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  1. writingistelepathy

    writingistelepathy Member

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    Do your dreams inspire your writing?

    Discussion in 'Plot Development' started by writingistelepathy, Sep 2, 2018.

    Have you ever had a dream which led you to a plot idea for a story?

    Those currently in the middle of writing something; has a dream ever answered plot holes or given you inspiration for a scene?

    Would love to hear examples of how your dreams have inspired your work!
     
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  2. DK3654

    DK3654 Almost a Productive Member of Society Contributor

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    Yes.
    My WIP was inspired in part by two different dreams.
    One featured some kind of sorcerer guy helping some girl who had been turned into a vampire, and there was some kind of attack on a bank or big store.
    The second featured some kind of strange exotic mystical items store. Or it might have been more of a brothel (dreams tend to be a little vague). A demonic woman shows up.
    Interestingly, I didn't take any direct elements from either but they got me thinking and I came up with some early concepts, and now much later my story actually more closely resembles those dreams than those early concepts did.
     
    Last edited: Sep 2, 2018
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  3. exweedfarmer

    exweedfarmer Banned Contributor

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    Yes! I saw a really cool looking spaceship in a dream firing curtains of lightning in red, yellow, and cream colored clouds. It inspired the whole back half of the book.
     
  4. QueenOfPlants

    QueenOfPlants Definitely a hominid

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    I take medication that sometimes leads to very vivid dreams.
    When I wake up I'm like: "Wow, that was so intense and fascinating, I should make a story out of it. NO, it should be a HOLLYWOOD MOVIE!!!"

    Once I'm fully awoken, maybe after a large cup of black tea and a breakfast, I then have to realize that the plot makes absolutely not sense at all and can never be turned into a decent story. :pity:

    However, there is one that I wish I could make into something, but I haven't yet had the leisure to try.

    In that dream I drove on the Autobahn at night and stopped at a gas station to drink some coffee. Then all the other people vanished and the gas station changed into some kind of ancient tower.
    It turned out the owner of the gas station was actually Lucifer and he needed my help (and that of a rocker/biker who had also stopped there) with preventing the apocalypse from happening.
    He gave me a sword with a flourished golden handle which doubled as a key to the doors of heaven and hell and I could even fly with it.

    The rocker/biker and I then needed to go and close the door of hell when the apocalypse started. It was at 3:30am.

    Now, in that dream Lucifer was actually a really kind and gentle person. Bit of a tragic character caught up in bad things happening that he didn't want to happen.* And although he looked a bit odd (demony-corpsey somehow), I developed a crush on him.

    Later I was annoyed and bored with my life after such an experience and I couldn't even talk to anybody about it.
    I obviously got so agitated that I found myself standing on a street in the middle of the night screaming "Lucifer!" at the sky until the police came.

    Somehow I realized that the golden sword hadn't actually gone away. I could make it appear in my hand again. And then I used it to fly up to heaven to... uhm, look for Lucifer??? I have no idea why he would be in heaven, though. That's where the dream ended.


    I still vividly remember the captivating atmosphere of the entire dream and I would love to make a story out of it, but I have no idea for a meaningful ending. And I also don't remember how we actually stopped the apocalypse.



    *If you're reminded to Adam in Good Omens, maybe that's where my brain got it from. Although Lucifer in that dream didn't resemble any of the Good Omens characters in personality. Nor did the atmosphere of the dream resemble that of Good Omens.
     
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  5. Oxymaroon

    Oxymaroon Contributor Contributor

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    It should, but doesn't. It seems like a good idea when I'm half-awake, but by the time I can hold a pen, I can't recall enough of the events to write down.
    However, some of my best art-work has come from dreams. Somehow, visual images stick a lot better than ideas.
     
  6. ddavidv

    ddavidv Senior Member

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    My first book came about as the result of a dream. However, I did not write the entire dream as a story. I only used the concept of a single scene to make a story that was useful. The little piece of a dream was the 'reason' for the story (I'm not certain I would go so far as to call it the plot). The rest of the dream I tossed.

    The downside is that despite my laser focus use of only a part of a typically bizarre dream I have a book that is very hard to categorize and has yet to find an audience.
     
  7. Necronox

    Necronox Contributor Contributor

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    Mhmm... no. My writing is mostly inspired by real events, peoples, stories or fictional version of these. I do occasionally get ideas from dreams though, but not often.
     
  8. Alex R. Encomienda

    Alex R. Encomienda Contributor Contributor

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    Yes, I do.

    It is difficult to explain because the ideas don't come from visuals or anything. They come from the oddness, the sense of surrealism.

    For example, I lost my grandad in real life. Two years ago, I had a dream where time had gone by and I found my grandad in a huge cave-like room. He was gigantic and waxy. He looked like he had vasoline all over him. I suppose, my dream explained that he never died and instead grew and grew until they had to store him up in a room just as big.

    I write stories that explore existentialism and escapism so it fit in one of them and got published in a magazine last year.
     
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  9. EdFromNY

    EdFromNY Hope to improve with age Supporter Contributor

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    No. If anything, with me the reverse is true. If I'm pondering a problem or a plot hole when drifting off to sleep (a not unusual occurrence), I will sometimes have a dream based on it.
     
  10. Infel

    Infel Contributor Contributor

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    I'd go so far as to say that a single dream inspired my entire desire to start writing! Everything I've got is because of that dream!
     
