Hi everyone. I'm hoping that you can help me get over a mental block. My main character experiences dreams that, for lack of better description, give him insight into the world around him. They are not necessarily prophetic dreams, but they do allow him to experience events that he was not a part of or interact with deceased individuals whom he never met. Also, as dreams, these "visions" are not within his control. Again, they do not necessarily show the future, so the words "precognitive," "prophetic", etc, do not seem to accurately apply. Is there an obvious way to describe this that I'm totally blanking on? Would you consider this clairvoyence? Thanks, all.
Clairvoyant dreams fits the bill, but it has a really Shirley MacLean, crystals, Enya sound to it.... Perhaps prescient?
I feel the same way. I get a crystal ball vibe from "clairvoyent", which is definitely not what I'm going for. "Prescient" might be better, but it still seems that everything I think of denotes precognition. Ugh. I'll write "prescient" for now and prep the old find and replace function for when the proper word hits me. lol.
Is the feeling you're going for have more to do with the characters awareness of the world around them? If these visions are more of a different plane, how about "reverie"?
They could be telepathic dreams. He establishes telepathy with people (living and the dead) as well as places? Why not, quantum mechanics would allow it, in theory. Whatever word you use, however, as long as you explain to the reader what you mean by that, it'll be fine.
It would, indeed, be clairvoyance. Clairvoyant is from the French and, strictly speaking, means clear vision. Therefore, although that is not the definition we tend to associate with the word (most people tend to envision it - npi - as something associated with ESP and precognition). But, inasmuch as your character is able to "see" the world more clearly, more deeply than normal while asleep, clairvoyance would be the closest label for what he/she is experiencing.
Hmm...thanks, everyone. This was helpful. I just needed a simple term for the characters to use that was not misleading. I'm sure clairvoyance, if properly explained, would do just fine. The pervasiveness of the phrase "prophetic dream" in literature and film made it seem like an easy fit until one day I was like, "Hold on. These aren't prophetic at all." At least I caught it...
It's called remote viewing if you aren't talking about viewing events before they happened. Googling synonyms I found the medical dictionary entry for the term. Which led to the technical term, anomalous cognition.
