greenoh hey, this week's #Writephant is on a subject that's one of my Special Interests--dreams!
first, how I'm doing today is pretty good, actually! it might snow a bit today or tonight or tomorrow, which would be neat! also I just woke up from a nap, also incidentally to the subject. XD #Writephant
#writephant Q1 Do you usually sleep pretty well, or is it sometimes a challenge?
ooooh it's a challenge for me. I had very bad insomnia for years, before I learned the elaborate combination of preparation, isolation, and OTC and prescription medications that usually do the trick, and sometimes it still doesn't work. that said, I generally get at least 8 hours these days and when I do sleep it's usually pretty high quality, though there are exceptions. >__<
#writephant Q2 The common advice is not to start a story with a dream sequence. Aside from that, do you use dream sequences in your writing?
hm... having to think about this, and I think the answer is no. although I have written several times about my characters having dreams of various kinds, I don't write their actual dreams; I write their descriptions or memories of them after they've woken up, or how the dream affects them later. (cont)
not for any particular reason, I certainly don't have any reason to avoid writing out dream sequences, except that most of mine are so disjointed and nonsensical which makes the feeling of a dream difficult to capture, and makes me feel like a more narratively sensible dream is kind of a cop-out, if that makes any sense.
#writephant Q3 Which feels closer to your writing process: Daydreaming, where you consciously imagine and guide the scene? Or lucid dreaming, where the story unfolds around you and you try to influence it from inside? Neither?
hm... all of the above? XD when I'm outlining/planning, it's like I'm having a vivid daydream that sometimes veers over into lucid dreaming, but when I'm actually writing it's not really dreamlike at all. hard to explain?
#writephant Q4 Do your characters ever appear in your dreams?
and now, the meat of the questions: all three of my longfics are the products of dreams.
the kernel at the center of Tongues of Serpents is one scene in the story that is pretty much *exactly* a dream I had. when I woke up, I wrote it down, then had to construct a setting for it, and next thing I knew it was 60k words. (cont)
the inspiration for The Monsters We Become is... similar, but not quite; I was already spinning up the story in my head when I was ambushed by a couple of dreams about the characters, which is when I knew I was committed.
the title for my current fic is "Dreams of Dead Stars" so yeah, you might say dreams are kind of a theme here. XD
I learned to lucid dream decades ago, and while I rarely practice it still happens sometimes. (cont)
my dreams are almost always very--I'm not sure how to explain it. complex? imaginative? weird? XD sometimes I get useful story ideas from them; sometimes I *dream a story* and writing it is literally a matter of cleaning the story up a bit and adding some narrative bridges. other times I wake up thinking "oh that would make a great story!" and then I write it down and, uh, no it doesn't! my dreams are usually very enjoyable, and make a nice respite from the waking world. (cont)
Neve Maslakovic@troodon that's so cool!