Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Do your dreams have plots?

This is topic Do your dreams have plots? in forum Open Discussions About Writing at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by RoJoHen (Member # 1030) on :

I was just wondering if anybody else's dreams actually have plots. Mine do, and they inspire me to write.

Just recently, I had a dream. It even had opening credits, and then the next night I had a sequel to my dream.

Posted by srhowen (Member # 462) on :

My husband claims to dream that way--I never do.

Shawn

Posted by GZ (Member # 1374) on :

I often dream that way. Although there is often some "dream logic" thrown in there that makes one question the viability of such plots when reexamining them the next morning. Somehow they always make sense when you're actually asleep though.

I've gotten a few ideas from story dreams, but because of the additions of "dream logic" nothing in it's final form or anything.

Posted by uberslacker2 (Member # 1397) on :

My dreams have plots but they often have "dream logic" also. That doesn't nescessarily make the useless as writing devices. I usually use the feelings from the dream, not the actual plot. Ocassionally though I'll take a part of the dream (usually this is a nightmare, my happy dreams are to pleasant to screw with) and say to myself, "How can I manifest this nightmare in it's darkest form and do it to a character?"

Earlier I said that I use the feelings, by this I mean if I have a nightmare where nobody can hear me talk I use the feelings of desperation and loneliness and make up a story where somebody has something to say but no one understands (they hear the words he says but don't understand them).

In answer to the question; yes, my dreams have plots.

Posted by Soule (Member # 1250) on :

I have had one dream like that - it was sort-of a battle scene from like a movie or something. It was really vivid, which was odd - usually I don't dream at all, though lately, due to lack of sleep, I've been having nightmares, but I can never remember those, and I know that they made no sense (like falling from a window, landing in a subway, then being eaten on a mountain). But that one reaccuring dream I remember very well, and it inspires me to want to be able to make people feel like I did during the dream whilst they are reading something. It was a very odd dream, but it flowed very smoothly - something dreams are not supposed to do.

Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :

Rust Hills, author of WRITING IN GENERAL AND THE SHORT STORY IN PARTICULAR says that stories that come from night dreams are much better than those that come from day dreams (also known as wishful thinking).

Scientists say that dreams are basically the way the brain sorts and files the images and thoughts and feelings and experiences of the day (and some say that if you don't get enough sleep, your brain will not have time to do that, and some of the things you learned that day will be lost to you).

If they are a conglomeration of images and so on, then they don't have much in the way of plot, but our conscious minds (the part that the dreaded "Editor on the Shoulder" comes from) tend to impose plots, or at least some kind of logic or cause-effect relationship, on our dreams.

Anyway, I think they're a great source of story ideas and plot-bits, at the very least.

If you don't already, try to keep a dream journal. Give yourself enough time in the morning when you wake to just lie there for a few seconds and think about what you were dreaming when you woke up. If you don't take the time to think about it, your dreams are more likely to slip away.

Then, once you feel they are clear in your conscious memory, write down the dream in as much detail as possible.

Do this regularly, and you will find yourself remembering more of your dreams.

I did this for over a month, but quit because my dreams began to seem too weird. Every so often, I think about trying it again. (It's better if you can do it when you wake up on your own, and don't need to be waked by an alarm clock or somesuch.

Posted by JK (Member # 654) on :

My dreams are freaky. I do mean freaky. They range from dialogue with cheese on the meaning of life according to Sootie to digging my way out of my own grave and failing. If I got story ideas from those sorts of dreams, I'd need serious professional help.
I do have more mundane dreams, though, but rarely with plot. They seem to be more random events joined together very badly. The random events can spark ideas, though, although I can never remenber which ideas came from dreams and which didn't.

quote:
some say that if you don't get enough sleep, your brain will not have time to do that, and some of the things you learned that day will be lost to you

Thanks Kathleen. I may use this as an excuse not to do work now, because I need to get sleep so I can learn things. *grin*
JK

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

My dreams have narrative structure, but I would hesitate to say that they have definable 'plots' as such (except for the 'reccuring' type that always center on the same basic difficulty). The problem, as I have hinted, is that the events in dreams are narrative by virtue of our brains imposing order, but there is rarely a single, driving

, pervasive conflict that becomes resolved and ends the dream (I winked because one of my 'recurring' dreams has to do with fixing--sometimes rebuilding from scrap--a car or motorcycle [once a bus, then a plane] and driving said vehicle about whilst plagued by mechanical difficulties).

Those dreams that are most 'storylike', and have the most elements of structured narrative, are the worst from a plot perspective becuase I have nothing at stake in the dream events, since most of those dreams are based on movies and books and such like, rather than personal experience.

Posted by Khavanon (Member # 927) on :

My dreams are just randomness. But I think they have some translation value.

Posted by Anaquam (Member # 1153) on :

Most of my dreams have very strange plots. Like I remember one time when these two or three guys were trying to gun me down in a mall with pistols. Then all of the sudden I see my best friend's grandmother, and ask her what I should do.

Posted by Brinestone (Member # 747) on :

The coolest dream I ever had had plot, characters, tension, resolution, scientific consistency, and it was completely unreal. It's too close to me for me to write it, and it has definite credibility issues, so I will never write it down. But if you are inspired by it, go ahead. I'm posting it here as free game...

I was a man, first of all. I was exploring a rainforest one day when I came upon a settlement. It was very primitive, all the people lived in huts that were vaguely roundish and made of bark. I tried to speak to them in a language I thought they would understand, but they obviously didn't. In fact, their language resembled none other on the face of the earth, and they didn't seem to have ever seen a person before. They certainly didn't greet me kindly--I was brought into the village at spearpoint.

I lived with them for a long time, and I eventually guessed what I had suspected at first--that somehow I had travelled back in time to meet this culture. Way back. Like wooly rhinos were probably still walking around in a cooler climate. Anyway, I learned their language and began to speak to them. They told me of their culture, and I (being a character of a man who had come from our present) shared modern technology with them. Stupidly, I hoped that maybe this people would spread their knowledge with other cultures so that by the time the 1990's came around, humans would be amazingly advanced technologically. They loved the little conveniences running water and electricity gave them, and they really took to astronomy. I remember that there were several brilliant scientists among the villagers, who even invented new things that our culture couldn't conceive of.

Then the nearby volcano started acting up. We knew it would blow at any time, and I also knew (somehow) that the blast would not kill me but bring me back to my time, whatever it was. I hid out in a cave near the volcano so as to make the most of the time warp that would result.

But I was worried about the villagers. In my dream, I knew that their huts could not withstand lava flow. I told them to open the skin flaps that covered the doors to let the lava flow through their huts, so that the extreme pressure wouldn't crush them. But I remember seeing them from my cave, just before I blasted back to the present. They saw the rivers of lava coming toward them, and in their terror they all closed their doors to keep it out. I appeared back in the present, knowing that all of them had died, that nothing I had brought to that civilization had remained. And you know what, the me in my dream was glad of it, because if it hadn't been that way, there would have been no home for me to come to.

Anywho, that's it. Gag, plunder, do as you will with it. It's just a dream anyway.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

i loved the bit about opening their door flaps so that the lava would flow through without building up any pressure