Fiction Story Ideas - Dream Journals
Subconscious Imagination Can Create Original Plots and Twists
Jun 13, 2009
Many people dream vivid, imaginative, and thoroughly impossible dreams. But rather than brushing them off and going about the business of the day, write them down and see if the idea can be turned into a story.
Keep a Dream Journal
The first thing to do with interesting dreams is to keep a dream journal. It doesn’t matter if it’s a simple pad of paper or a fancy bound journal, as long as it is kept next to the bed where it’s easily accessible.
Write down the dream as soon as possible in the morning. Key phrases, plot points, interesting twists, no matter how odd. Include colors, smells, and other sensory details if they were important in the dream. Don’t worry too much about dialogue unless there was a striking phrase – a simple narrative account is fine.
Create a Story Outline From the Dream
The key point now, whether the same day or a month later, is to see what is useable as a story once the active memory of the dream is gone. Does a particular character matter, or could it be anybody? Will it matter what the protagonist is running from, or just that he or she is escaping?
For example, one writer’s dream consisted of some sort of alien turning people into goo if they couldn’t answer a question correctly. When the alien got to the writer, he couldn’t answer and tried to escape on a forest tram. He didn’t have enough of the form of payment, but the forest let him on anyway. When he arrived across the continent, he was crowned with fruit.
It’s usually not possible to turn a dream straight into a good story, but it probably has many elements to strike a writer’s fancy. In this example, a fantasy/science fiction story might center around the alien attack, or around a forest that can control transportation through its heart. A realistic story could turn the dream into a contemporary thriller that includes escaping without money, or a story about leaving a threatened home behind for a new world.
It would be the writer’s choice as to the aliens’ looks, powers and origin, or if the thriller is about a legal, medical or sadistic criminal, or whether flood, plague, or famine threaten the home.
Good Fiction Techniques are Still Important
Just as real life doesn’t often make good fiction, neither does turning dreams straight into a story. Don’t forget the fundamentals of storytelling: a compelling conflict, interesting characters, realistic dialogue that moves the story forward, careful word choice, a story arc, and so on. Even original ideas from a dream need to be developed and edited.
Use Part of the Dream in a Different Story
One more fiction use for a dream is to inject a portion of it into an existing manuscript. Peruse the dream journal for plot twists that could be inserted into a lackluster story, a new threat that would deepen the crisis, or a character to be introduced for conflict and pizzazz.
A dream journal can be a rich source of imaginative ideas. It’s worth writing dreams down to see what possibilities they bring.
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