Keeping a Dream Journal -- 7 Tips

Dreams disappear quickly upon waking. One way to hang onto those fragments of inspiration is to keep a Dream Diary. From your dreams you can take the abstract idea and brainstorm story plots. Do you record dreams? Here's some tips:

1. Make sure your paper and pen are right by your bedside, chances are you won't bother getting up in the night to find them.
2. If you can't see well enough to write immediately (my eyes are blurry for about an hour after waking), you can say the dream out loud to help solidify the memory.
3. Think about your WIP as you drift off to sleep. Talk to your characters, this might help you dream about them.
4. Don't try to write a sensible narrative of your dream, just scrible images and interactions as you remember them. They don't have to make sense, you can use them as writing prompts later.
5. Meditate before sleep to promote vivid dreams. I've posted about hypnosis for writing before in Stories from the Subconscious I use a hypnosis recording on my iPhone. You can also learn self-hypnosis. Try iTunes or Audible for plenty of free hypnosis podcasts.
6. Fall asleep listening to an audio book. I do this accidently sometimes and it always prompts weird dreams.
7. Reading fiction right before bed can get your brain in an imaginative mood.

Here's some recordings that I use:

Ever wondered why we forget our dreams so easily? 

The Naked Scientist tells us dreams create short-term memories, and because we often don't consciously move those images to our long-term memory, we quickly forget them. This is why you are more likely to remember a dream if you are awakened during it.

Freud's idea was that dreams are our secret wishes and desires, so we decide to suppress them. That doesn't really work for me because there are plenty of dreams I wish I could have suppressed, but didn't.

And because we move in our dreams through our imagination we are tying our memory to that kinetic memory, but when we wake we move our body physically (stretch, sit up or reach for the alarm) and this breaks the link between our dream state and physical state. This theory suggests lying very still upon waking, with your eyes still closed to recall your dream before moving your body.

Read More

6 Reasons to Try Writing Exercises

When you have a manuscript you're working on, it can be easy to assume writing exercises will just take away valuable time from that WIP. Why waste a thousand words on random things when you really need to get that scene down with the alligator and the microwave?

There's lots of reasons to try writing exercises:

1. Perfect one aspect of your writing. Especially when you are starting out, you can separate each learning tool and perfect it until you move on. This mastering method works well with school children and can be good for us too. For example, dialogue was something I struggled with at first and so I didn't have a lot in my work. I've done so many workshops on it now that I feel a lot more confident (but still find new ways to tighten it!).
2. Free your mind up to explore new ideas for your WIP. Writers are usually not short of ideas, because we a strong on the imagination side, but sometimes weak on the structure jobs. Ideas are great but they can be a big jumbled mess. By trying different exercises you can clarify those ideas and develop a complete plot (or maybe come up with a great sub-plot for your WIP). Free writing is  a good one for this, or clustering.
3. Find out the true motivation of your characters (they're sneaky, sometimes they lie to you at first). We have our story idea, we know what happens, but sometimes there are parts where our characters perform a necessary act for the story, but lack an appropriate motivation. By trying exercises and using your character in them, you can get a feel for why they do the things they do, and again might come up with more material for your WIP.
4. Give yourself a break from your WIP. It can get draining working on the same thing, especially if your piece is something that requires a lot of research or hits an emotional nerve. If you're writing about a tragedy, you might just need to try a short comic piece to pull you through the slump.
5. Push yourself out of your comfort zone. Try a different genre or writing style. I've taken courses on genres I don't write. I even signed up for a class to write sizzling sex scenes - and I never use those. It doesn't matter, it helps me see things from a different angle (which could be quite disturbing in a sex scene). I freely admit I suck at romance. So what if I never write a romance novel? Some of my characters are teens and romance is still an important element. I intend to try and learn more about that genre to help me in my genre.
6. Connect with other writers. Blog challenges are a great way to try something new and see how different writers approach the same prompt. Why not sign up to try a Haiku or flash fiction? There's always plenty of exercises online to try.

So wether you sign up for a class, try a blog challenge, read a book on writing exercises or just sit down to write in your journal, it all helps, nothing is wasted. Today, I'm having a go at romance! Want to have a go? Go sign up at Romantic Friday Writers here's the prompt:

And here is my piece:

The Tune of Love

Country ballads? He shrugs. What about Kenny Rogers? He picks biscuit crumbs from his polo shirt.

  Sinatra, or Elvis, older Elvis? His only reaction a cringe.

  Meatloaf then? Demis bloody Roussos? His figure leans forward, but only to reach the remote. 

  His CD collection gives her no clue. An almost random compilation of artists, common only by the fact that they are all gifts. Each one revealing something about the giver but not the receiver.  She remembers crying and yearning to so many different ballads over the years. Has he never felt that passion?

  She accuses him of not liking love songs. He answers that he doesn't not like them. She thinks he never really wanted to get married, he just didn't not want to. Maybe he just doesn't not love her. She puts this to him, but he doesn't react. She suddenly realises, after all these years, she can't remember seeing him cry or yell or belt out a really hearty laugh. 

