Dreamy Inspirations

Inspiration is the key to any good story. That inspiration can come in many forms but always leads to one inevitable end, a story that moves you.

If you don’t like what you are writing, if it doesn’t shock you, turn you on, reduce you to tears, or scar the breeches off of you, (you know, whatever boat you want to float) it won’t do any of those things for anyone else.

This key has to come from somewhere. Some writers see a sunset and WHAM! fantastic stories come pouring out of their ears faster than they can manage to get them down on paper. Other authors listen to the experiences and memories of others and find ways to take bits and pieces and build a unique and moving tale from them.

Then there are people like me who rely on those images and experiences that haunt the night. Dreams are the purest expression of your deepest imagination, the rawest forms of your desires, the playground for that part of yourself you are afraid to let your colleagues see. While some dreams can be disturbing or terrifying, most are meant to show you things you want or things you enjoy.

For me, most show me movies that have never been made featuring characters that have never been formally chronicled on paper, with the insistent intention of having me create that chronicle, or tell that story.

It's a daunting task to think that my mind is making a demand that I might not be able to fulfill. The dreams that haunt you, that return night after night and wake you in the wee hours, panting or crying or laughing, those are the dreams that need to become stories.

The ones that the purest part of you wants to offer the world. If you have ever experienced that, pick up a pen, sit at a computer, and make them real. The world will thank you. And even if it doesn’t, you will thank yourself!

I should probably have started with a disclaimer. I am not now, nor have I ever been, a psychologist or psychiatrist. I am not board-certified to do anything more than teach mathematics to apathetic teenagers, so everything I say is best taken with a grain of salt.

That said, dream interpretation is a foggy science to begin with. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of books that have been written to quantify and explain what, by definition, are ephemeral and lack the logical structure the conscious mind would normally employ.

Dreams are a stream of thought that you can neither influence nor control. Unless you have mastered lucid dreaming! That is one of the few things I pride myself on. I cannot teach you how to have lucid dreams. It was not a skill I learned but one that just sort of coalesced in my youth. Sorry! But, I can try to help you find the story buried in the images and emotions left behind when your eyelids betray you and open in the morning.

First things first, the best dreams (at least from a writing standpoint) are ones in which you are not the main character. Not even a supporting role is even better.

I am NEVER in my dreams and I like it that way. I am a 6 (at best) and I like them steamy!

I am basically sitting in the audience, locked behind the fourth wall (unless I choose to leave the theater) watching people I don’t know do things I didn’t see coming.

Let me tell you, my movies are weird! Like, Twilight Zone, weird. Many of them wind up in the inspiration “trash bin” because no one short of serial killers or perverts would be interested.

The ones that make me wake up lonely, scared, crying, laughing, or frisky are the ones I keep. When you have one like that, one that comes back to you over and over again, even if it didn’t really make a ton of sense on the surface, write it down. You don’t have to rush through getting the entire 110,000 word novel on paper that minute, but a paragraph or outline of who the characters were and what little of the plot you can still remember are a great place to start.

If you can’t write it down, tell your bed-mate. Say it out loud, even if it’s to your cat and he looks at you like you just ruined his birthday. While my husband is likely very tired of hearing me prattle on, it really helps me. To say a thing out loud helps your brain to commit it to memory and turns those ephemeral, flippant things into concrete connections in our brains.

I just dropped some developmental science knowledge from my education classes on you. Take that!

This time we will try something a little more direct. When teaching math you always start with an example--one that is plausible and contains all the elements that you want to cover, but in an obvious and simplistic manner.

My example will be weird on purpose. I am not saying that I have ever had this dream…not saying I haven’t…but it will be perfect for discussion.

Say you dream that a giant blue-bellied cod fish is being roasted on a spit over the campfire of a group of aliens and they are having a rather intense discussion as to the greater significance of the shade of blue on its belly. (I said it was weird.)

