The Watchtower of Destruction: The Ferrett's Journal - The Amazing Bit Happened
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12:04 pm
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The Amazing Bit Happened
I had a dream, and lo! It turns out there was a complete, workable short story in there! Admittedly, I had to change the protagonist from "a young Batman" to "a preadolescent girl," but the rest of the plot hung together, and the setting was actually plausible. That's something that's never happened before; generally, if I have a dream, it evaporates into nonsense the minute I unplug myself from dream logic.
I know there are some folks who wake up from dreams and discover their subconscious has generated whole plots for them. My subconscious is usually as lazy as my conscious; I've never even had a wet dream, since apparently when I'm asleep I'm too lazy to orgasm.
No, I have to work at stories one thought at a time, and I think a lot about my stories. As such, I envy those lovely, lovely dreamers who spin plots out of gossamer sleep, and today I feel like I'm one of them. It's such a weirdly proud moment, even if the story may suck (as they always have the potential of doing, and actually do depressingly often).
Actually, I envy the people who can do nighttime logic well. Kelly Link is the queen of unsettling stories that seem like they all fit together in some way, but don't make any sense when you eye them from a logical point of view. There's a fine line in writing dreamy stories; explain too much, and it just seems stupid. Explain in the wrong way, and the reader feels stupid because she feels like she was supposed to get it, and didn't. There's a sweet spot where you describe just enough so that the reader goes, "Okay, yeah, this is just weird, it doesn't make any cohesive sense, but I'm okay with that"... And few people can do it.
I certainly can't. I'm a strictly logical guy; in fact, if you ask me about my stories, you'll find I generally have left out more details than I was able to cram in. But that's completely irrelevant, since you can't ask me about my stories because they're not quite good enough to get published, and when they are then you can read them and ask. Until I've gotten them out there in magazines, I'm just sticking my head up my butt.
Anyway. I had a dream. And it looks plausible. That's the neat bit.
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^_^
Most of my stuff is dream-generated, not necessarily of whole cloth, but the seeds are almost always there when I sleep.
Unless I am dreaming of hate-mail, which totally blows.
I have found that the more you come to rely on your subconsciousness, the more you open to that, the better and more vivid and more plot-like your dreams can become.
Edited at 2008-10-22 04:10 pm (UTC)
I am excruciatingly jealous! My dreams could be worked into a Jasper Fforde plot, but not without a lot of substitutions and an injection of sanity.
You made me LOL over the required change in protagonist.
I had a dream, years back, about a gang of teenagers with their own names, personalities, and specific appearances. Immediately upon waking up, I wrote everything I could recall about them down and integrated them into the cast of the persistent crime fiction universe I write most of my original work in(although admittedly I write more fanfiction these days; I think I'm addicted to the preexisting fanbase for such works). I still have most of those characters, clearly defined, up through today, although I had to kill one off for being unforgivably Mary Sue-ish - although I think (given that I was maybe sixteen at the time) that was something I did to the character rather than a product of the dream.
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/83688618/426731) | | From: | ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jume |
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| Date: | October 22nd, 2008 05:56 pm (UTC) |
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my dream was plausible up to the point that I left france in a pickup truck headed across the interstate to america.
I have gotten characters from dreams more than once. I tend to base my stories on characters anyway, once I've come up with a living character their stories seem to almost fall from the sky. Evidence of this is the five or six times my best friend has drawn a character and said "I know nothing about this character except this is their name and this is what they look like" and I look at said drawing and go "here's their backstory, their girlfriend's backstory, and the entire world they live in." I remember my first "serious" character (who didn't star in a fanfic) being from a dream that actually had the setting of a video game.
These days I get more interesting plots from dreams than I do interesting characters, and once in a great while those plots can be re-worked into the semblance of a story.
Yeah, I once dreamed an entire lifetime, in a fantasy world, from about 15-old age. It was startling when I woke up. Whole plots emerge from my brain all the time. Of course, my waking mine is inordinately lazy when it comes to writing.
Thanks for the Kelly Link. I was not familiar with her and she looks fab!
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/61912977/810751) | | From: | jfargo |
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| Date: | October 22nd, 2008 08:03 pm (UTC) |
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I lived the course of my life in a dream. Waking up the next morning was definitely strange. I clearly remember thinking "Wait, I haven't lived here in 60 years."
Run with it, man. And have her wear a batman T-shirt. ;)
I've never even had a wet dream, since apparently when I'm asleep I'm too lazy to orgasm. I once had a "wet dream" dream, in which I woke up from a wet dream, but that turned out to be a dream, and then I woke up for real. Unfortunately, all that multilayered stuff doesn't lead to plots and characters either--all my dreams are either surreal and nonsensical, or a href=http://jacobford.livejournal.com/17270.html>annoyingly Freudian</a>.
So maybe a lazy subconscious is better than an overactive one?
![[User Picture]](http://l-userpic.livejournal.com/2059720/616553) | | From: | slipjig |
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| Date: | October 23rd, 2008 02:42 am (UTC) |
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Awesome. One of the greatest gifts my subconscious ever gave me was the dream that contained the plotbunny for last year's NaNoWriMo, which will probably be the only novel I ever finish.
holy shiz, you've never had a wet dream? i swear to god, i come more in my sleep than i do in my fairly active sex life.
...but then again, my dreams nearly ALWAYS tell good (or horrific) stories. who needs a holodeck? i actually sleep poorly because i can't stop REM sleep. i'm too lazy while awake to write out all the stories that keep my friends and family fascinated. er, unintended alliteration there.
anyway! congratulations! WRITE! i'm looking forward to reading...when you get around to it! |
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