Using Dream as Writing Source

[yebastick]

I've been keeping a dream journal for some five years now. I started it when I was looking for something just to fill my quota for the day to write something, you know just to keep in practice. In desperation, I wrote a dream that had happened some few days back. It felt good. Ever since, I tried to jot down all my dreams, to capture the moment. Sometimes my dream entry runs from one paragraph to several pages.

Beside the sense of psychological sigh, it's a good source of writing too, if you're lost what to write about.

However, I noticed most of my dream logs tend to dramatize. But I realized it is the emotional intensity that made you remember it in the first place. And also, dream logs isnt your actual dream but impressions, consciousness trying to feel the gaps.

Here is a dream I just had last night.




I felt choked and prisoned and compressed in the sea of light that surrounds me. I can see nothing at all but the sheering whiteness, cloudlike fluff, an overwhelming sense of dimensionlessness drowning me.

I was naked, standing in the brightness, my arms crossed against my chest. I was sweating profusely, every beads of sweat running down every curves and contours of muscles and body bumps, glistening. I was shivering.

I looked up, and from the whiteness overhead dangled a long ironchain, sheening in its blackness, ominous as if a snake struggling from the clutch of brightness. It was so far up. Far up. Too far

Yet I when I reached for it, I touched it. In a sudden burst of panic, my touch balled into a gripped, my body trembling, excited, fightened.

I pulled the ironchain.

From all corner overhead, countless tapes of gold and gray, like worms, was breaking the whiteness, heaving toward the center. The whiteness broke into rays of light, the gold and gray swirling, circling each white ray, as if devouring the light. Slowly, soon, the myriads gold and gray met at the point where the ironchain dangled.

There was no more white light.

The chain fell. What had been bright and white around me was now gold and grayed like halfway between night and morn, like a dawn or dusk.

I moved to walk and raise my hand, but now I'm chained, hands and feet.




A bit too melodramatic but I was going for an impression that, if you think about it, lasted only for 5-7 seconds.

Quoting a man in the Pretty Woman movie, "What's your dream?"

 

[littlemissattitude]

I'd be afraid to write my dreams down, so many of them are so strange. Although some of them have special effects that would make Industrial Light and Magic jealous.

 

[Tyranus]

I never write my dreams down, more importantly I rarely remember any. There are a few dreams, the recurring kind, from my childhood that I can remember clear enough if I set my mind to it, but that is only from having them many times. They are nothing really to write about though, I don't have an inkling of what they mean, nor do I think they mean anything (I had them from a real early age.) As for recent dreams, and being able to use them as inspiration, there is only one. It occured a few weeks ago, I remembered it clearly when I first awoke, but as usual, it slipped away soon after. It did leave some things with me though. A name: Nightengale, who is a male character ( I can't help it, there is no other name that can fit, and it is fantasy so...), and of course a profession: bard/musician/minstrel what ever you want to call it, a master of the intrument and of song. I do remember a few points from the dream, but they are all out of order (I remember one point was well after his death). I have intended to sort everything out, and start all the necessary requirements for the story, but I just have not had the time.

 

[jackokent]

I've never tried to record a dream delibertly but my first book is almost entirely from a dream. I dreampt the whole thing, the story the names everything and now it's a 120,000 word novel which one day I will try to get published. I have no idea where it came from, I only hope it's not something I've read although I've searched hard to make sure. Then the other day I heard of some new writer saying he'd done the same thing. I don't think I would have ever considered writing if it hadn't been for that dream.

 

[mosaix]

There is a story that a famous physicist kept waking up thinking that each night he had dreamt the fundamental laws to the universe but, on waking, forgotten them.

He decided to keep a notebook and pencil by the bed and, before sleeping, concentrated on thinking about waking himself up after the dream and writing it all down.

Sure enough a few nights later he had the dream, woke himself and made copious notes. In the morning he read them -

"No custard on meat pies!" was all he had written.

 

[tiny99]

I regularly have strange dreams, last night's was an extremely vivid one. I myself live in Liverpool, and in the dream, there was a bunch of us trying to figure out why the statues of the Liver birds had flown away....in the time we were standing on a nearby building looking up towards the monuments now empty plinth, we began to notice other various statues and gargoyles and such like. Then I noticed that one of the statues wasn't a statue at all, but a young man who had made his way to the top of the building with the sole intention of throwing himself from the top of it. This I realised because he was already hurtling past us as we watched on in horror.
For anyone who doesn't know, The Liver Buildings are big, and to survive a fall from the top would be nothing short of a miracle, however when this guy hit the ground, he landed in a sitting position, right on his backside. The lad himself was some sort of construction or outdoors manual worker, this deduced from the fact he had left his luminous yellow high-visibility workers jacket on the ground as a kind of marker, a target at which he could aim for when he dropped, (he actually landed just a few feet to the right of it). He was still alive after he hit the ground, we could see him moving.
A lot more happened in this dream than I care to document here, however there was a point at which I felt I had to defend this poor man, in the face of a packed market type street were he was being denounced for not thinking of others, (I felt he needed defending, none of us knew the misery which caused his actions) I also felt a little like Jesus whilst standing up for this man. Anyway, it didn't exactly end there but I will. I f anyone out there has any knowledge of dreams and thier meanings, or any thoughts at all on this, please let me know, it's been battering my head all day.

 

[violetann]

I use them as sources all the time though normally there lucid dreaming and I watch them from a 3rd person perspective and feel each charters and know almost omnipotent what’s going on everywhere in the mini world and what has and will go on and able to control and morph it.
Though I don’t normally write them down since the good ones I can’t get out of my head until I write them. The first chapter of the one I posted on the forums was almost comply a dream though further on it’s not.