Now, if you read this and went, “OMG, I have totally had that dream! Only, I was the fish!” You need to speak to someone in a professional capacity. Dreaming that you are a fish is bad enough, but a cod fish is just…well, Freud would draw all sorts of naughty connections to the male member and reduce you to nothing more than a sex-obsessed fisherman. (Not that I have issues with sex obsession. A little “perviness” never hurt anyone!)

First off, this image would make me laugh. Score number one. Everyone loves to laugh, but, sadly, it makes no sense.

If you haven’t noticed, most comedies, especially these days, are only loosely based on reality. Some even go so far as to defy the laws of nature and physics to make their punch lines. A little nonsense goes a long way. Rest easy, there is more logic here than you think. You just need to tweak it a bit.

Dreams are pure imagination. Your imagination. So you can manipulate them and not feel the least bit guilty. I never do.

Instead of dwelling on the ridiculousness of it all, focus on the individual parts that don’t make sense. Focus on the parts that are interesting or funny. Ask yourself questions.

Why are they cooking a cod fish? I mean come on, salmon is so much better for you!

Who taught the aliens to fish in the first place? Easily half this country couldn’t bait a hook if their life depended on it, and we live here.

Are these aliens on vacation? If so, why Earth? Surely in this wide universe, there are entire planets devoted to beaches or casinos. I would imagine that we are like the “state park” of the universe-a place to go when you can’t afford to go anywhere else that’s more fun.

All of a sudden this strange scene takes on a logic that makes even the weirdest moments have meaning.

Answering these questions, and being creative with your responses, gives you everything you need to build the coolest camping trip story ever! Forget band camp, let’s go fishing!

Most dream theory schools are focused on what a dream means for you in your life. This works really well for people who dream exclusively about themselves. If you dream about showing up to work or class naked then you are fearful and insecure, that sort of thing.

Even though they happen in your head, not all dreams are about you. I know, depressing right? That said, you can appreciate them for the roller coasters they are even if you are not the one in the front car. Allow yourself to empathize with the star of your dream. Let their emotions affect you without consuming you. You can know their pain, or their joy, or their fear, while not having to actually experience it yourself. We do it all the time when we watch TV. You are totally capable.

All those textbook dream theories can be applied to your dreams starring…well…not you, but where’s the fun in that? I am not really concerned with what Joe Schmo is afraid of, or the inner turmoil Sally Somebody feels over her looming affair. In that situation, I want a bowl of popcorn and bring on the drama. If you’re not in your dreams, you can enjoy them as pure entertainment without agonizing over the inevitable emotional fallout.

You didn’t kill your significant other last night.

You didn’t walk into a fancy dress party butt-ass naked.

You didn’t solve a serial murder where the killer turned out to be your genetically engineered clone created by some secret government agency with more letters in their acronym name than operatives in the field.

Those things happened to people you made up and you get to watch. You get to laugh, cry, cheer, gasp, and scream completely guilt-free. How awesome is that?

If these dreams happen to you, I would hope that after my last chapter, you have started writing them down. If not, START! Trust me, if you enjoyed them there are others out there that will, too. Your brain is giving you the raw materials for a product that no one can claim you stole and with a little effort, creativity, and tons of carpel tunnel pain, you can make money off your dreams.

And who doesn’t like free money?

Perhaps it’s time for a little bit of brass tacks. While I will always try to use broad strokes here to help you unwind the dreams that are driving you mad, some real examples are usually useful. On that note, let me walk you through my process.

Example:

For the last week, I have had the same basic dream every night. I say “same basic” because little things always change. Tuesday she was a redhead and now she’s a blond, or it happened on a plane and now it’s a rigid airship. Most often times the things that change are relatively innocuous and have almost no effect on the story as a whole.

At this point, if I have found the dream to be emotionally striking, I will sit down as soon as I can and write down the bones of the plot. When I say bones I mean no meat, no muscle, just bleached skeleton. “People go here and this happens and now they need to get out” kind of thing.

