Ideas from dreams?

No, I haven't. But that's mainly because my dreams are so off the wall that not even markets for bizarre fiction would be interested.

I frequently get good phrases and descriptions from dreams. The upside is that an emotionally intense dream can give me ideas - the downside is who likes nightmares?

Yes. only once. Not just a an idea but a story complete with beginning middle and end. It was like watching a movie.

All I have to do is write it down...which hasn't been as easy as you might think. I wrote it down as a short at first and didn't like the writing. I've decided to make it a novel but IT doesn't want to be written the way I want to write it. It insists on being in first person, something I try to avoid.

Every so often, I have a really vivid dream that stays with me when I wake up fully. I tend to jot this down to see if I can use it somewhere. A few would make pretty decent short stories, I think.

Yes I do, all the time. But I'm weird like that.

Sleep is an unusual habit I have never found easy to form. Therefore my version of a ‘dream’ probably differs from yours. (and you though you may be the freaky one?)

Most of my stories have come from one of the days’ events. Sorting out my thoughts as I attempt to sleep tends to mix and merge memories as I become drowsy. One of two things happen: I either fall asleep with a sorted memory of the day or several ideas coalesce into clarity and wake me up. Hope this is not boring because here comes an example or two.

4 weeks of zero lottery winnings using the most logical choices gave me reason to abandon that particular system. I purchase a random ticket for the 5th week. The winnings from that ticket exactly covered all the money lost. No win, no loss; zero balance. As I was drifting towards sleep, many similar memories came to me. Such as earning some extra money the same day my microwave died. The extra income was just enough to cover the replacement cost. Thoughts of other things which find balance came to mind.

That led to a [failed] short story.

Finding a connection between random events in a fuzzy half asleep state is often better than hours of pacing thought.

As for the few vivid dreams I have occasionally had, they make for strange tales of the macabre when written verbatim. That’s when people say, “Wow, this person has an amazingly creative mind; strange as it may be.” While reading up on the style of some famous authors recently, I wondered if they too simply wrote down the remnants of a bizarre dream and passed it off as hard work when others found hidden meaning in it.

Draco…
[o]

Opps, my humble apologies to you both, Delarege and Legionsynch, for my last few lines for that moment when your dreams are successfully published.

A lot of times I get images, inferences, and fragments that tend to lend themselves to writing, either because they're a great way to postulate how characters might experience a journey or a memory or because it's got really great visuals and descriptors underneath it.

Just my 0.02

I've gotten some good story ideas from dreams. The problem I've found is that the power of dreams comes from their emotional flavor, something that's almost impossible to capture after you wake (maybe that's why we love to talk about our dreams but hate to listen to other people's dreams).

I did write one SF story taken almost directly from a dream I had, but while it was full of interesting details, I had failed to dream the ending and I have yet to be satisfied with the various endings I've written. Darn it.

All the time, but my subconsciousness is usually too lazy to let me wake up and write it down. I usually only remember snippets of a dream.

All the time. And I do mean ALL the time. At least twice a week I dream up something story-worthy. Some end up as stand-alones, some add into current WIPs. At least 50% of my ideas come to me in my dreams.

I have vivid dreams almost every night, and they are a constant source of material. I've even written horror stories that were based on nightmares. I think I have always been inspired by the concept ever since I first learned that Mary Shelley based her gothic horror, Frankenstein on a nightmare she had had.

Pretty often. I rarely remember to write them down right after I wake up, though. If it sticks with me for the few hours I generally need to become a human in the mornings, then I know it's a good 'un.

Most of my dreams lately seem to involve either work or sentient tornadoes. I can't really think of a good story to come out of either. At least not in my style of writing...

Stupid sentient tornadoes...




-Michelle

I've said it many times, but... were we go again. I have a recurring dream in which I'm a chicken farmer. Sometimes chicken farms work their way into my big, cinematic almost-feels-plotted dreams. Recently I had a fantasy'esk dream involving the search for a magical suit of armour... buried under a chicken coop. I'm still considering turning that one into a story.