Though I don’t think people should use everything they dream since some is just random crud which doesn’t have anything interesting or any where to go expect to explore the persons psyche. So you still need to edit and think though short dreams like your describing might be a good way to start you off


also mediating and while thinking about something may help or even make a tape of yourself reading the first part of your story up till you get stuck to help endue yourself to dream about it. May be a tape of random words you want to write about too but I’ve never tried that. Though they often use them for people when there trying to get them to give up something they play things like bad smoking bad etc or if your going to go on holiday and you want to learn a language people play tapes in there sleep. Though a little decision about what to write about since writing about everything might not be a good idea.

 

[FelineEyes]

My dreams are dark and sometimes frighteningly realistic.
I also dream in storylines, so most of my dreams would make great stories, but they're so dark I can't bring myself to write them down. It's just too depressing.

 

[argenianpoet]

Actually, the novel that I am writing at this very moment is based largely off an elaborate dream that I had one night. It was the only dream I have ever had that was in a story form, and when I awoke I had the strangest feeling that the dream had been given to me by something else: dreamweavers, I call them. I must say, this has turned out to be my best work yet, at least I think so.

 

[ZoeRat]

I write down my dream when I remember them, because usually they are interesting enough to form stories out of, or at least scenes of stories. I've also taken several creative writing classes in college, and they encourage the habit of keeping a notebook at your bedside so you can jot down your dreams if you happen to wake up in the middle of the night. I haven't gone that far in writing my dreams down, but I'll try it when I'm at a loss for good ideas.
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[Chrystelia]

Ha my dreams are useless for story lines, but good for scenes I guess and most of them tend to be SF-ish. I really should write them down though. Has anyone had a night full of dreams, one after another, and a continuation of the previous dream, and knowing in the dream that you are dreaming a dream of a dream? Don't know if this makes sense. I had one of those, and O I was so tired when I woke up.

 

[BookStop]

Has anyone had a night full of dreams, one after another, and a continuation of the previous dream, and knowing in the dream that you are dreaming a dream of a dream?

Oh, I do that all the time. It's very tiring. I am also prone to have those dreams where, suddenly, out of nowhere, a fire errupts (or another emergency), and rescue sirens start wailing. I wake up to find I've been sleeping through a minute or more of my alarm clock.

 

[Chrystelia]

The one night I can remember: in the first dream I was in the ocean. I guess it was far below the surface because it was very quiet and still and dark, and I was swimming round and round a mountain looking for diamonds of all things. Then began the second dream, and in my sleep I knew I was dreaming and that it is now the second dream. I was a statue of a princess in a room set in ancient egyptian style. There were 2 other ladies in the room and they were talking about me not knowing I was there listening to every word. There was a sense of danger, that if I get caught something bad will happen, but at the same time, I knew that it was just a dream, that it was the dream of the me that was swimming in the dark ocean in the first dream and that the real real me was asleep dreaming all this. Then it went on to the third dream, in the same pattern. It was very strange.

 

[Marky Lazer]

It's crazy, my imagination really runs wild, so you would say my dreams should be like that. But, they're not. The other day I dreamed I was posting a letter, and I did. That was really it. I can think of a few things more exciting...

 

[Mouse]

Yeah I've used a few dreams as scenes in my books. There was one dream when I was on a ship with all my 'friends' (i knew them in the dream but not real life) and I was fighting robots (!) with a huge broadsword. The deck crashes beneath my feet and I fall down into the hold where I get penned in by a laser beam. Then these ghostly figures start coming at me from the shadows, I break the beam and fight my way free! It was a cool dream! I used that scene in a story, but took out the robots and set it in a cave instead of a ship!

 

[Perpetual Man]

Speaking personally I would not have thought about using dreams as a source material, most of the ones I have are far too weird to put into any serious context. Most of my writing has always come from the conscious imagination - no matter how weird or wonderful that might be in its own right.

About a year ago I had a dream, woke in the middle of the night, grabbed a sheet of paper and jotted down the ideas in the dream. Follwing moring I woke up and started writing, managing a resonable sized novel in about three months. Literally it seemed as though the story was there fully formed in side me waiting to flow. And it did, quickly and completely. It just seemed to NEED to be written if that makes sense.

After years of trying with other stuff this one was duly packed off to an agent and was heroically rejected - although the rejection was quite complimentary and encouraging as much as these things can be.

The second agent who received it picked it up almost at once and although it's not been picked up by a published yet it is doing the rounds and, the agent at least is still quite positive that things are going somewhere...

So using dreams as a writing source - absolutely!!!

 

[j d worthington]

About a year ago I had a dream, woke in the middle of the night, grabbed a sheet of paper and jotted down the ideas in the dream. Follwing moring I woke up and started writing, managing a resonable sized novel in about three months. Literally it seemed as though the story was there fully formed in side me waiting to flow. And it did, quickly and completely. It just seemed to NEED to be written if that makes sense.

Perfectly good sense. You've entered the first phase. Just wait until your characters start talking back to you when you're lousing up a scene, and basically tell you to b***er off, they can handle it better. At that point, you start to make that call to the chappies in the white coat all on your lonesome....

Yes, sometimes this is the best time to do the writing, and the best writing often comes out of it. This is something that's niggling you down there and is truly something you've got to say if you're a writer at all. The quality of the writing varies; but that's one of the things revision is for....

Good luck with the book. Keep us posted.

 

[Sparks the Knave]

My dreams are far too Pornographic I'm sure half the time, but if I dumbed that side down, who knows, some cool crazy stuff in there.