The White Lily (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thewhitelily) wrote2006-12-07 11:44 pm
thewhitelily) wrote2006-12-07 11:44 pm
Entry tags:
Dreaming and writing
A while ago, I had a dream.
It's still vivid in my head, almost a year later, when I cast my eye over my dream diary and came across it. I have lots of dreams that stay vivid like this - when I'm actually bothering to keep up with my dream diary, I have a couple of entries every night - but I thought I'd share just one.
It was very much an action/adventure dream – and I was the lone protagonist. The chosen one who was the only one who could save the world from destruction and all that jazz. But although everyone else in the world knew it, I didn’t. And no one would tell me because there was some sort of prophecy saying that if I knew I was the chosen one, I would surely die and with me, the world.
It’s hard to explain how I knew this. I knew this in the third person narrator sense – but at the same time I was definitely completely the protagonist in the dream, no extraneous thoughts at all, and in that sense I hadn’t the foggiest idea.
It was dry and there was dust swirling in clouds everywhere where the ground wasn't just baked completely rock hard. I was walking to where I was headed – trekking around with a bare swag of supplies and possessions on my back with a walking stick and cloak and everything, right out of a fantasy novel. But as I went from place to place throughout the dream, everyone was incredibly helpful. They kept giving me things. Offering me a place to spend the night and rest as long as I needed. And it was confusingly unusual – it wasn’t that the people in this world were nasty or totally self-centred; it just wasn’t the done thing to befriend strangers or give things to random people, even if I’d had something to give them in return.
I don’t know where I was headed – but I do know that it was the other side of a mountain range, so I hiked my way up through the foothills, along a path that was well-travelled to get to the major pass – which was too difficult to be very well-travelled.
At the last checkpoint before the actual pass became too treacherous for easy travel, there was a group of stalls selling supplies and souvenirs set out on a small plateau. One of the stalls was manned by an Asian young man selling water (I think this whole thing may have taken place in an Asian country, but this is the only person whose skin-tone I really remember). When I pulled out my wallet to pay him for the food I needed to continue my journey, he recognized me, but he covered it very well and simply got me what I needed quickly and politely. He even accepted my money. He obviously knew who I was, but there was nothing I could pinpoint about his behaviour that I could confront him about – except the fact that he was so darn helpful and didn’t say a word. He had a nice smile, too, even if it was a bit secretive. So he only made me slightly more irritated with the whole world and its conspiracy against me.
The next person I encountered, however, ten metres on, was surly and rude and wouldn’t sell me the ticket I needed to continue on along through the pass. (Although why I needed to buy a ticket from some guy behind a table to go through, I had no idea.) I was arguing that I was a member of the group I needed to be, so I was eligible, and I was trying to flash my licence and my membership card at him, but he wouldn’t look up to see them. Eventually I thrust them right under his nose, and he went pale and suddenly became exceedingly helpful.
“Ooooh,” I said, looking down at the cards section of my wallet (which actually seemed to look a great deal like my husband’s wallet, come to think of it) and realised what it was that everyone kept seeing that made them so thoroughly polite. It wasn't even the whole card, because it was only partially sticking out. “So it’s something to do with the last three digits of my membership number?” I demanded. “What does it mean?”
I was starting to lose my temper at this stage, and when he blustered something about not knowing what I was talking about, I just totally snapped.
I distinctly remember grabbing him by the lapels and hoisting him up (yeah, right!) so that his nose was millimetres from mine. It’s a vivid moment – I remember his eyes were brown and so wide and terrified that I could see the whites all the way around the irises. His skin was covered in dirty smudges from the mix of dust and the sheen of sweat from sitting at the table in the sun. He was just a bit overweight, and his mouth was hanging open slackly over his second chin. I could feel the moisture of his breath on my face, but with all the adrenaline I didn’t even notice how heavy he was.
“F*** you,” I snarled at the top of my lungs, right in his face. “What the f*** is everyone’s problem?”
Even in the dream, that felt totally out of character. I don’t swear much. Or, in fact, I do swear a bit – but only at or to people I know exceedingly well. I would never swear at a complete stranger, not even mildly. The character in the dream wasn't me, but he or she (I'm more often male than female in my dreams, and I'm not sure which this character was) wouldn't have either, even with this kind of provocation.
