How do I make sure it isn't cheesy and that it is well-written. She is thrown into some deadly and screwed up game in her dream where she can't wake up. I WANT her to wake up, but that's so cheesy, but I don't want to leave her in her nightmares to play some hellish game for eternity because that would just feel to harsh for me. How should I go about this so that it sounds decent and is an interesting boom because is just doesn't feel like it's going to go off how I expected.
It's really hard to avoid "and then she woke up" being cheesy. A common technique is for something physical from the dream world to carry over into the waking world, blurring the boundary between the two worlds. Being a common technique it's still something of a cliché, but a bit less so that simply waking up.
I have to agree. Something from the Nightmare should appear in the waking world. Maybe she still has some wound she recieved or some object.
Maybe, you can make the character feeling something the real world is doing in the last couple of parts of the book, like a loved one touching s/he face or arm. Of course, the character won't know what the feelings are, but it will definitely provide suspense to the character and the reader. Then have the nightmare just gradually fall apart. Like, little by little, it will have less affect on her and then eventually the character wakes up. If the nightmare slowly dissolves before the Reader's eyes it isn't cliche or too sudden, but it provides the feeling of suspense, and you get the end affect of the reader having a good ending. Did I make sense?