  She asks if he likes any songs from The Carpenters. This is a trick. He says he doesn't know. She reminds him that he sang Close to You on their first date. It was as a joke, but it should still matter. He is quiet and she thinks he won't remember ever loving her. She gasps when he jumps out of his chair and yells, "Yes!"

  He dances her around the living room, lifting her feet from the ground and kisses her forehead many times. She smiles. She is loved. Elation as she leaves the room, he is hers. Close to You will be their song.

  He sits back down deep into the sofa, still grinning as he watches the horse he backed in a trifecta being led to the winner's circle.

Read More

Dreaming Writing Prompts

In our new home we seem to have an adjusted rhythm to our day. It's warm and sunny in Brisbane (if you ignore today's drizzle), so I get up early, anywhere between 4:30 and 5:30am. Brisbane also seems to be a healthier city - in the mornings you see a constant whirl of cyclists and in the evenings everyone is out for a run. It's also culturally essential to join your local gym.

The cold winters of Yass were more encouraging of hot chocolates and an extra layer of fat (just to keep warm, mind you), so we have also started having a workout every day. This means by early evening we're all ready to crash and when we sleep we sleep goooood. Quality sleep is also good for dreaming, and for recalling dreams the next day. I though the girls and I could use them as writing prompts for short stories.

My dream:

Our new house was situated on an island with only one road in and out. That flooded and we had to get ready incase our home also flooded. The kids, dogs and I sat up on the roof - mind you at this stage our street had not even flooded, let alone the two story house.

Emily's dream:

Grandma came to visit. She did not warn us she was coming,  nor did she knock, she just quietly let herself in and waited by Emily's bed until she woke up (this would be considered a scary dream).

Matilda's dream:

There was a terrorist planting bombs in Brisbane. Hard to spot, he was dressed in a giant squirrel costume.

The next day it poured and our street looked like this:

Later, Grandma called Emily for our new address. We are keeping a keen eye out for a giant squirrel.

Here's some previous posts on ways to record, remember and reuse your dreams:

7 Tips for Keeping a Dream Diary

Turning Dreams into Stories

Forgetting Dreams

Read More

Writer's Dream Diary - Results

Look at that date - 8th August - that means we've come to the end of our Imagination Sparks Blogfest. Well I say Pffffft! to dates. I've read some fantastic writing exercise ideas from the blogs participating (you can visit them too, at the links below. I've been trying them all out this week and gotten some interesting results. Soooo, I've decided to extend the date and blog my results of each exercise I tried separately. If you're taking place, please blog your results too, so we can see how you went.

I'm starting with Milly's post from Paper Dolls. Milly is 13 and blogs reviewing tween and teen fiction with her little sister Tilly (they're also my daughters, so books are pretty major in our house). Both girls like writing and Milly's favourite writing exercise involves recording her dreams.

All writers know you should write down your dreams, and we all mean to... but... sometimes we need reminding. I tried this exercise for three nights with a pad and pen right by my bed, but kept forgetting to actually write things down - I'm pretty dopey first thing in the morning. I'm sure I had amazing dreams those nights.

On the fourth try I finally remembered to write down my dream. I was teaching a very disruptive class of teenagers English in a demountable classroom.

What?

In real life I teach (amongst other topics) English to teenagers in a demountable classroom. Even the kids were the same. I pointed out of Facebook that this dream was a bit of a let down. Who wants to record a dream just like real life? Then I thought more about it. One of the kids was trying to sneak out of the class. Why? There was a visiting carnival to the school and these kids were not allowed to participate. There were rides and shows and a scary looking clown. I kind of think the clown might have been someone evil undercover. 

Ta da! School taken over by evil circus and the only people left to help are the naughtiest kids in the school and the very tired teacher. Or maybe the clown is a pedophile, the kid that escapes class is sneaking around the back of the buildings in time to catch him trying to abduct a child. These kids might be disruptive, but they're brave if nothing else, and they always stick up for each other. There's no way this kid would just walk away.

Did you dream any good plots this week?

And I'm loving this blogfest so much, I've decided to run it again (maybe same time next year?) but next time let it run for a month (although I don't dictate how many times you post about you inspiring exercise).

Read More

Forgetting Dreams

Image from http://www.kylemstone.com/paintings34.html

I've had a bit of a fascination about dreams lately and how they can be used for inspiration for plot ideas.

In 7 Tips for Keeping a Writer's Dream Diary, we talked about writing down your dreams because they're so hard to remember. I was curious. Why are they hard to remember? So... I did some research.

Do we all dream?

Seems to be a difference of opinion here. The Naked Scientist says we probably have more than four dreams each night. The one we remember is more likely the one we have as we come out of deep sleep towards waking.

But, Dreamsearch believes some people dream very little or maybe not at all. Although this site also says we are not sure if animals dream, and if you've ever owned a dog and seen them running, growling and wagging their tail in their sleep, you'll know better.

Why do we forget dreams?

The Naked Scientist tells us that dreams create short-term memories, and because we often don't consciously move those images to our long-term memory, we quickly forget them. This is why you are more likely to remember a dream if you are awakened during it.