The man I was holding was utterly terrified, trembling and had no idea what to do. But before he blurted out something that would damn the world, I felt the young Asian man’s hand on my arm. I looked over and noticed that he’d left his stall unattended to come and intervene, and that the whole bustling plateau had stopped to watch the scene I was making.
“There’s no need for this,” he told me firmly. “I think he’ll sell you a ticket now.”
And, suddenly feeling rather sheepish, I released the man I was holding, and woke up.
Question: Does everyone have dreams like this? Not only a coherent story, but one that doesn't end properly? If so, how can you stop yourself from spinning a universe and the story of its characters in your head? How can you stop yourself from writing? Do you wake up and think “wow, that was an interesting story” and then just forget about it? Aren’t you desperate to work out what happens next? Or do you just not realise that that’s how you find out what happens next – you write it yourself?
Or is it a carry-over of having started writing in the first place in fandom that I feel compelled to write original fanfiction of my own dreams? I don't remember feeling like this about my dreams before I started writing...
I was surprised, during NaNo, that at no point in the proceedings did I actually dream myself into the world I was writing. It’s odd, because usually when I’m in a writing frenzy, I dream my characters and my situations, every night a total vivid immersion in the world of my imagination. They’re not always coherent stories like the above - and they're certainly seldom actual scenes that exactly slot in - but even if they’re just incoherent snatches of dialogue and the swirling colours of a setting, they contribute to my world-building and plotting and overall inspiration.
I wonder if the reason why I still haven’t really decided whether to bother with the huge amounts of editing my NaNovel will require is that I’ve never dreamed even the smallest bits of it. It’s obviously not a story that really catches my attention and my imagination if it’s not hijacking my subconscious – and can it really be a story worth telling if it doesn’t even catch the imagination of the author?
Maybe it isn’t yet. Maybe if I work on it some more, I’ll start to dream myself into it and it will become that story. Maybe, now I’ve got the basis there, I’ll be able to work my way up from that.
Or maybe I should just chalk November up to a valuable learning experience – and it was definitely that – and concentrate on writing something that does fire my imagination...
It's still vivid in my head, almost a year later, when I cast my eye over my dream diary and came across it. I have lots of dreams that stay vivid like this - when I'm actually bothering to keep up with my dream diary, I have a couple of entries every night - but I thought I'd share just one.
It was very much an action/adventure dream – and I was the lone protagonist. The chosen one who was the only one who could save the world from destruction and all that jazz. But although everyone else in the world knew it, I didn’t. And no one would tell me because there was some sort of prophecy saying that if I knew I was the chosen one, I would surely die and with me, the world.
It’s hard to explain how I knew this. I knew this in the third person narrator sense – but at the same time I was definitely completely the protagonist in the dream, no extraneous thoughts at all, and in that sense I hadn’t the foggiest idea.
It was dry and there was dust swirling in clouds everywhere where the ground wasn't just baked completely rock hard. I was walking to where I was headed – trekking around with a bare swag of supplies and possessions on my back with a walking stick and cloak and everything, right out of a fantasy novel. But as I went from place to place throughout the dream, everyone was incredibly helpful. They kept giving me things. Offering me a place to spend the night and rest as long as I needed. And it was confusingly unusual – it wasn’t that the people in this world were nasty or totally self-centred; it just wasn’t the done thing to befriend strangers or give things to random people, even if I’d had something to give them in return.
I don’t know where I was headed – but I do know that it was the other side of a mountain range, so I hiked my way up through the foothills, along a path that was well-travelled to get to the major pass – which was too difficult to be very well-travelled.
At the last checkpoint before the actual pass became too treacherous for easy travel, there was a group of stalls selling supplies and souvenirs set out on a small plateau. One of the stalls was manned by an Asian young man selling water (I think this whole thing may have taken place in an Asian country, but this is the only person whose skin-tone I really remember). When I pulled out my wallet to pay him for the food I needed to continue my journey, he recognized me, but he covered it very well and simply got me what I needed quickly and politely. He even accepted my money. He obviously knew who I was, but there was nothing I could pinpoint about his behaviour that I could confront him about – except the fact that he was so darn helpful and didn’t say a word. He had a nice smile, too, even if it was a bit secretive. So he only made me slightly more irritated with the whole world and its conspiracy against me.
