Dreams for Stories

[Sugary_Comfort]

Anyone ever have crazy dreams and then use what happened in them for stories?

I've got several and am currently starting a new one from a weird dream I had during my nap today. I have no idea what the hell was going through my mind because first there's tsunamis and then next it's like the world is ending but it's just some insane race of lizard-like aliens capturing thousands of people for lord knows what. I was just getting to the part where I was going to find out why we'd all bee taken when I started waking up thanks to some stupid a-hole's car going by.

I wanted to stay asleep dangit! Mostly because I wanted to spend time with the hot guy I'd married in the dream because it was nice to be able to hug someone.

 

[SamScribble]

My dreams tend to be a bit too strange to use as stories.

Here's a recent one:

I’m at some kind of public ‘event’ – but well away from the main action. Nearby, there’s a police dog-handler with a German shepherd. For some reason, the handler doesn’t have the dog on a lead.

‘D’you want to play?’ I say to the dog.

‘Stay’, the handler says.

But the dog ignores him and comes up to me. We start play fighting. The dog is nipping my hand – not doing any serious damage, but after a little while my hand is getting quite sore. (I guess I remember this from various dogs I had as a child.)

‘Right, enough of that,’ I tell the dog. ‘Come on, let’s go for a run.’

‘Stay!’ the handler says.

But, again, the dog ignores him, and we’re off, out of the park (or whatever it is), turning left and then left again. And then we’re in some sort of commercial district. At that point I’m seriously running out of puff. We turn right into ‘Eliot’ street and, just around the corner, we stop. I sit down on the steps of a building and think that I really should try to find some water for the dog. But before I can do anything about it, the handler is there.

‘I should arrest you for stealing a police dog,’ he says.

‘Nonsense,’ I tell him. ‘I didn’t steal your dog. Dogs are pack animals. Yours just decided to run with my pack for a little while. And anyway, this is a dream. Also, I think your dog might need a drink.’

Not exactly erotic, is it?

 

[talismania]

I turned a long-ago dream about a man dying of thirst in a desert into my story "The Prince of Winds." The dream was so vivid, with me as the man and involving chariots and swords, etc. that it felt like a past life experience, which is why it stayed with me for years.

 

[lovecraft68]

Anyone ever have crazy dreams and then use what happened in them for stories?

I've got several and am currently starting a new one from a weird dream I had during my nap today. I have no idea what the hell was going through my mind because first there's tsunamis and then next it's like the world is ending but it's just some insane race of lizard-like aliens capturing thousands of people for lord knows what. I was just getting to the part where I was going to find out why we'd all bee taken when I started waking up thanks to some stupid a-hole's car going by.

I wanted to stay asleep dangit! Mostly because I wanted to spend time with the hot guy I'd married in the dream because it was nice to be able to hug someone.

For me Breaking of Allison was based on an extremely nasty dream I had involving a woman I had met one night at Club Hell in Providence. She was a bity of a poser and claimed she could never be "broken".

I'm married (in fact my wife was with me that night I was just talking to this woman) when the wife and I got home we had a little fun "pretending" she wanted to be broken and that led to the dream.

 

[Sugary_Comfort]

Well, the dream doesn't have to be one that would inspire an erotic story, just a story in general.

I have very few sex dreams and the ones I usually end up having bug the crap out of me because it's usually me doing things with my dad. So I end up waking up feeling deeply disturbed because my dad definitely does not inspire sexual thoughts.

I could try and turn my nap dream into something erotic because the guy that I was married to in it was very handsome. He looked a lot like Tom Hardy ( http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0362766/ ). I'm guessing he looked like that because I just bought the book Wuthering Heights to read for the first time and I was talking about the 2009 version of the movie with the father of my baby. Tom Hardy plays Heathcliff and he did such an amazing job and now he's going to be Bane in the new Batman movie and he's the only reason I'm going to see it cause I can't stand Christian Bale as Batman.

 

[PennLady]

I've noticed a few people say that use dreams as some sort of inspiration, and I think that's neat. I, on the other hand, so rarely remember my dreams that it's a non-factor for me.

 

[SydneyBlake]

I've noticed a few people say that use dreams as some sort of inspiration, and I think that's neat. I, on the other hand, so rarely remember my dreams that it's a non-factor for me.

Me, too, Penn. I rarely remember my dreams.