Then I put a little more effort into fleshing my main 2 or 3 characters. Not all of them. Good lord who has time for that! Not their physical characteristics either, but who they are. Their history, their personality type, and any aspects of their pasts that will control what decisions they may make during the course of the novel. What they look like (unless it is a plot point, like she is blond and the serial killer is targeting blonds) is entirely fluid and can change easily to fit the story later on. So leave it out.

All in all, my basic notes are a page, maybe two, typed. Once it’s on paper, I find that details that had escaped me before begin to come back. Things like really powerful dialogue that I want to use, or a particular scene that really moved me, will drift back into my head. If this happens I always write them down, too.

Your memory may be better than mine, but trust me, it really sucks when you had the perfect conversation worked out in your head two days ago and now that you are ready to write it down you can’t remember a bleeding word of it!

Once this is written down, walk away from it. See if the dream comes back. See if things change a little and you need to make some corrections. Then go back and read what you wrote down. Start adding details and more details and a few additional details (keeping in mind that you still aren’t writing the book yet.)

Create a timeline, a storyboard, for your plot. “This has to happen first, and then this can happen. Oh! And that will lead to this!”

Then read it again, as if it’s a short story. If it works for you, then there it is, your novel is ready to be written!

Now let’s have some fun. (I know, I know, about freaking time, right? I’m a math teacher remember? When do teachers, especially the math kind, ever start with the fun stuff?)

Let’s go back to the fish dream, because I can’t get past it and I really want to know what’s happening there. I made it up just for this blog and then was like, “OMG, I want to read that story!” So I guess now I need to write it.

So here is what I came up with to answer my own questions. It kind of feels like cheating since I asked the questions, but, since I am not grading myself, I will let it slide this time!

If we start out at the campfire, listening to that argument I mentioned, then there is a whole back story we need before any of it makes sense. I love that because it means that everything that led to this moment must be gleaned from what they say to each other. A story that unfolds in reverse is always good!

First off, the cod fish, while interesting for its innuendo, is not really crazy enough for this scene. So what if the aliens were huge! Like 30 feet tall huge. And because of some really bad space information, they think that cars are fish! Silly, I know, but it’s not implausible. Cars travel down highways like fish travel through currents and, if you have ever been unlucky enough to be close to an accident as it happens, cars scatter around the trouble spot in an almost synchronized fashion. It always reminds me of birds in flight or fish schools fleeing a predator. That also eliminates the need to explain how they learned to fish, though the image of them hovering over an interstate at rush hour dangling a tasty-looking full-sized spare tire from their cloaked spaceship window is hilarious to me…in fact, I think I will keep that!

From here, in my head, it turned into a SUV carrying four college students on a school outing, and no one knows anybody else. Insert four standard personality types here. They have been thrown together by chance (and an asshole professor) and now they are trapped in a vehicle getting turned over and over slowly roasting.

The next question I asked myself once this was decided was from which perspective do we see things? Since I love to make things about 20 times harder than they have to be, I voted both! So now, in my head, the POV is bouncing from inside the slowly spinning car, and the plans to get free without getting eaten (and the arguments that those suggestions spark), and outside where, in alien language obviously, they are having that deep discussion of blue and the philosophical difference between cerulean and royal. Of course, the aliens have no idea there are little sentient beings inside the car and the people can’t understand a word the aliens are saying.

Then I thought, “How funny would it be if the aliens are there to earn the cosmic equivalent of a merit badge in scouts?” That would explain the discussion of the blue belly! Not only that, it takes care of the “why Earth” question, because we really are the state park of the universe!

So the college kids are freaking out because they are terrified of being eaten and the aliens are preoccupied with following directions and the comedy ensues!

Not all dreams are funny. I know I started this whole thing with the cod fish story, and the more I do with it the more my sides hurt, but some dreams don’t leave us laughing. For example, I woke up this morning royally torqued at the star of last night’s prime-time head movie. When I say royally torqued, I don’t mean miffed or upset or ever peeved. I mean pissed. Like flames from my eyes and my head going blood red, livid. I wanted to scream at him like an irate DMV patron who stood in the wrong line for three hours just to be told that fact and then have a “Gone to Lunch” sign shoved in his face.

