Finding ideas from dreams

My first screenplay and my first novella both came directly from dreams, characters, plots, and all. I changed things over time, but i do that no matter what the original source of an idea.

I've also dreamed of scenarios that turned into short stories (working on one now, as a matter of fact).

I have many dreams that I have written down as story ideas. They are usually only one or two scenes, but it is enough to get me really working on them. Most of my WIPs have started with a scene from a dream (or daydream, or daydream stemmed from a dream).
Sometimes my dreams are so random that I don't bother writing them down and blame them on weird movies before bed. I do not remember those dreams well. My last one had something to do with a possessed boy, a carousel, and pickle-flavored cotton candy. I don't remember past that. ;D

ap123 said:

Never.

My clearest ideas/plots seem to come from the god of the shower head.

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Lol I love this.

Ive had multiple dreams where I'm in a theater and when the movie starts playing, my dream becomes the movie and I'm no longer in the dream... I know it sounds weird, that's because it is lol dreaming where you're not even in the dream.

I had this dream once that my late brother was in and he had this huge horse -- we needed a ladder to get on his back. And we were in this gargantuan mall... Like the size of a state. We were trying to find our friend Jeff and trying to find the exit of the mall... Im thinking about making a plot out of that, I think that'd be a cool setting for a modern fantasy.

Edit:

Oh, and having after read The Road I had some hellish dreams for like a week straight. I remember waking up crying because I would never see the people in my dreams again, because we had been through so much together. That dream inspired me. In my WIP one of two characters are experiencing the same thing but one is awake and the other is dreamer -- and im trying to find a good way to point out how what happens to us happens to us, why do we think dreams aren't real and write off the experience of it. Dreams are weird lol

ap123 said:

My clearest ideas/plots seem to come from the god of the shower head.

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I get most of mine while shoveling shit in the kennel. I, uh, shit you not.

Clearly there's something about hygiene vs creativity.



(Why don't we have the Think and Confused smileys here? Oh well, Eeek is close enough.)

benthomas97 said:

Has anyone ever got an idea for a novel or a character or something from a dream? Whenever I actually remember dreams, they seem to be a random pile of illogical nonsense that I have no real use for.

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Absolutely. Sometimes, I even think my subconscious is my main character these days (of course, I've used the same MC for all of my stories since I started writing when I was fifteen...).

There's one dream I had in particular. I was about twenty or so and my MC was getting chased across a tall, black wheat field. I wasn't sure what was chasing him; all I could see was him looking back constantly.

My point of view finally shifted, and there it was -- a big dragon breathing fire down the lane my MC was running. I shifted into his head as the fire almost reached him. It was as if I could actually feel his panic. I won't go into the rest, but the dream was incredible. It felt as if I was living my character, even if for a moment. I believe I've written the scene in every book since.

As silly as it sounds, it was one of the coolest things I've never experienced -- if that makes sense, haha.

I find inspiration from my dreams every once in a while, but my dreams are usually super long and detailed (basically a full story in themselves, minus the very beginning and very end) or just flashes of images or emotions. It's the short flashes that usually work themselves into my writing. For instance, I'm trying to work in some spider imagery/details/foreshadowing stuff into my current WIP because for some reason I've been dreaming about spiders all the time lately.

I think sometimes people might be hesitant to work things from their dreams into their writing (or at least to admit to it). When artists say something came to them in a dream, it can sometimes be equated with "divine inspiration" which can get a lot of eye-rolling from some folks. But still, if the idea works, it works.

I had a dream once where someone was shouting away, making a speech of defiance. When I woke up and remembered what it was he said, I found it fit perfectly with the scene I was working on at the time. Never happened before, or since.

Seconding the shower as a place of thought. I wonder if it's a sort of nexus of creativity.

I've had two vivid dreams that came true exactly as per the dream and played out in real life situations very oddly but in a distinct way! I think material from dreams, if related to your ideas and woven well, can add a new and important dimension to a piece if the reader can also relate to it!

BM

Although I do remember most of my dreams it is kind of hard to get a complete plot out of them because they are full of holes and sudden changes that not even a fantasy could really help to make sense of.

Fortunately, I have managed to same some complete scenes if I write them down straight away after waking up. Waiting after drinking my morning cup of coffee seems to be totally counter-productive.

Since I'm feeling generous this morning, I'm going to tell you my dream from a couple of weeks ago. Make a best-seller out of it. No credit to me required.

People kept startling me by having their shoulders and heads detach from their bodies and flying around. There was also a frail old man being pushed out of the basket of a hot-air balloon. But he was all right, he was attached to a bungee cord.

Not dreams, but daydreams. I listen to music and go for walks and ideas for characters just fly on by, tickling my interest.

I'll get little details or images from dreams sometimes. What I find particularly fertile is paying attention to people when I'm out in public and just sort of extrapolating in my mind what they're like on the basis of what I see when they're standing in line at the gas station or whatever.

My latest WiP came from a completely unrelated dream. Upon waking from the dream, I walked over to the computer and, in a state of fevered inspiration, outlined a plot that had nothing to do with the dream I had just had except for using the mirror at the end as a jumping-off point conceptually.

I often spend much of my night in a half-asleep state where I'm kind of thinking and kind of dreaming. It's a decent state for coming up with/hashing out bits of new ideas.

No way. My dreams are weird as hell. Plus, I tend to lucid dream, which is sort of like plotting when you're awake, but with half the logic and none of the coherency. x)

Count me as a shower-plotter though. I dunno what it is about that shower head... it's like a fountain of wisdom.

I rarely have dreams that are coherent enough to use as part of a narrative. Most of the time, it's like watching a movie trailer. I record the stuff I can remember, but it doesn't come very often.

Two Taylors in a row! Now I know I'm in a dream.

I had a weird dream that turned into a story idea.

It was two years ago. I drank two energy drinks and then had a nap an hour later. I think the huge dose of caffeine influenced the type of dream I had.

In my dream, I was looking up at the most massive tree imaginable. It was as thick as a city and it stretched endlessly into the stormy, black sky above. There was no land in eye's sight, only huge, black swells of water that the tree was jutting out from.

There was a sense of enormity and reverence that I can only equate to seeing a god.

I saw something massive shift in the water and then I woke up.

Basically, I turned that dream into an outline for screenplay (back when I wrote them). It would probably work better in a novel or short story. The idea was that the tree in my dream represented the afterlife. When you die, you surface in the black swells, and you have to climb the tree. The tree has stages and at every stage you have to relive a major moment of your life.

That was the idea. The only story idea I've ever gotten from a dream.

Reziac said:

Two Taylors in a row! Now I know I'm in a dream.

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In a world full of Taylors... *dun dun dunnnnnn*

Oh, I love the name Taylor. *pets both*

I dream often, and my dreams are usually logical-ish. I'm in a habit of writing them down, and I hear memory is a muscle. The more you use it, the better it becomes. The more I write down dreams, the better I can recall the next one.

Anyway, I pull lots of ideas from my dreams. Characters have come from dreams, settings, new inventive drugs, and rarely (but twice) I've pulled plots from dreams.

Then again, I'm also a musician and I'm known to wake up at 3 in the morning and run to the studio to record a song from a dream. ...so maybe it's just me?

TwentyThousandEyes, I've used the precious five minutes after I've woken up to tap into my creative side too. I've come to find that time to be very productive if used properly. Of course, most mornings, the need for coffee overrides everything...