Thoughts on waking up the other day.

[daibhidc]

The reason dreams can't usually be turned into stories is that dreams are under no compulsion to make sense, be funny, have logical puzzles or have Whoniverse references that work. It's much easier for your subconcious to tell you "This makes sense", "This is funny", "This is a very clever puzzle and the answer is 52" and "This is a bit like a character that you totally remember from Big Finish audios. IT'S AMBIGIOUS."

And so you wake up, think "Wow, I should write that down", and gradually realise it was a string of nonsensical events.

Comments

[julesjones]

My record so far is 3 days for a dream that looked like a story idea when I first woke up to stop making sense when I was fully awake...

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I've had several dreams that actually did have coherent plots. Like the one where my school got turned into a military base when the shit hit the fan, and all the pupils weren't allowed to leave, so the prefects ended up doing patrols. It was a multi-parter over three nights. There was a murder mystery subplot and everything.

Or the one where I was hunting someone down, and they went into an abandoned building which nobody ever went into, not even the local kids. It was supposedly haunted. So, I go inside, gun at the ready, following movement up ahead but not actually getting a good look at the guy, until we both wriggle through a rubble-filled doorway into a basement full of columns. Only it turns out, they're not columns, they the legs of HYUUUUUGE giant spiders living in this big basement, apparently snatching up anything that goes past and staying pretty quiet the rest of the time. The rest of the dream was a standard chase and shooting sci fi rubber monster scene.

My dreams focus very heavily on the cinematics, so usually there are not so much plots as individual scenes, but when there are plots, they usually hang together.

[daibhid-c.livejournal.com]

I have had a few dreams that work; last night's superhero storyline made sense, and a few years back I woke up with a fully-formed episode of Stanley Baxter's Playhouse in my head, wrote it down, and then lost the bit of paper...