The maddening part isn’t the weirdest part of it though. The strangest thing is that I am still dying to know what happens next. Even though I know what he did, even though I know that if someone had done this to me I would never forgive them, and I mean NEVER, part of me still wants to see what happens after. The even sadder part is that I am hoping she stays with him. Somehow I feel like that makes me a bad person, but I trust myself enough to believe that my mind will make it work.

Not all dreams are pleasant, we know this. Nightmares are famous for this, but even they can be inspirational. I don’t really want to be someone who sees that sort of thing night after night when I close my eyes, and I truly worry for the sanity of people who do. I am totally convinced that people like Stephen King must dread lying down at night. No, I take that back. He might have hated it when he was a nobody, but now each new nightmare is boo-coo bucks. It would be crazier not to sleep in his case…terrifying! But that doesn’t mean that those dreams that bring out the dark in us aren’t just as rich as the funny or sexy ones.

The world is gritty, dangerous, and messy. It makes perfect sense to me that our dreams will reflect that part of our world back to us. If we, as a species, weren’t interested in watching the darkness there would be no action or horror movies, no crime shows like CSI, which I LOVE, and no heart-wrenching dramas. Let’s face it, we like to see suffering almost as much as we like to laugh. We come into this world screaming. It takes time to learn to smile!

Not everything that happens in the dream needs to be a part of your work. Let’s face it, dreams can be boring, too.

I dreamed one time that a guy was trapped in a motorhome for three days. I know that sounds totally implausible, but I swear it made sense at the time. There was a wreck on this narrow bridge and the RV went over the side, winding up squeezed between the narrow cliff sides. It was suspended a few hundred feet over a dried-up river bed, and the rocks blocked all the windows and the door. There was no way up or down for him that wouldn’t involve the “splat” sound effect.

The rescue effort was really cool to watch. There were hundreds of people working constantly to get him food, water, and trying to save him. Each attempt would fail with even more “holy crap” consequences for the guy. And, not to ruin it, but in the end, he doesn’t make it out alive.

I know I probably should have kept that part a secret. But as I have said before, not all stories are good stories. If it helps, I learned through the course of the dream that he was serial killer. He has a kind of “come to Jesus” moment while trapped there and the woman he was planning to kill does live. In fact, he sacrifices himself to save her!

Did I fix it? Are you happy with me again? Hope so…

Anyway…There were entire sections of this dream that were excruciatingly boring. Moments like, “Oh look, he staring out the windshield…at nothing…again.” Or, “Nice, the people up top are slowly lowering more supplies…and everything goes just fine.” Not sure why my mind chose to show me these parts, but needless to say, if this story (which I did write down but have not found the time to flesh out) ever makes it to fruition those snoozers will not be included.

Boring isn’t the ONLY reason to leave out some things. As a woman, and a romance writer, I can’t believe I am about to say this, but sex for the sake of sex is something you can probably drop, too. If the sex IS the point of your dream then the more the merrier, but if the plot revolves around a girl overcoming her fear of crowds so that she can successfully complete college I’m not really sure tons of random sex is going to progress your plot. The dream was probably super fun to have, but…less is more. Right?

That’s not to say giving her a lover won’t help pull her out of her own head. Finding someone who cares about her would allow her to have that self-awareness moment necessary to move beyond her fear. In fact, nothing can inspire more confidence than finding love! Just make sure that when they take that step it’s for her and not for you. You can dream about whoopi all you want without dragging this story’s plot into it!

Do you dream in color? It’s a funny sort of question because as much as we want to say yes the answer is most often no. Our brains don’t really process information like that when we dream. We know what color something is. We can understand its hue and variations of shade, but do we actually see it? If you are a vivid dreamer your answer might be yes. If not, you will be okay. Knowing something is blue is almost as good as seeing the bright azure sheen shimmering as the sun bounces off of it, I swear.