I used to think dreams were a great source of story ideas, but reality proved that there is a lack of coherent linear dreams that make enough sense to write about.

I don't go searching for stories in my dreams, but on the rare occasion one will hit me in the face and demand to be put on the page.

I've gotten some good stories and some absolute crap from my dreams.

I always try to write them down. Weird as it may sound, I discovered that, if I don't, the dreams stop. Then sleep is just... boring.

drachin8 said:

Most of my dreams lately seem to involve either work or sentient tornadoes. I can't really think of a good story to come out of either. At least not in my style of writing...

Stupid sentient tornadoes...




-Michelle

Click to expand...

Ahh, tornadoes. I dream about them ALL the time. But I don't write about them. My current WIP is based on a dream, and it's clicking along quite nicely, thank you.

I usually get ideas for characters from my dreams. In fact, I can't think of a character I've ever invented that didn't originate in a dream. However, most of the plots of my dreams are way too random if I even remember them, so I can't really use those.
Yet I speak only of my nighttime dreams. Sometimes I daydream so deeply that I...wake-walk? It's like sleepwalking, but I'm completely consumed in my dream world while awake. Well, whatever you might call it, sometimes I get plot ideas from doing that.

Chumplet said:

Ahh, tornadoes. I dream about them ALL the time. But I don't write about them. My current WIP is based on a dream, and it's clicking along quite nicely, thank you.

Click to expand...

Oh wow, I dream about tornadoes all the time too! When I was in college I used to dream about trains, but that stopped once I settled down and got a real (and real boring) job. Sad, really. Those train dreams were cool.

I think the tornado dreams have a lot to do with stress. They crop up whenever I'm under stress at work, which lately is always.

I need to start keeping a dream journal again, I guess, because I can't remember what I dreamed last night. Writing dreams down seems to help jog my memory the following nights, just as Williebee says.

Hmmm

I had a very vivid dream about a week ago that fourteen tornadoes were hitting my small city. I had the full color, high detail version. First time in years I've thought about using a dream in fiction.

Sometimes. Most of the dreams I have/remember are related to an idea or character I'm already thinking about. I do have something completely new pop in to my head on occasion.

I carry a moleskin notebook with me everywhere I go. I leave it on my nightstand along with a light so if I do wake up with an idea, I can jot it down before falling asleep. In the morning I can flesh out the idea more, using whatever I scribbled in the night as a prompt.

I woke one morning remembering a snippet of a dream that eventually became my novel.

It was one of those dreams where all the back history and plot were assumed. I "knew" where the characters were, who they were, and what they were doing even though the dream didn't cover that part. The dream was basically one scene of the novel: five characters are in a crumbling building that seems to be a very old skyscraper. There is a huge hole in one wall. They are desperately searching for something...then this almost translucent, HUGE dragon-like thing attacks them.

I felt as though I knew all the characters intimately. I knew their families, their histories, and their weaknesses. I knew this city, and why the building was half-destroyed. I knew that the creature was called a Nuameii, and I knew what would happen next. The dream was one scene; the story behind it was huge.

So I set out to write the whole story. The scene from the dream, changed only very slightly, is in one of the first chapters.

I've used the inspiration from several dreams in my writing. But I've been timid to use the more bizarre, however vivid, ones.

sgtmrb03 said:

I had one about a week and a half ago that would make a great comedy-horror, if such a thing exists.

Click to expand...

Maybe you were meant to write spoofs, or B movies. Dark comedy?
I've wondered if my dream-inspirations would be better fullfilled as screenplays, which I know nothing about. (time to learn?!)

sgtmrb03 said:

Almost all my life, I've had a recurring dream in which I can't read or talk.

Click to expand...

Are these dreams showing actual print? Because the act of reading requires a cognitive, wakeful function, usually one can't read in a dream. Or do math functions, dial telephone numbers, etc.
The inability to talk could be symbolic, or it could be a real physical occurance, considering that you're asleep. Just like you won't really pee, (hopefully!) even if you have to badly, no matter how many stalls you try to let it out in in the dream.