Other theories included Freud's idea that dreams are our secret wishes and desires, so we decide to suppress them. That doesn't really work for me because there are plenty of dreams I wish I could have suppressed, but didn't.

And that because we move in our dreams through our imagination we are tying our memory to that kinetic memory, but when we wake we move our body physically (stretch, sit up or reach for the alarm) and this breaks the link between our dream state and physical state. This theory suggests lying very still upon waking, with your eyes still closed to recall your dream before moving your body.

I wonder if my pets remember their dreams?

Read More

Turning Dreams into Stories

 

I love this image I found at: www.josephinewall.co.uk/stairway.html 

In my last post, 7 Tips for Keeping a Writer's Dream Diary, I talked about ways to provoke, inspire and remember your dreams. But what if you have a big list of bizarre images, how does that help you create a story or add to your WIP?

Don't worry if you think your dreams don't make sense, mine hardly ever do. To show you how I turn a dream sequence into a plot idea, I'll give you an example of a dream I had just a couple of nights ago. This is how I recorded the dream:

Black Tweety-bird, human size. Lives in it's own house.

For some reason it's essential to modern society, it performs some necessary function for our lifestyle and it's a machine.

It's lonely.

The people try to find it a match, they send them in boxes with barcodes.

The robot (it's changed now) scans the barcodes to get a probability percentage of happiness with the match.

Finds a reasonably high percent and chooses that box.

It's changed again and is a woman. The match is a man with his two kids, they move in.

The kids are thrilled but the man is not.

What the...?

After brainstorming the idea with my daughter, we came up with this story plot:

Woman with OCD, decides to find herself a partner because she's lonely. She can't stand the idea of taking her chances with strangers, so she joins a dating service. She's sold by the idea they will give her a percentage rating of compatibility with each match. She's a numbers girl (really, she sometimes has to recite increments of seven or count the number of parked cars she passes on a walk).

Let's call her Nancy. Nancy agrees to a date with a man she's never met or seen, because the lady who runs the agency (let's call her Jill) told her the compatibility was 98%. That's good odds.

But...

Jill has a loser brother called Chris, he gambles, drinks and picks up cheap women. Party-boy Chris thinks it will be easy to pray on desperate woman looking for dates through the agency. No way is Jill going to let him join. So... Chris steals the identity of one James Brown, accountant and prepares to turn up to meet his blind date - Nancy.

This couple has nothing in common. Chris is wild and unpredictable and Nancy is straight-laced and needs routine. She is not impressed by Chris, but believes in the numbers so much that she overlooks all his obvious faults.

Chris has never had to work so hard to win over a date, but he can not accept failure - womanising is the only thing he's been proud off. He has to pretend to be a bit more like she'd want, less drinking, less flirting. He even turns up for the job interview she helps arrange for him, and to his disappointment, he gets it. He finds Nancy's ways rubbing off a bit, he's started washing his hands three times before and after meals and has caught himself counting parked cars.

Nancy slowly starts to unwind. She's still OCD, but learns to have fun in spontaneous moments as well.

Finally it looks like Chris will get his night of passion with Nancy, but...

Jill finds out what her brother has done and rings Nancy to warn, just as Nancy was heading to the bedroom! Nancy storms out.

Chris is miserable. He can't even be bothered getting back into the drink and gambling.

Nancy dates the real James Brown, accountant. She discovers he would have indeed been perfect for her, but... that was before she met Chris, before she started to change.

Jill realises she's interrupted true love when she allows her brother to join the agency and runs his statistics to find his perfect match is Nancy. She arranges a secret blind date for them so the lovers will be  reunited. They find compatibility is not about being the same, but about creating a balance with differences.

I'm sure your dreams won't be any worse than a lonely giant-Tweety-bird, so see what plot ideas you can get from your dream notes.

Read More

Don't wake me, I'm writing a novel.

My desk is cleared, I have my favorite pen (after testing many for weight and texture), a brand new notebook, kids out of the room and I decide to work on my novel. Nothing comes.

I can work on plot elements, story structure, research details, but the creative writing does not happen on demand. When my brain is active, alert and ready to go, this is the time I can observe and take inspiration, think of different angles and solve character problems. It's only when my brain is switched off, in that soft space between wake and sleep that the narrative starts to flow.

I hop into bed, longing to just pass out, but thinking I'll just jot down a few notes before I drift off; before too long my head drops down and I have that quick moment of not being here. When I shake my head to wake myself enough to put down the pen and turn off the lamp, I realise I have already written pages of narrative, it just seems to flow. I think the key here is I don't over think what I am writing. I don't put up my own mental obstacles to block the story from moving forward. I get out of the way of my characters. I just write.

Perhaps this is where the theory of keeping a journal of dreams comes from. There may be a few plot ideas pop up from a bizarre dream, but possibly it is where you allow those words to lead when you keep writing in that 'not quite back in reality' space.

So alert time is for planning (and blog writing) and those times I'm too tired to write are for, well, writing.

Read More