Colors in a dream can give so much to your story. Think about how we see the world. We describe emotions and relationships in shades of the rainbow all the time. Love is red, jealousy is green, honor is purple…we have assigned good old Roy G. Biv so many jobs and titles that the poor man can barely find time in his schedule to arch across the sky anymore.

Colors matter!

Start paying attention to the colors in your dreams. Not because it’s vitally important to the plot that the hot blond is wearing a yellow dress, but because of what that color means for her personality. You wear certain colors when you feel a certain way, don’t you? You have assigned “happiness” or “sexiness” scores to colorful articles in your wardrobe. If a color makes you happy or sad or angry, or whatever, it’s because your subconscious is reacting to that color. Deep down you are chemically affected by that shade. It causes your body to release certain hormones or enzymes that actually affect your mood in a tangible way.

Your dreams will use your opinions of color in your dreams. Your opinions, not popular culture’s. If red to you means loneliness then red in your dream is signifying that your character is lonely. Just because Cosmo says orange is a fun color doesn’t mean that it is for you. If orange makes you feel anxious then the agitated college student who is always wearing a grungy orange tee is feeling how you would feel.

This is your world and it obeys your rules. Use those rules to truly understand your characters. Once you understand them you will fall in love with them (even the bad guys) and you will be able to present a very real and approachable character that you can be proud of.

All this time I have been trying to help you turn your nighttime frivolities into logical, emotionally gripping, and entertaining stories, but I feel that perhaps I have neglected a vital part of the entire process.

When to say, “No.”

It’s hard to do. Hard to take a dream that really affects you deeply and say to it, “Sorry old friend, but you are unworthy.” None the less, sometimes it must be done. Not all stories are meant for the outside world—some are meant for you, and only you. Deeply personal themes or painful self-truths make gripping stories, but before you type it all out and send it off to the presses, you need to think about just how much of yourself is there. How much of you is laid bare for the world to explore and scrutinize.

And trust me, they will scrutinize it. Don’t you when you read?

That is not to say that the story can’t be told. As always, it is your choice. That’s the wonderful thing about being a writer—you get to choose what you write. Always write for yourself. I will never tell you differently, but be mindful of just how much of yourself you are comfortable putting out there.

Deeply personal traumas can be healed by discussing them, but a book isn’t so much a discussion as an exposition. There is no back and forth, only forth. Only you stripping your soul bare for the world to see (and judge) with little to no way to defend your choices or actions.

Some writers will extol the virtue of full disclosure, but let’s be honest; no one wants to be completely naked in front of a crowd when they feel they are imperfect. And if you are writing about personal tragedy, especially if you have never really dealt with it, you probably feel imperfect.

I have suffered in my life, not nearly to the extent that millions of others have, but my pain is mine, so it means more to me. Selfish I know, but honestly we all feel just a bit closer to our pain than anyone else’s because it is ours.

The main character of my latest book suffered an assault, not unlike one that I suffered in my youth, (hers was far worse of course) and writing her emotional fallout was deeply personal because it was mine. While I am very proud of the work I have created, there is that small voice in my head that screams in terror each and every time I read a review-horrified that the reader will not be kind or understanding of my connection. A connection that no one but me, and now all of you I guess, knows exists.

I do not regret what I have done, but I will be mindful in the future of how much of me I let go. This is just a solemn word of advice.

What happens to what you have created when the dream changes? What do you do when you have put untold time into typing a particular scene or chapter and that night the dynamic you have seen for weeks suddenly turns on its ear? The characters do different things, or say different things or are in a different place.

What do you do? I know it seems harsh, but you need to back up. Sucks, but I have found that if my brain wants the scene to be different and I don’t go back and fix it, I will never hear the end of it. Something inside me decided that it need to happen this way instead of that and it simply refuses to take no for an answer.

As heartbreaking as deleting hours of work can be, nothing compares to being beaten black and blue by your own brain, especially when it happens in your sleep and you are defenseless. The first time this happened to me I tried to ignore it. The chapter was fine the way it was…at least that’s what I thought. As soon as I put in the miracle page break, signifying my forward progression, my dreams became overwhelmingly annoying. Instead of seeing the story as a whole, I saw the same scene, altered, over and over again all night long.