I did have one back in '95 that I remember like yesterday. I was shot in the head in the beginning, and I died at the end. It was a very long dream, but that was the freaky part, well, besides feeling blood dripping. Very vivid. Doubt I'll write about it!

Good morning everyone! Pancakes and syrup?

 

[PennLady]

Me, too, Penn. I rarely remember my dreams.

I did have one back in '95 that I remember like yesterday. I was shot in the head in the beginning, and I died at the end. It was a very long dream, but that was the freaky part, well, besides feeling blood dripping. Very vivid. Doubt I'll write about it!

Good morning everyone! Pancakes and syrup?

Well. geez, thanks, Syd.

I can remember four, maybe five dreams, and one wasn't mind. When I was in high school, I was dating this guy and he told me once he had this dream where he'd been chased by this mob of people, then turned a corner and found me, and was quite relieved. Then I shot him. His dream, remember.

Two others I remember were nightmares, one when I was 17. Gah.

And finally I had a dream when I was pregnant with each kid that told me the gender, and each time I was right.

 

[LettersFromTatyana]

I was going to say no, since the actual plots from my dreams have never made it into a story.

But that isn't quite right. My dreams (well, the ones that don't involve me, my husband, my kid, or some combination thereof dying) have a way of pulling moments from my past to the forefront of my mind and changing something in them. Usually, a decision I've always doubted or regretted is altered, though I rarely get past that point in the dream. It stops with the dream-Tatyana making a different decision.

Those altered decisions have appeared in each of my stories, once as major plot point but usually as minor references. It's cathartic, in a strange sort of way, though I don't think I'll ever stop wondering about that big one.

Good morning everyone! Pancakes and syrup?

Morning, Syd. As a native of northern New England, my answer rests on whether or not you have real maple syrup. Bonus points given for grade B.

 

[PennLady]

Morning, Syd. As a native of northern New England, my answer rests on whether or not you have real maple syrup. Bonus points given for grade B.

I have real maple syrup!

Although my son prefers what he calls "Jack'n'King" -- his name for any non-maple syrup like Hungry Jack. My hub is a big fan of King Syrup.

 

[SydneyBlake]

I have real maple syrup!

Although my son prefers what he calls "Jack'n'King" -- his name for any non-maple syrup like Hungry Jack. My hub is a big fan of King Syrup.

Only maple syrup here - hot. I hate the mainstream brands. ;-)

 

[sr71plt]

Yes, some of my stories have developed from remembered snippets of dreams.

 

[GinaTina]

I lucid dream quite often. It's great fun and whatnot, but I've never based a story off of one.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Anyone ever have crazy dreams and then use what happened in them for stories?

I've got several and am currently starting a new one from a weird dream I had during my nap today. I have no idea what the hell was going through my mind because first there's tsunamis and then next it's like the world is ending but it's just some insane race of lizard-like aliens capturing thousands of people for lord knows what. I was just getting to the part where I was going to find out why we'd all bee taken when I started waking up thanks to some stupid a-hole's car going by.

I wanted to stay asleep dangit! Mostly because I wanted to spend time with the hot guy I'd married in the dream because it was nice to be able to hug someone.

How many times do we have to tell you not to eat pizza before taking a nap! This happens all the time. Last time you were captured by a race of penises...we promised not to tell you the rest of that dream.

 

[Sugary_Comfort]

I'm glad I usually remember my dreams. They are incredibly entertaining.

The one I had just before I woke up was really odd. Skipping all the boring stuff with some family in it and this girl I used to know who, for some reason, had pink eye and I was helping her put the drops in her eyes, they all left to go somewhere and I stayed to watch the house.

The inside of the house was nothing like what it is in real life but meh. Anyways I was sitting there, watching TV, minding my own business when I noticed movement on the carpet in front of me. Looking I saw that there was a hole about the length and width of my palm in the carpet and in the floor underneath. The edge of the hole was tinged black as if the hole had been burned into it.

I could see some red-orange lights, like embers, in the pitch black below the floor. Something was moving around down there. Then these tentacles popped through the hole and were trying to pull whatever they were attached to out from the basement.