The next person I encountered, however, ten metres on, was surly and rude and wouldn’t sell me the ticket I needed to continue on along through the pass. (Although why I needed to buy a ticket from some guy behind a table to go through, I had no idea.) I was arguing that I was a member of the group I needed to be, so I was eligible, and I was trying to flash my licence and my membership card at him, but he wouldn’t look up to see them. Eventually I thrust them right under his nose, and he went pale and suddenly became exceedingly helpful.
“Ooooh,” I said, looking down at the cards section of my wallet (which actually seemed to look a great deal like my husband’s wallet, come to think of it) and realised what it was that everyone kept seeing that made them so thoroughly polite. It wasn't even the whole card, because it was only partially sticking out. “So it’s something to do with the last three digits of my membership number?” I demanded. “What does it mean?”
I was starting to lose my temper at this stage, and when he blustered something about not knowing what I was talking about, I just totally snapped.
I distinctly remember grabbing him by the lapels and hoisting him up (yeah, right!) so that his nose was millimetres from mine. It’s a vivid moment – I remember his eyes were brown and so wide and terrified that I could see the whites all the way around the irises. His skin was covered in dirty smudges from the mix of dust and the sheen of sweat from sitting at the table in the sun. He was just a bit overweight, and his mouth was hanging open slackly over his second chin. I could feel the moisture of his breath on my face, but with all the adrenaline I didn’t even notice how heavy he was.
“F*** you,” I snarled at the top of my lungs, right in his face. “What the f*** is everyone’s problem?”
Even in the dream, that felt totally out of character. I don’t swear much. Or, in fact, I do swear a bit – but only at or to people I know exceedingly well. I would never swear at a complete stranger, not even mildly. The character in the dream wasn't me, but he or she (I'm more often male than female in my dreams, and I'm not sure which this character was) wouldn't have either, even with this kind of provocation.
The man I was holding was utterly terrified, trembling and had no idea what to do. But before he blurted out something that would damn the world, I felt the young Asian man’s hand on my arm. I looked over and noticed that he’d left his stall unattended to come and intervene, and that the whole bustling plateau had stopped to watch the scene I was making.
“There’s no need for this,” he told me firmly. “I think he’ll sell you a ticket now.”
And, suddenly feeling rather sheepish, I released the man I was holding, and woke up.
Question: Does everyone have dreams like this? Not only a coherent story, but one that doesn't end properly? If so, how can you stop yourself from spinning a universe and the story of its characters in your head? How can you stop yourself from writing? Do you wake up and think “wow, that was an interesting story” and then just forget about it? Aren’t you desperate to work out what happens next? Or do you just not realise that that’s how you find out what happens next – you write it yourself?
Or is it a carry-over of having started writing in the first place in fandom that I feel compelled to write original fanfiction of my own dreams? I don't remember feeling like this about my dreams before I started writing...
I was surprised, during NaNo, that at no point in the proceedings did I actually dream myself into the world I was writing. It’s odd, because usually when I’m in a writing frenzy, I dream my characters and my situations, every night a total vivid immersion in the world of my imagination. They’re not always coherent stories like the above - and they're certainly seldom actual scenes that exactly slot in - but even if they’re just incoherent snatches of dialogue and the swirling colours of a setting, they contribute to my world-building and plotting and overall inspiration.
I wonder if the reason why I still haven’t really decided whether to bother with the huge amounts of editing my NaNovel will require is that I’ve never dreamed even the smallest bits of it. It’s obviously not a story that really catches my attention and my imagination if it’s not hijacking my subconscious – and can it really be a story worth telling if it doesn’t even catch the imagination of the author?
Maybe it isn’t yet. Maybe if I work on it some more, I’ll start to dream myself into it and it will become that story. Maybe, now I’ve got the basis there, I’ll be able to work my way up from that.
Or maybe I should just chalk November up to a valuable learning experience – and it was definitely that – and concentrate on writing something that does fire my imagination...
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LJ should have a quick-quote featureDoes everyone have dreams like this? Not only a coherent story, but one that doesn't end properly?