Trying to ignore it only made things worse. As I have said, I can usually lead the flow of my dreams. Lead, not control. I would change the direction or the story completely; only to have my brain pitch a hissy fit reminiscent of a three year old being denied their favorite cookie only minutes before dinner is served. It would morph the carefully crafted new dream into a bastardized version of the other story and make my new characters act out the other plot. Totally disconcerting.

Ultimately, I surrendered and made the changes, so sure that it would detract from the story as a whole and that my work would suffer because I wasn’t strong willed enough to say no to myself. I was pleasantly surprised. Not only did my subconscious stop kicking me in the teeth over and over again, like a bully on the playground, the story as a whole improved. While I knew the whole tale, my mind was planning things behind my back that relied on that change for them to make sense.

All the outlines and sketches you can manage to fit on a tera-byte hard drive are meaningless if the source of your inspiration wants to go in a different direction. Follow it down the rabbit hole. After all, it’s you, right? Trust yourself to create the perfect version of the story. Deleting all that work sucks, but the end result will be exactly what you wanted to create and not close to what you set out to build.

Be true to you, even when you change your mind. It’s your story, remember? Tell the one you need to tell, not the one you are settling for.

To my romance novel writers, and you know who you are, you sex fiends, you, this one is just for you!

There are several books out there that will give you tons of advice on how to write a sex scene. I highly recommend getting at least one of them as a desk reference. Actually, it can be a lot more than that for you if you get the right one…but I digress…

There are some really good, and bad, sex scenes in novels out there. Your own personal desires are a huge factor into which category you ascribe the scenes you read. There are those scenes, those exchanges, in your favorite romance novels that for one reason or another you find really…moving…shall we say. What makes them so thrilling for you?

Is it the vocabulary used? Is it the description of the contact? Is it the emotions and sensations the characters feel?

I can’t answer this question for you as each person has a different answer. For me it’s a mix of the contact and the emotions. I have little tolerance for over use of crude body part names. It’s not necessary to use a naughty word to describe a naughty act. I want to know how it felt, not where it happened.

When we read, we are trying to imagine ourselves in that situation, in that moment, and, for me, the emotions have a far more tangible effect. Your ability to see yourself in that scene is all based on how you convert the information for your imagination.

Your logical mind, the part that is doing the reading, has to convert the information into usable bits for your imagination so that it can understand. It does this because those two sides don’t speak the same language.

Remember how I called your dreams pure imagination? It was a long time ago and if you have forgotten I forgive you, but it’s true. If your logical mind speaks a different language, then you will need to interpret what your dreams showed you. I feel my dreams, even though I am not in them. This is especially true for the…physical…dreams. I spend hours languishing over how to convert what I felt in my dream into words on a page that will (hopefully) illicit the same feelings in my reader.

I know that not everyone will get out what I tried to put in. I know this because some people want a description that reads like a road map, some want the vulgar language and body part nicknames that I can’t stomach and to those people, I say, “I hope you find what you like.”

I write for me, and people like me, so I write what will impact me. I advise you to do the same. You are an expert on you. Write what would excite you if you were the reader. I also suggest that you read it (several times *wink wink*) to make sure that it gives you what you intended. Enjoy it! And don’t be afraid. Your audience bought your book knowing it was a romance. If they weren’t prepared for what you have written they should have known better!

I have hit a wall, my friends. My current project, only a few chapters from completion, has hit a snag and I am helpless to free myself from the trap. I speak, of course, of the dreaded writer’s block.

I think perhaps my case is a bit strange. I do so much planning ahead of time that I know precisely what will happen in each of my currently missing chapters, so not knowing what to write about is not my issue. My dilemma is mood.

I have to feel it, and right now it’s just not…happening…for me. I want to finish this manuscript desperately. I have the second book of my serial to write (not to mention three and four) and six outlines waiting for flesh, but I am caught in a quagmire of laziness and fatigue when it comes to putting pen to paper, or rather fingers to keys.