I was waiting for it and when it finally came out it was this tiny octopus looking creature but I can't even begin to explain what was wrong with it. Just know that I knew it was something evil. It was so small, though (about a foot and a half in length) that I was able to grab it and keep control of it. I took it into the kitchen, the entire time shaking it violently, like a dog shakes an animal in its teeth to snap the neck, trying to keep it from grabbing hold of me. In the kitchen I started slamming it against the stove with one hand while the other searched through a drawer for this butcher knife I knew to be there. Couldn't find it but did find something like those long spatulas you see being used by the cooks at diners, only this one had sharp edges.

But just before I grabbed the thing the creature started doing something (I can't remember what) and I pulled it up, gripped it in the other hand, and began twisting like I was wringing out a wash cloth. That managed to kill it.

I took the spatula thing and sliced the creature into a few pieces and left it there, heading back into the living room with my new weapon. Just as I got into the living room, I saw something else trying to come out of the hole. It was having a hard time because it's body was a little bigger and had an entire skeletal structure. It looked like a cat, but again, something was wrong with it.

I definitely did not want to wait until this thing got out so I went over and took the spatula and slammed a sharp edge down on each paw so the claws were left in the floor and it wouldn't be able to climb back up. I'm guess it had more than four legs because I sliced four paws.

That was the end of all the action and I started waking up then, thoroughly disappointed that in all the dreams I'd had last night, none of them had the guy from my nap dream.

So yeah, I have some weird dreams.

I remembered one dream where I ended up knowing I was dreaming. It got to this part where Death was about to rape me and I woke up. I calmed myself down and went back to sleep and for some reason the dream picked back up right where it left off, only this time I knew I was dreaming. I kept telling myself that I can change things since I knew it wasn't real, but as hard as I tried, nothing changed and I was raped by Death. I have never been able to actually control my dream when I'm lucid dreaming.

 

[LisbethElliot]

Anyone ever have crazy dreams and then use what happened in them for stories?

I've got several and am currently starting a new one from a weird dream I had during my nap today. I have no idea what the hell was going through my mind because first there's tsunamis and then next it's like the world is ending but it's just some insane race of lizard-like aliens capturing thousands of people for lord knows what. I was just getting to the part where I was going to find out why we'd all bee taken when I started waking up thanks to some stupid a-hole's car going by.

I wanted to stay asleep dangit! Mostly because I wanted to spend time with the hot guy I'd married in the dream because it was nice to be able to hug someone.

I've noticed a few people say that use dreams as some sort of inspiration, and I think that's neat. I, on the other hand, so rarely remember my dreams that it's a non-factor for me.

I also rarely remember dreams, and what I do remember is usually too bizarre to make much sense of. But sometimes a dream, no matter how little I remember or how bizarre, makes such an emotional impact that it stays with me. None of my dreams have resulted in an entire story, but I have based some scenes on a few.

 

[English Lady]

My first ever lit story was just me writing down what happened in a really vivid dream.

An author friend of mine, Serena Yates, almost all her ideas come to her as dreams.

I think I get hints and tips from my actual sleeping dreams but generally it's my daydreaming that yields the most story ideas!

 

[ILmonamour]

I don't necessarily use dreams, mainly because I don't remember what happened unless it/the conflict or whatever happened burned its way into my memory. When I am focused during writing spells, I do tend to dream about plot structure. If that happens I map out the sequence and see if its usable.

For the most part, its right before I fall asleep does the creative process kick into high gear. I keep my phone or a notepad by my bed in case a burst of a scene comes to me, or dialogue I'd want to use. That's technically half asleep so - guess I do.

Hmm.

 

[annanova]

Dreams as storylines

Anyone ever have crazy dreams and then use what happened in them for stories?

Oh, frequently. At least, I used to. For a long time a few years back, I was having extremely vivid dreams and I've been using them for stories. In college, I learned about directed dreaming and dream journaling, so I was able to keep some pretty good notes.

From my own catalog, Exhibitions and Don't Make Me Wait Too Long both started from dreams. Picture This also carries scenes that came directly from my dreams.

 

[dawei]

I agree with PennLady and LisbethElliot. I rarely remember my dreams anymore. I wonder if it's because I stay up too late and I'm too tired to dream right.

Anyway, one thing that I do notice, when I do remember something, is that sometimes I will wake up thinking I have a great idea for something new way of doing something or a new inventive something or even a new story, etc. But then once I'm fully awake the idea kind of fades away or doesn't seem to be as practical as it was when I was dreaming it. Which is too bad because it really seems good before I wake up on it.