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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30979
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/30979
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

At the heart of all art is vision. The artist is an artist because the see something and find a way to express what they have seen so that others can share in the experience. No work of art can succeed without vision. If you have not seen, you cannot show.

It may or may not be necessary or helpful for an artist to make a plan. But a plan is not a vision. You can plan till the cows come home but that will not give you one iota of vision. A plan can serve a vision by introducing discipline into the expression of the vision. But the vision stands outside the plan. The vision is not in the plan.

Fundamentally all stories are about the same thing: what is it like to X. The X's themselves are pretty mundane:

- fall in love
- go to war
- fight a bully
- make a friend
- return home after a long absence

What sets good stories apart is not that they come up with some extraordinary new experience to write about, but they they write about the ordinary experiences that everyone cares about with a particular vision. The more vivid and true the vision, them better the story.

Read the plot summaries of any of the great works of literature (Wikipedia is full of them). You will find nothing remarkable about them. Their greatness does not lie in the plan but in the vision.

Unfortunately, we don't all have an artistic vision. Some people can prattle on happily without one. Others stall at the starting line because no matter how much the have planned, they have no vision. There is nothing that is burning in them to be said to the world. When the vision comes, the words will come. Alas, there is no promise that it will ever come.

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