beings capable of astonishing courage. People raising children in a burning world, inventing cleaner ways to live, making art that touches the soul of the crisis. We are the main character already in motion, we just haven’t realised it yet.

Why Science Can’t Start The Story

Science is essential. But science doesn’t make us move. Story does.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change can describe the dragon; it can’t make us pick up the sword.

In storytelling terms, the climate movement has mastered world-building but forgotten character-building. We’ve mapped the terrain of catastrophe, but not the internal journeys of the people within it. The plot twist we need is a shift in identity, not another data set.

Because when people see themselves as protagonists, everything changes. The same flood becomes a challenge to overcome. The same solar panel becomes a symbol of defiance. The same act of hope becomes contagious.

The real transformation happens not when we say “the planet is dying,” but when we whisper, “You can change this story.”

The New Chapter Begins Here

That’s why I’ve helped launch the Fuck Doom campaign.

Because our cultural story has stalled in Act One. Because the doom narrative has eaten our imagination. Because we deserve more than tragedy.
Fuck Doom is a call to reclaim agency, creativity, and courage from the jaws of fatalism.

This campaign isn’t about denying danger. It’s about rejecting despair. And finally stepping into the adventure we were always meant to live.

So here’s your invitation:
You’re not an NPC.

You’re not an extra in the apocalypse
You are not background noise in the great story of survival.
You are the main character. The one holding the controller. The one who can change the ending.

It’s time to move past our inciting incident.

Because the climate story isn’t over. It’s barely begun.

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Godstorm is now available to pre-order in the UK (link goes to Waterstones).

These pre-orders are vitally important! So important in fact, that in the next few weeks I’ll send a free, beautifully designed bookplate, hand-signed and dedicated to you, to anyone with proof they’ve pre-ordered! So please get your copy, and send the receipt/email confirmation of your order to hello@solitairetownsend.com

Remember to tell me the name you’d like the bookplate dedicated to!

⭐THANK YOU⭐