Conflicted. Help?

Taylor Harbin said:

Scenario 1

A boy is in a coma and is being read his favorite fairytale by his mother. The boy is living the story in his head, and sets off on a grand quest to find a spectacular treasure. In the end, he succeeds and wakes up.

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I'm a fan of scenario 1 too. I think the "and then he woke up" problem can be avoided if it's known early on that the boy is dreaming. You can also take a different spin on "and then he woke up" by killing the boy in the end. Maybe rather than the treasure being to wake up it's to end his suffering (assuming whatever put him in a coma isn't curable, or waking up would cause untold amounts of pain, etc.), and the mother reading the story is her way of saying goodbye.

WOW what a great premise for a story. I love it!
I think you could start out with premise one... mom reading.
And the story turns into premise two- What, his spirit travels into another world, another body?

Very Total Recall.

Reminded me a bit of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, but there's also a MG (I think) novel called Marianne Dreams. Whatever Marianne draws during the day, she interacts with in a dream at night.

robjvargas said:

Plot #1 might work if the boy has some level of understanding of his situation. Maybe the object *is* his return to consciousness.

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Something like this happened in Hemlock Grove, a Netflix show, it was done really well.

Avoid having it ending with it all being nothing more than a dream. That would be an unsatisfying end.

I agree. The less the ending is "and then he woke up" the better. If you could bifurcate the story in some way, and have Act III happen after he wakes up, that could be pretty cool.

I think that either scenario could be better depending on your style of writing. Do you like to keep readers confused and engaged in trying to find out what's going on, or do you like to be clear on every detail?