I was wondering if anyone has had a similar experience. Successful experience. I recently.. semi-recently.. had a dream that I thought would make an interesting story. However, as it rose from a dream.. well.. the idea is a bunch of events strung together in a daisy string. It would take a lot of work, and I'm just wondering if this idea is new, or it's gone through the wash several times.
I find dreams to be my main source of inspiration. They serve me as an outline more than anything else. Most times, things don't make sense. For example, one second someone is standing next to me; the next, they are gone without me ever knowing what happened. In that case, I make up stuff that happened in between. But if you ever have a really cool dream, then I suggest writing it down. You never know when you'll need it.
I've found that dreams can be a great source of basic ideas but perhaps not actual plots. The plots of dreams are often complicated and confusing and if I wake up remembering anything at all about them, they're usually pretty nonsensical. However I have woken up with a great basic idea for a story several times. For example, I once had a dream about being lost in a maze, which turned into a story about a princess who finds out that the maze in the castle grounds has a life of its own. A week or so ago I had a dream about an affair between a student and their university tutor, which has now turned into an outline for a novel (almost finished the first chapter, actually!). I say go for it. If you think you can create a plot out of your dream, great, but if not, take the underlying idea(s) and come up with something new.
I do not really remeber my dreams, so I cannot say I have ever wrote from them, but if you have found inspiration from one, I say go for it. You say it will take a lot of development. Well, if you think it is a good plot, and you think you will enjoy writing it, put the effort in and see what comes out the other end.
People get inspiration and story ideas from dreams all the time, so that concept isn't new. The specific idea that you're getting from YOUR dream, however, might be new. Without knowing it one can't say. *shrug* Dreams don't usually tend to unfold like a good story with a coherent beginning, middle, and end, so yes, you'll have to work to string everything together into a decent plot and fill in the holes. You probably can't expect to get the entire story from the dream. You'll have to make some things up. For example, many of my dreams that might become decent stories lack endings, or kind of meander off into something totally unrelated to the main plot. Just like real life. You have to take what works and leave what doesn't, and fill in what you need. I don't tend to get ideas for ENTIRE stories from my dreams for this very reason, but I do use dreams for certain points within my stories.