What’s the Vision for Your Story?
Arg! When someone asks you what’s the vision for your story, do you know what they want? As far as I was concerned, the “vision” for my story meant the big screen. It was kind of like when someone asks the dreaded, so, tell me about yourself, question in an interview. The question is too big. The context too broad. It leaves me vaguely uncomfortable. I needed Story Vision Examples!
To combat this verbiage inhibitor, I did some research to figure out what this daunting, vague, writerly terminology means. Story Vision is not the elevator pitch. Nope. The elevator pitch is the twenty five words or less synopsis of your story. Story Vision isn’t theme either. Yeah, no. Theme is the issue or maybe the moral of the story – theme is about behavior and values. Easy example – what’s Romeo and Juliet about? What’s it’s primary theme? Love. But what’s the vision of the story? Well – that’s a little different.
According to famous literary critic Harold Bloom, Romeo and Juliet “…is unmatched, in Shakespeare and in the world’s literature, as a VISION of uncompromising mutual love that perishes of its own idealism and intensity.” (Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human, 197).” [Quote] Please note, my emphasis on the word vision. So the vision of the story isn’t simply the theme of love – no, indeed, it is the uncompromising mutual love that perishes, blah, blah blah. It is more complex and intense than theme and encompasses a bit of character in there too. The vision of the story is what compels you to write it. It’s the message of your story. A lot like theme, but different. The vision also has the impetus of what made you start writing in the first place. For Romeo and Juliet it wasn’t just love that compelled Shakespeare to write, it was a love that couldn’t be sustained in this world. It was a love that would perish because of its idealism. So when asked what’s the vision for your story, get out the big guns, and rock their world with the reason you wrote your story in the first place.