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  11. Night Herald

    Night Herald The Fool Contributor

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    Oh, yeah. I have very vivid dreams and good recall, because I practice lucid dreaming. One particular dream laid the groundwork for a novel (that I sadly did not finish) and I consistently use imagery from my dreams in stories. Moreover, I sometimes "write" in my dreams, and wake up with solutions to things that have been bugging me.
     
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  12. srwilson

    srwilson Senior Member

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    This is not quite a dream, but it felt like a dream: Sleep Paralysis. It's a nightmarish experience where you wake up and can't move a muscle, or even properly focus your eyes, and you're not sure whether you have woken or what's going on. Then you become paranoid and sometimes terrified because you can see things in your room, such as a coatrack, and it feels like it might be a person standing over you.

    I used it in my very first mature story. Surprise surprise, it was a horror story. :eek:
     
  13. writingistelepathy

    writingistelepathy Member

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    Ah I hate sleep paralysis! I've only ever had it twice, but it is horrifying.

    I felt like a demon-like presence was in the room with me the whole time.
     
  14. srwilson

    srwilson Senior Member

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    Exactly same for me! It's horrifying, yet somehow fascinating.
     
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  15. Mckk

    Mckk Member Supporter Contributor

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    I did have a cool dream once that definitely felt like a story, but I've not written it yet, though I totally want to. There was a brother and sister pair travelling through a blizzard, and as they crossed the frozen waters in search of their kidnapped mother, they discovered bodies frozen in the ice beneath them. Later, when they got to the castle where their mother was supposed to be, they realised it was a maze inside and they went deeper and deeper down. That's all I got - not developed it into anything but it does sound kinda cool, right? I think I have a scene of it written up in the Workshop actually - just something I banged out for fun.
     
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  16. kriti

    kriti New Member

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    Yes, I always trying to Write down my dreams on paper. It does not matter to me what kind of dreams they are whether they really funny, serious or horror. My dreams always inspired me for writing.
     
  17. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I reckon dreams are simply ideas that are floating around in your subconscious—but they have the added advantage of letting you visualise them as realities as well as think of them as ideas. The key for me, though, is always feeling. What were your feelings while you were in the dream? Were you scared? Intrigued? Grieving? Angry and frustrated? That's the key to getting into a story, I reckon. Figure out how your dream made you feel. That might point you in the direction of where your story should go.
     
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  18. writingistelepathy

    writingistelepathy Member

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    Agreed! I once had a dream years ago where I, and many others, were being genetically modified/improved by an alien species. I remembered being terrified but then realising that the modification was for the better. The alien species were modifying the human race to help us against a bigger problem that we could work together on (such as another alien species which was a common enemy).

    Although I wouldn’t necessarily write a sci-fi this dream gave me the idea/feeling of feeling like someone was hurting me but actually they were helping me the whole time, and it wasn’t revealed until the very end of the dream/first book.

    I feel that that very feeling is something Harry Potter felt with Snape.
     
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  19. Privateer

    Privateer Senior Member

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    Yes. I have very vivid nightmares, one of which inspired the thing I'm working on now.
     
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  20. ITBA01

    ITBA01 Active Member

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    Sometimes, though I usually realize that my dreams are stupid once I clear my head, so I don't use them.
     
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  21. ixk

    ixk Banned

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    you talk about a demon like presence in the room- sleep paralysis-
    I was going to comment on this,
    I thought better of it
    as I don't want to happen to you
    what happens to me
    ever.
    - you asked if anyone used dream
    imagery in fictional writing
    I'm new, so I don't know you
    most likely, and im using a small
    screen by the way, incase u wonder
    why I have to write this way or think that I do. This experience happened to me sometime last week.
    In the dream there was a rat, a snake and a small spider. The spider was the most - dead- dreams are weird/ so my character then was invented into a scene in real life. Isk asked another user to please keep out of it's dream world. The user in question, had asked how to go about a rat telepathically communicating with em cee . . . Isk was . . . not itself.. it advised said user to protect the rat, even if there were others to take care of.
    anyway hi. I noticed there a are a lot of unregistered users, and less members, now.
    : )
     
  22. MusingWordsmith

    MusingWordsmith Shenanigan Master Contributor

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    I don't usually remember my dreams- but once had a weird dream about a monster on a spaceship. I do want to turn that into a story.
     
  23. S M Tolley

    S M Tolley New Member

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    I honestly can't think of something off the top of my head, but I know at the very least I written down idea's either for plots or game mechanics that pop into my mind just as I'm going off to nod. I don't really make note that they occurred in a dream, before or after, I just put them on paper and get back in bed. Perhaps it doesn't matter too much for me. I spend so much time daydreaming, I doubt I really see a difference between idea's that come to me when I'm sleeping or awake.
     
  24. Cogito

    Cogito Former Mod, Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I sleep like a stone. Undoubtedly I pass through REM sleep, but I never remember somnolent dreams. I do my best dreaming while awake, looking up at ancient, unblinking stars or down into deep, dark waters past where any eye has seen.
     
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  25. zoupskim

    zoupskim Contributor Contributor

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    No. My dreams are always so stupid.

    One dream I can remember is that I'm flying a futuristic jet through a canyon of spikes, only to realize that the plane is actually a woman, and I'm actually laying at the bottom of a bed looking up at her laying on her stomach. Having discovered that my plane is a woman, I fall to the floor on my stomach, and crawl through the mall with no pants on, while the woman talks to her friend about where to eat lunch.

    100% true story. It's always crap like that.
     

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