It's not a dream, I swear!

I've not run into that problem myself, but I think it'd be fairly simple to prove to most folks they aren't dreaming. What are some things you don't do in your dreams?

Me? I don't eat things. I can't think of any dream in which I ate food, so by eating and tasting and swallowing (especially something nasty), I'd quickly convince myself I was awake. Also smells. Strong smells.

Anything else that shocks the body, besides strong food or smells, like loud sounds. Have someone blow a trumpet in your ear. Or poke you with a burning stick. Or put a piece of ice in your pants.

You may be able to just tell.

When I'm dreaming and unaware, I think I'm awake. If I "wake up" into another dream then I'll think I'm really awake. But when I wake up for real, I KNOW it. It's hard to describe the feeling better than this, but it's a condition of lucid wakefulness for me that I know 100% without a doubt that I'm not dreaming. So I've always read those "I must be dreaming" scenes with some doubt. Wouldn't you just know you weren't?

I don't know if other people have this ability, though.

NB Thinking you've gone bonkers, on the other hand, is a distinct possibility.

Indy Tarquinson said:

How do you prove to them it's not a dream?

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Kill them, then carry on with the story... That will set your readers straight.

It's never occured to me that the character might think it's a dream, so I never had to deal with that aspect of it.

Because in my dreams, I never think it's a dream no matter how weird it is. I just go with the flow and try to survive.

ChaosTitan said:

I've not run into that problem myself, but I think it'd be fairly simple to prove to most folks they aren't dreaming. What are some things you don't do in your dreams?

Me? I don't eat things. I can't think of any dream in which I ate food, so by eating and tasting and swallowing (especially something nasty), I'd quickly convince myself I was awake.

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Oh, I eat things. I've had several recurring dreams where I was eating pizza, hotdogs, and sandwiches since I had to give them up and go gluten free.

Man, I could SMELL them in my dream... never taste though.

Indy Tarquinson said:

I've run into this a lot, especially in a story where the MC is from the normal human world and suddenly get sucked into a fantasy or science fictiony world. How do you prove to them it's not a dream? That's the first thing I'd think of, naturally if I was in that situation!

What I've done is used pain, food/hunger, and length of time to prove it wasn't a dream. Eventually the protagonist realizes that they've been in that world much too long for it to be a dream.

Does anyone else run into this problem? Got any suggestions or help for the rest of us that are running out of ideas?

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I've been rather crude about this because I've had to distinguish between going to other worlds by various methods (all of which have deliberately conscious choices if not the expected outcomes) and having dreams from various sources. So the character just says something about similar dreams if they are dreaming and nothing about similar dreams at all (perhaps being in somebody else's dream one time) if they are in another world.

I remember in the first Nightmare On Elm Street where the girl is having a nightmare while in a hospital. She finally wakes up, reaches under her bed sheet, and pulls out Freddy's hat.

I (we) knew at that moment, that she was having something more than just a regular old nightmare. Reality entered the picture somewhere.

I can make myself wake up from bad dreams. Somehow my conscious comes into the nightmare and is like "wake up wake up wake up."


so I wouldn't be able to do that in a real fantasy world.

but maybe that's just me.

I can make myself wake up from dreams too. But only sometimes. Last night, for example, I had a dream which involved an especially large elephant with a cold using me as a kleenex. I didn't have the presence of mind to wake from that one, for some reason.

My character is in the exact same situation in my first serial (she's realized by now that it's definitely NOT a dream, *LOL*). She only realizes this for certain, though, in the second story of the series when she's able to return to the place in the first story, meaning it wasn't a dream.

One thing that helps me figure out if I'm in a dream or not is the ability to read the same thing twice. I think I've done this only once in a dream of mine, and it's behind the frequent difficulty doing things like dialing a phone in a dream--the numbers, and words, keep changing. Things rarely remain the same. I don't usually notice this in my dreams (I just freak out, ha ha), so I don't go lucid/realize I'm dreaming, but some people are better at this than others. My character can often tell if she's in a dream if she looks at something, looks away, and then looks at it again, really focuses on it, to see if it's exactly the same. (Of course, this only works sometimes in my story, seeing as dreams are often considered their own separate realms in my line of fiction! But I'd say this technique should work with normal dreams.)

Passage of time is a good one, but I've seen people's recollection of their dreams where they'll say something like, "Several weeks/months later..." and it's just bizarre to me, because there's never such a passage of time in my own dreams. But apparently for some people it happens. So that's not a foolproof method to determine if something is real or not.

You can also have a character attempt to do something that they don't have the power to do in the reality of the story, like make their arms longer, or fly, or some such (only I'd make sure it isn't something that would endanger their lives, like jumping off a cliff ).

I eat, smell, taste, and feel pain in my dreams, although not all in the same dream. Strange too that I've run or cycled for what seemed hours even though the dream scientists tell us we only have vivid dreams for a few seconds. Ah, we must have FTL dreams!
It can be annoying to be reading a sf story and realize early on that it is a character's dream unless it is cleverly woven into the plot. Because we are warned against using dreams I try hard to avoid it - even the plot twist with all of this is a dream and only the 'dream' is real.
Geoff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cnr-135u84c

Often in dreams everyday devices will not work--light switches, car ignitions, stuff like that. If you can think up an equivalent, something that ALWAYS works, but in a dream would randomly malfunction, try flicking the switch a couple times.

Your MC can also pick an object--a light, a trash can, whatever--look at it, look away for a minute, and look back. If it's still there...yup, this is real.

When I was a kid, I acutally managed to force myself awake from a lousy dream by hurling myself at the (dreamscape) wall. I woke up as I hit it.

I eat in dreams, but I don't think I ever sleep, so for me falling asleep might do it. Also the fact that the world does seem to make its own sort of sense, I'm not losing track of time or anything, and stuff would just FEEL realer, if anybody understands what I mean there.

I've done just about everything in dreams. From eating, to intimacy, to waking up, but still dreaming, to seeing half my head missing in a mirror and not understanding why. I even had a dream that Jesus appeared in the sky, and for some reason, my knees buckled and I was forced to bow down.

But one odd thing that happens, is sometimes I actually know I'm dreaming, and when that happens, I start changing the rules. For example, if someone is chasing me or I need to get somewhere fast and I realize it is a dream, I can force myself to fly. At other times I don't bother to do anything because I realize it is all a dream and I don't want to feel the stress that is being caused by the dream.

Also, I remember one dream where I did try to pinch myself, to see if I was dreaming, and I convinced myself I wasn't dreaming, when, in fact, I was. I vividly remember that because, after really waking up, I thought how weird that was to be in a dream that I actually thought was real.

Another time, I knew it was a dream, and I was hanging out with a woman that I deeply loved, someone who (in real life) didn't feel the same about me, yet in the dream, she did, and I remember telling myself not to wake up.

Another time, I dreamed I was falling. When I hit the ground, I woke up. Why did I wake up? Because I had just fallen out of my bunk bed, the top bed, and darn did that hurt!!!

So, maybe your MC could have some strange quirk that he or she keeps trying, to make sure it isn't a dream, something more than just pinching an arm. Heck, maybe your MC periodically tries to fly?!?!

I heard one time that it is impossible to read in a dream, but I've done that (although not well, and not many words).

A long time ago I read the Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever series (by Stephen R. Donaldson). If I remember correctly, the mc never believed that the world he was in was real.

I think that once your character develops a sense of consequence (that what they do inside the 'dream' really matters or will have a lasting impact), he/she will begin to believe.