Has this happened to you?

Ideas can come from anywhere and at anytime. Some people keep a notepad on their nightstand so they can write down the things they come up with at night, whether in dreams or just awaking with an idea. I would say that having the story "written" in your head would be unusual; or actually, being able to recall it clearly enough to write it down in full would be unusual.

The mind is complex and no one understand everything about it. I know in dreams I can create whole cities (nicely designed too), or even new inventions. A couple of weeks ago I had a dream where the buttons on the elevators in a building were designed to be "child proof" (that is, children couldn't just push the buttons for the fun of it). I hadn't been thinking about any such thing, not even a little, but there it was in a dream.

Yeah, sometimes. And yes, they fade fast.

Another good story idea time for me is as I'm in bed, eyes closed, close to drifting off. Maybe I'm more open to the muses then.

My favorite idea's come from my dreams. In fact, I probably wouldn't write if I didn't have the vivid dreams I do.

I get only the smallest inspirations and fragments in sleep. I'd love to get an entire story! A couple of times I've had dreams that could MAKE an okay story if written out properly (one involved me discovering the identity of a serial killer but then getting hit in the head with a shovel for my pains...it was actually quite funny), but never a ready-made story. That would be wonderful.

Sometimes, but when I try and write them down they're never as good as the dream was! I guess it's like trying to write the novelisation for a movie - whereas a novel is dialogue and description, a film is mostly visual.

The last two ideas I had came in my sleep, or right before I woke up.

The one from yesterday was odd - I knew I was dreaming about the movie Cloverfield, but somehow the story that came out was a detective / government conspiracy tale.

I've come up with some great stories that way. I always have pens and paper at my disposal on my night stand, or at least a pen. There have been morning where I'll wake up with story ideas written on my arms because I apparently couldn't find the paper.

I've had one story come to me, fully formed, in a dream. I woke up and scrambled to write down the bare bones, before I forgot. It's on my desk somewhere, amid dozens of other scraps of ideas.

I also had a character come out of a dream. I'm still not quite sure who she is, just an idea of what she wants and how tenacious she's going to be about getting it. Can't wait for a chance to tell her story, whatever it is.

Most of my ideas come from dreams. Often bizarre and in different genres. A few nights ago I had a dream that I thought would make a pretty good murder mystery. Too bad I don't write mystery. :-(

Sadly, never fully-formed. Half-formed, ephereal things that must be chased down at great lengths with massive butterfly nets....

This isn't a story, but I had a whole song pop in my head, completely written. I wasn't asleep, I was in a business meeting.

I am not a musician (I can kinda read music and play around, but I am certainly not a musician.) I wrote it down and it ended up getting recorded locally.

That hasn't happened to me since.

I have vivid, odd dreams that I almost always remember and they're full of stuff that I use in my writing. Everything from interesting images to full-blown scenes. I often think my subconscious is more clever than my actual conscious.

And ditto on the pen & notebook by the bed, it's very helpful for catching those dream-ideas before they float away.

I don't dream stories but I do dream television shows or movies, but not being involved in them, watching them. And then, and this happened last night too, me, in the dream, critiques the shows. like that was obviously a plot device, or i saw that coming a mile away, or inconsistent character. really weird.

I once had a nightmare about a zombie in a robe. Not quite sure what happened, but it turned out it was just a normal dead person inside a robe that could move around. I replaced the robe with machinery and used it in my sci-fi WIP.

Two of the novels that I'm working on now came from dreams. I have to keep a journal under my pillow so that I can write stuff down when I wake up.

My psych teacher told us that if, when you wake up, you don't move at all, you're more prone to remember whatever you were dreaming about so now when I wake up I try to stay as still as I can and ingrain every bit of my dream into my mind before I start writing like a crazyperson.

Isaac Espriu said:

Dude - limiting yourself to one genre is a pretty good way for your writing to go stale and the ideas to stop flowing. Write it out - even as nothing more than a writing exercise it will be useful to you.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but the only problem is I don't read much Murder Mystery besides Sanford and Poe, so I'm at an utter loss for the style.

Oddly enough, I had a dream last night in which I'd queried my WIP (which is nowhere NEAR done, and I've never queried a thing ever). I did it by email, for some reason, and I had put the wrong subject header in, and written a completely incoherent synopsis.

The only reply I got back from the agent was "I see we aren't even living on the same planet."

I dreamt an entire murder mystery the other night. There was an awesome twisty turny plot, and as the MC I got to go on honeymoon with a great looking guy and solve crime! Every scene was there, every setting clear as a bell, each piece of dialogue paced to tantalize until I revealled whodunnit at the end.

I woke up and thought 'lawks a lordy, that'll make a great book'. Tens seconds later when I had notepad from bedside cabinet in hand, I couldn't remember a damn thing, other than it was a murder mystery, one of the scenes took place in a fantastic glass building and the guy was hot. *sigh*

Sorta, Kinda, Almost

Not in a dream while sleeping. More like a daydream. I was listening to the sound track of "2001: A Space Oddessy(sorry, can't think how to spell it.) while having my portrait drawn after graduating from college and this silent movie started running through my mind. I wrote it down as soon as my friend the artist would let me take a break. First and only time that happened to me.

Dreams led to the formation of scenes in both my upcoming novella (Heroes Die Young) and my current WIP (Friends in Deed).

Mumut said:

Has anyone else experienced this?

Click to expand...

No.

I haven't (yet) dreamed an entire story needing little or no editing. But I did, once, dream so vividly a snapshot of a figure walking through a storm that I had to write about it/him. That little subconscious nugget turned into two completed manuscripts and a third which I'm letting stew to resolve some plot points.

Being a visual artist, also, I have dreamed complete paintings before I've started them. It was always a race to see if I could get the image out of my head and onto canvas before it faded. Can't keep an easel next to the bed to help, either. The hubby complains.

I find that typically I do it in reverse, I go to sleep with an idea of a story line in my head, then deliberately use the dreamy, anything-can-happen dreamscape. Now I need to have pen and paper nearby to record this stuff!