When I hit a roadblock I tend to jump over it. I move on to the next chapter and start from the beginning as if the previous scene was finished. I know that may sound strange, or maybe not, as I don’t know you, but for me it works. It works because I still see the whole story in my dreams.

If you are writing about your dreams, you have the opportunity to jump over hard things and do the easy things first. It’s very freeing. You know everything that will happen; everything that is waiting in the uncongealed shadows to pop out and startle your oblivious main character. Use it. That’s the beauty of seeing the whole story night after night, there is no necessary order!

You don’t even have to jump only one chapter! Start in the middle, or write the last chapter first! Write what you are in the mood to write. If you are grumpy, write an argument scene, if you are lonely, write a scene like that. If you feel it you can really describe the emotions in an impactful and tangible way, do it. The more you feel the more your readers will feel and that is a huge plus.

We read to escape our lives, to walk in someone else’s shoes. To believe you’re in their shoes it helps to know where they pinch and rub, where they breathe nicely, and which toe really screams by the end of the day…if you know what I mean.

So, if it’s a sneakers day and your next chapter is a stiletto, jump over it and find a sneakers chapter. Your work will be more realistic and detailed when you are writing stilettos on a day you are feeling stilettos. I bet none of that made sense…oh well.

Every dream contains things you didn’t know you knew. Did you know that? We glean bits of information every day that stow themselves in unreachable corners of our “attics” never to be consciously brought up again. They wiggle and wind themselves into our shelves and squeeze into our collections in any leftover free space they can find.

Sadly, our brains don’t have a setting for Defrag that we can set up to run each night at 3 am like our trusty computer. (FYI- if you have an SSD turn off this setting…it will KILL your hard drive, but I’m off topic, so…)

While these strange little pieces of useless facts are out of reach for our conscious mind, it would seem that our imaginations have a super librarian on staff. She can open her ultra-awesome card catalog drawer and find the silliest or most interesting little truths to interject into our dreams.

Facts you didn’t realize you knew will pop up in your dreams, faces you passed once on a crowded street corner and haven’t thought about since will smile at you, songs you heard once in an elevator, or through a passing car’s open window, will play a crucial role in each of your nighttime special features. They do for me and it’s terrific to think that I know a lot more than I think I do, even if I can’t quite put my finger on it in the morning!

This is the part where I am sure most would expect me to say, “Trust your instincts” but you would be mistaken. The faces and the songs are fine, but the nuggets of information that leave you saying, “Wow, I didn’t know that blah-blah-blah was true,” should not be automatically taken at face value.

Our brains are sponges. They soak up everything around us, with or without our consent, and not everything you hear, see, or read, in a day is truth.

We have all heard the phrase “if it’s on the internet it must be true” spoken in sarcasm. The internet is not the only place where an eager, though naive, mind can find lies parading as verifiable facts. We are bombarded every day by half-truths and pseudoscience. People love to share what they think they know and not all of it is accurate, but your dreams don’t know that.

You have to find out!

If you want one of these interesting concepts to be in your work, check it out first. If you wake up from a dream and think, “That would be so cool if it were true!” make an effort to find out if it is before you include it. Do a little research on trusted sites and through reliable sources before you put something into a book that turns out to be inaccurate or an outright falsehood. There’s nothing worse than feeling stupid in front of people. Finding yourself in that position in front of the whole reading world could be life-shattering!

Most people know, or have at least heard, that time in your dreams is completely subjective. Dreams that seem to take days, or even years, to pass by happen in seconds and you experience hundreds, if not thousands, of these dreams in a single REM cycle.

It seems a bit far-fetched, I know, but when you embrace how truly amazing our brains really are it’s just a really cool fact to have on hand in a room full of idiots. Drop this knowledge and they will make you their king.

