do you dream?

tiny · Mar 29, 2008

What I mean is do you dream about your characters, or dream scenes, or solutions to story issues?

I've started a new project, sprung from an old idea, about a soldier. The book is touching very deeply on post traumatic stress syndrome, something that I've recently (last several months) had to deal with for the first time in my life. Tons of research, reading books on Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, and speaking in depth about experiences and PTSD with a couple of veterans, one that's mine.

Lately I've noticed my dreams have turned to war and are so vivid they're waking me up or keeping me up. I feel almost haunted by this story.

Anyone else live their stories at night? I'm not sure I'm very happy about my mind continuing to write after I close my eyes.

Maryn · Mar 29, 2008

Yes, I dream my stories, or sometimes my characters are the people in my dreams not about their stories, but I know who they are and such.

What's interesting on waking is that often my brain has "cast" some actor as my character who's totally unlike how I imagined him or her. This must be what screenwriters experience all the time, but it's kind of nerve-wracking for a novelist.

Maryn, who woke up the other morning thinking, Ted Danson?

Robert Toy · Mar 29, 2008

TT

Have you seen these links:

http://www.apa.org/journals/features/pro366626.pdf
http://www.psychguides.com/ptsdgl.pdf

triceretops · Mar 29, 2008

I wake up with the worst anxiety attacks about my characters and scenes. I feel guilty for sleeping and force myself to get to the computer.
Output...output...output!

Tri

inkkognito · Mar 29, 2008

I don't do a lot of fiction writing, but I have dreamed short story ideas for the little that I do. Once I start writing the story, I don't dream about it again.

Sometimes when I am deeply embroiled in a non-fiction piece, I will dream about it. I don't dream about the content, but rather the actual writing of the piece.

ishtar'sgate · Mar 29, 2008

Sleep, what is sleep?
Linnea

justme · Mar 29, 2008

Yes. I dream my stories. I wake up with ideas all the time and then write them down.

Riley · Mar 29, 2008

I'm jealous. You lucky guys get to dream! The medicines I take pretty much knock me right out of Dreamland, or at least Lucid Dreamland.

Your subconscious is talking to you. Kind of neat, but scary at the same time. Isn't anyone here ever unnerved waking up from a dream about their own stories?

Matera the Mad · Mar 29, 2008

I would like to dream more of my story and my characters, but it doesn't happen often. Once I did come up with something that helped with the plot of an as yet unwritten sequel. More often I get story ideas from dreams that I do not want to pursue. Most of my dreams are pretty trivial, and frequently computer oriented (It's reading my mind, she muttered paranoidly). On the other hand, I have found some of my dream experiences useful in describing characters' dreams.

Appalachian Writer · Mar 29, 2008

tiny terror said:
What I mean is do you dream about your characters, or dream scenes, or solutions to story issues?

I've started a new project, sprung from an old idea, about a soldier. The book is touching very deeply on post traumatic stress syndrome, something that I've recently (last several months) had to deal with for the first time in my life. Tons of research, reading books on Vietnam and the Gulf Wars, and speaking in depth about experiences and PTSD with a couple of veterans, one that's mine.

Lately I've noticed my dreams have turned to war and are so vivid they're waking me up or keeping me up. I feel almost haunted by this story.

Anyone else live their stories at night? I'm not sure I'm very happy about my mind continuing to write after I close my eyes.

I can't say I dream about my long fiction. But I have had poems wake me up, fully formed, so much so that I had to get up and write them down. I know what you mean about your mind continuing to write. It's sometimes as if my brain can't let something go, even if I'm physically tired. It just keeps on clipping along until it hits on the right wording then gives me a good punch in the cerebellum, and boom! I'm awake.

AuthorGuy · Mar 30, 2008

I originally came up with my first novel from some dreams I had, which is unusual since I don't have a conscious memory of my dreams most of the time. I have often had story line problems that I work out in my sleep, and I wake up knowing where to go, but again I don't remember working them out, they're just there in the morning. I use a similar technique when awake, by putting a story in the back of my head and letting it work itself out while I drive.

Bufty · Mar 30, 2008

I don't think I dream per se about stories and characters, but I often drift off while working out solutions.

BlueLucario · Mar 30, 2008

I dream every night. But I don't want to come across as looney

nerds · Mar 30, 2008

My dreams are loony and not worth the brain cells they're printed on.

ACEnders · Mar 30, 2008

Totally! As I drift off to sleep, I'm dreaming about my characters or the next scene I'm going to write...

JacobWorld · Mar 31, 2008

Hello

I have to say I have this dream.
I am on my pleasure Island with my friends and some of the characters from the books I read . They change all the time . Sometimes they are good but sometimes I get nightmares .
The pleasure island turns into a nightmare island

do you dream?

tiny

riding the sun

Maryn

At Sea

Robert Toy

FOB and Slayer of windmills

triceretops

inkkognito

Onlyifyouwanttowillyoufin daway-Enya

ishtar'sgate

living in the past

justme

Well butter my biscuit!

Riley

They won't let me be good

Matera the Mad

Bartender, gimme a Linux Mint

Appalachian Writer

Somewhere in the hills....

AuthorGuy

Bufty

Where have the last ten years gone?

BlueLucario

Blood Elves FTW

nerds

of all the gin joints

ACEnders

Self-Banned

JacobWorld