I do. Sometimes, my conscious wakes up before my subconscious can wrap up the story, and I find myself finishing the dream to my own liking, obvioulsy conscious. Perhaps if the dreams ever reach an ending and fade, we don't remember then when waking up?
If so, how can you stop yourself from spinning a universe and the story of its characters in your head? How can you stop yourself from writing? Do you wake up and think “wow, that was an interesting story” and then just forget about it?
One thing I know for sure: the same thing doesn't spur a reaction from everyone. A while ago, I wondered what exactly was it that made males become babbling morons if a curvy female was in sight, and then I got it. Some people (mainly men) are visual persons: they feed in images and have no drive or desire to express themselves in words, but in images, and likewise, get their facts from pictures. And others (mostly women) are...um, the other kind (I don't really have a word for it. Word persons?) People who derive their pleasure from written text and have a way with language both written and spoken. I think it has to do with what hemisphere of the brain dominates a person (and that's pretty much the reason why most fanfiction writers are women, and as far as I know, most comic artists are men).
So, people don't stop themselves from writing a conclusion to their dreams, they simply didn't have a motivation to do it in the first place, it's my take. :)
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ph33r my 4wful gr4mm3ryes, I wrote 'grammer'no subject
It totally should!*nodnod* That's a really good point, about a dream that ends fading away. Although you've also reminded me of a home-video I saw once where the soundtrack played only the first about ten seconds of each of at least a hundred songs before it faded into the next one (not as annoying as it sounds, because it was done proper DJ style with matching the beats, slowly changing over, etc). But at the end of the video, the slogan came up "And remember: Life, like the music, just keeps on starting..." Maybe that's the deal with dreams - it's only stories that have neat endings. :)
As for written/visual expression - that's totally true. I think I'm pretty far on the side of written expression - I never visualise things except in my dreams. It's all words. Interestingly, Hubby doesn't even dream pictures.
Fascinating, anyway - thanks for the response. :)
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OTOH, I had a series of three dreams, between the ages of 4 and 7 (-ish). Obviously the dreams were fairly widely spaced apart. But I still remember large portions of them, and perhaps one day I will write them down and turn them into a full story...
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I have programming dreams. I'll be writing these awesome programs that solve piece after piece of a problem - and each bit I write open up the avenues to solve even more parts of the problem. It's that incomparable feeling of being utterly in the zone, and they're so satisfying! But then I wake up, completely convinced that I've solved everything and realise a) I was never actually working on a specific problem in the first place, b) what I was doing was complete and utter gibberish, and c) I still had to go to work and actually write code the hard way, rather than the dream way which is more like building a house of blocks in a virtual reality.
*grins*
Your serial dreams sound fascinating, too. *wonders if you've got a topic for next November yet*
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*wanders off to find camera*
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On ideas from dreams.
I woke up, and worked on it for a bit, eventually keeping only one wedding play and the bushrangers, and changing some details around. Then I went to work and spent all day thinking about it, and it turned into a series of four plays:
"The Play" - an idea that I had ages ago but haven't worked on since.
"Two Can Play" (or some similar pun-like name), similar to Sliding Doors, except instead of one person twice, it's two different people with parallel lives, having to make similar decisions, but always going in different ways.
"Thriply" - which is three plays, about Thomas Thripley. The first is his 18th or 21st birthday party, the second is his 50th birthday party, and the third is his funeral.
"Fourplay", which is the one from the dream. I've got some scenes worked out, but I've had work every day since I moved (this is my first day off) and so haven't sat down and nutted everything out yet.
When these plays win me multiple awards, I'll invite you along, as the first person I told about them. (though my cousin has been watching me type, so technically you're the second to know.)
When I was on Doxycycline for my acne, I used to have really, really vivid dreams, every night.
I've been working on a sitcom called "Frank and Ernie" for about a year now, and that started as a dream as well.
So, what am I trying to say? Hoorah for dreams, I guess. Hoorah indeed!
Re: On ideas from dreams.
I love to see disparate or related stories interwoven together. It can be done so cleverly - and yours sound awesome. Also, plays about bushrangers = goodness, so you honestly can't lose.
I'll head straight out and buy a dress for those awards ceremonies, then!
Hoorah for dreams!