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Monday 17 January 2011

To sleep, perchance to dream

I had the most incredible dream last night. So incredible, I'm actually going to write one of those 'dream' blog posts. It was completely fantastical - for a start, I kept jumping characters, but spent most of my time as a shapeshifting girl/super-fierce wolf in love with a shapeshifting boy/super-fierce wolf. And we swam a lot. In a lake the size of an ocean. And had people coming after us because our super-fierce abilities were totally awesome. 

And, as usual, it doesn't sound half as amazing as it was when I was actually there. Dreams like that make me want to write. It was such a incredible story while I was living it - thrilling, and full of adventure and romance and random weirdness. It's the kind of thing that makes you think 'you can't beat this, I do not want to wake up!'

Only, of course, when you do wake up and try to think through the dream logically, it doesn't make for a very good story at all. Because very little makes sense. And stories have to make sense, unless you're writing The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and that's already been done, alas.

Such is the annoying thing about dreams-that-can't-be-stories, no matter how badly you want them to be. But one day, blog readers. One day I will have a dream that will be a story.

Do you have dreams you want to be stories? Have you ever made a good story out of a dream? (And if so, what is your secret?!)

Now, I'm off to have a nap...

12 comments:

  1. I have a handful of dreams I want to write into a story and I think I've written the elements of some dreams into my stories. I once had a dream there was a shooting at my school and I nearly died... o_o Dreams like that make me want to put that intensity into words.

    I wish I had more wild dreams all the time. My friend has weird dreams nearly every day; she once dreamed a polar bear was trying to eat her dog so she beat the polar bear with a tennis racket?

    Oh, you subconscious...

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  2. Oh, that sounds like a great dream! I do have lots of dreams, but mostly mish-mashed stories with no resolution and no reason!

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  3. I've had dreams that made me want to write. Once, I had a dream that actually had a soundtrack (I make up music in my head sometimes) and I started writing it down . . . I haven't really looked at it since that first attempt. :P

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  4. Most of my dreams do not make any sense. But some of them are too dramatic for words! Here via Vix's blog! :)

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  5. Same here, I have wonderful dreams but when I try to talk them through in my head they make no sense whatsoever.
    I see Tanvi's found you, she's fab, I think you two will get along great. xxx
    PS Wii Fit is nothing like exercise is it? I've converted several of my lethargic friends.

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  6. I had a dream 3 years ago and I wrote down all the details. It IS going to be a bok one day, it utterly haunted me :)

    The Arrival, on Amazon NOW!
    www.damselinadirtydress.com

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  7. I had a dream about a vampire boy and a human girl in a meadow - and then Stephenie Meyer stole it.

    Nah, just kidding. Wish it was me!

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  8. Are you kidding? My dreams never make sense.

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  9. Hmm, I do get a lot of cool dreams but they would make for cool scenes over cool stories because they don't make sense, haha. Hope you have more like that!

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  10. fun times... i rarely recall dreams, so likely lose many tales .(

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  11. I get envious of people who have such happy, fantastical dreams. I want so badly to be a fantasy, happy ending kind of person. I've tried...really hard, but it just doesn't work for me.

    My dreams are always very dark, but quite amazing to me. I dream in great detail and color. My dreams continue to scare the living crap out me, to the point of where I have to wake myself up, get out of bed and get some tea. I check the house, I check my children and then I have to watch something happy on tv.

    By nature I guess I'm just a dark kind of horror writer. I can't help it, it's just where my mind goes.

    Thank you for sharing this. It's nice for me to escape into someone's fantasy, even if it's not my own.

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