Researching The Story

When I decided to write my story about Climate Change, I knew I’d have to do a lot of research. I wanted my story to be as realistic as possible, so I ended up reading a lot of government articles and watched some TED and PBS videos. I also have a contact whose work involves interfacing with COP (Conference of Parties (COP16) of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The government stuff was pretty heady and, in some places, difficult to understand. That’s where my contact helped a lot. Fortunately, for me, all this research gave a broad overview of where we might be in the coming decades but no specific details. This is where my storytelling came in.

I focused, not so much on what the climate changes will be, but on how people deal with them. I chose to use four main story lines to show the different effects of climate change in different geographical areas and different groups of people.

I’ve also included a few vignettes (one page snapshot stories) to show aspects that wouldn’t support a complete story in themselves. The vignettes are being posted in a special area of the website so my readers can see how other people deal with the changes.