The dreams we remember are on the outskirts of our REM cycles—the extrema of the normal curve that maps our nighttime frivolities. Basically, we retain the first dream we have when we start to fall asleep and the last one we are living out as we wake up. I think this is most likely because our conscious mind is starting to rouse while our subconscious is still running full steam. Some of the information is getting temporarily stored in the conscious section; making us aware of it. Kind of like temporary file storage on a computer. It’s there until you either translate it into full-fledged memory or it gets over-written by the next dream in line.

Again, I am not a dream science expert, just an amateur making an educated guess!

For this reason, time can be difficult to judge in a dream. Ultimately you can make it whatever you want, but I tend to want to keep the story as true to the dream as I can. Call me a coward, but as I have said before, my dreams have a tendency to pitch hissy fits if I mess with them too much and I don’t like confrontations, especially violent ones. AND especially with myself. Those get nasty way too fast!

I use context clues to put things in order of occurrence. You know, they meet THEN get married. I mean the other way around just seems a bit too old-fashioned for me. Then I play with the timing until it feels right. If a week seems a bit too soon for a relationship to take the next step, you can try a month, or several, until you get a time frame you like. Maybe the seasons changed in your dream. Use that! Find the context clues hidden in the dream and follow them!

Sometimes the passage of long periods of time is necessary for the whole story and unnecessary for the reader to suffer through. People traveling on foot could take anywhere from days to weeks to months to reach their destination. The question is, will simply saying “it took Jack and Jill “X” days to arrive” be enough or will the reader get to be with them day in and day out?

You have a wealth of extra information at your fingertips that helps you build the story. Information the reader doesn’t need to enjoy the tale. The dream will show you everything—every setback, every victory. But is the point the journey? Or the destination? Is it the action along the path? Or what they face when they make it to the end?

Base your time frame on the story you want to tell and let the rest of the dream add to your understanding of the events, not necessarily the readers.

Perspective. I have touched on this before but as I have been doing a fair amount of soul searching on this very idea lately, I think I will do a little bit on it here. These are my two cents on it, take it or leave it.

In my dreams, and with my stories, I know everything there is to know about all of my characters. From the major events in their childhoods that haunt their decisions and actions to this day to the useless bits of fluff that happen day in and day out that no one would ever care about. I know how they felt when they stepped in that puddle last Monday and how tired they are of cornflakes and how much they regret buying the super family size box because it was 25 cents less. Everything. But only some of that mess is important and only some perspectives matter.

Here is my opinion…for what it’s worth.

I historically prefer third person over first. As I have said, I watch my dreams, not live them. From time to time I am in the body of my character but if I walk by a mirror it is clearly not me in the glass. The weirdest moments are when I’m a guy. Those get creepy. Sometimes I even bounce from one brain to the next in a dream. It’s like a strange “invasion of the body snatchers” feeling but the character doesn’t seem to notice and the story keeps right on rolling along. I believe that it is this “mind hopping” that gives me that truly omniscient feel to my characters, but it also means that more than one perspective is almost necessary to tell the story correctly.

Writing more than one person’s mind can be done many different ways, but if you have ever read a book where it was poorly done, and there are MANY out there, you know that too much bouncing or poorly done transitions can really kill the flow. There needs to be some signal to the reader, a format change, a font change, a chapter break, something to tell them that they are now looking through someone else’s eyes.

If you are planning to take a “God” approach to your writing then by all means reveal everything constantly, but if you want the reader to be a fly, looking over the shoulder of one character at a time, put a little forethought into how you will buzz from one shoulder to the next.

I have tried a few methods for this and, in all honesty, I am not entirely sure they work. I like them, but I wrote the story so of course it makes sense to me. I have tried chapters, where each of the perspective characters gets a full (though short) chapter to show us their view and then we are on to the next, and I have tried a gap in the middle of the chapter, where we follow one charter to a high point then break to ride the other perspective to its conclusion. In both cases, I try to shy away from bouncing. I know how each of them feels of course, but for the sake of the reader, and my own sanity, they have to wait their turns.

Perspective is vital to the flow and pace of a good novel. I am not saying I do it right, but I put time and thought into how I will do it. I encourage you to do the same. It’s important!