Let Us Talk About Dreams

 I  (Donis) would like to talk about dreams today, Dear Reader.

A while back I was getting ready to conduct a journaling and memoir workshop. I pulled out some of my own old journals and went through them in hopes of finding a couple of creative examples of entries I could share with the class. Here is what I discovered: It’s horrifying to go back in time and see what was on my mind twenty or thirty years ago. Mainly because I really haven’t changed much. I was hoping I’d learned a thing or two.

The journal that interested me most was one that I kept about twenty years ago. I was going through a period of recording my dreams. 

Mar. 5, 2004 — I dreamed that Lois and Beckie and I were sitting around smoking weed…

I have always been a big dreamer. When I was very young, up through my twenties, my dreams were incredibly vivid and sometimes prescient. As the years passed, my dreams became more mundane. Now that I am no longer young, I mostly dream about something I read or just saw on television. 

October 12, 2004 - last night I dreamed I was driving John Kerry to a political rally but I got hopelessly lost. He was very patient. I kept acting like I knew what I was doing.

Like everyone else, I have the occasional weird, archetypal dream of the sort that you can find in any dream interpretation book. 

June 11, 2004 - I dreamed I went to a deli for a sandwich. I realize I’m naked, so I wrap myself in my newspaper, which turns into a gauzy blue scarf and looks very pretty. Finally I order a roast beef sandwich but realize that I can’t sit and read my paper without getting naked again…

I actually believe that many of the dreams of my youth were out-of-body experiences—floating around the house, or over the house, or visiting people in my sleep. Oh, yes, I do believe that dreams can be a portal to something. Early on in our relationship my husband and I had a long discussion about The Dream that sometimes happens when someone you love dies. This is a dream that is different from all others, and I don’t care how many logical people try to explain it away for you, you know you’ve been a party to something extraordinary.

Don said three of his five siblings reported that before they knew their mother had passed, she had come to them in a dream so real that they all swore they were awake. Maybe they were. Who am I do say otherwise?

In 1967, my own mother told me that a few months after my father died unexpectedly, he visited her in a vivid dream and assured her that he was all right.

Almost forty years later, the January that my mother died, I told Don that I had never had The Dream, even though for decades I had really wanted some contact with my father, and now I longed to know that my mother was okay. Wanting does not make it so. But that didn’t keep me from wishing. 

Finally, that same year:

Sept. 20 - I dreamed that my father was leading me through a forest. We found the nest of a tiny hummingbird, with a tiny blue egg in it. I said I wished I had a little egg like that, and my father produced one and told me to hold it in my moth. I put it between my lips and a little bird flew up and took from my lips with its bill, and I realized the egg would eventually hatch into a blue butterfly. I knew I was being given a gift of magic words.

Dreams, Inspiration, and the Muse

I pride myself in being a nuts-and-bolts type writer, meaning I'm not much for the woo-woo stuff. Having said that, I do admit that I've had story ideas come to me in dreams. I know that dreams are seen as the interpretations of our subconscious, but I'm convinced they're more than that. Some insist that dreams are another form of inspiration given to us by the Muse. Most dreams we forget, unfortunately, but once in a while these sleep visions stick with us. If the images were particularly strong, sometimes upon waking we're confused about where we are and what's really happening.

The Bible mentions dreams and the most famous sleep vision in Scripture comes from Genesis 41, when the pharaoh dreamed of seven fat cows being eaten by seven emaciated cows, and seven plump stalks of grain being swallowed by seven thin stalks of grain. Joseph (he of the Technicolor Coat) is summoned to interpret the pharaoh's dream, which he does by explaining that seven good years of harvest will be followed by seven years of famine. So forewarned, the pharaoh appoints Joseph as his second-in-command and is tasked with storing and managing surplus food to prevent disaster.

As writers we're cautioned against using dreams in our work because dream sequences are regarded as narrative cheats. What happens is that characters wake up and nothing has changed. However, dreams in stories can be useful to build tension and foreshadow plot twists. We know that dreams can be symptoms of a troubled mind and in a story, an immersive dream sequence can illustrate the interior turmoil of our characters as they contemplate danger.

A dream that I used for a recently accepted story was one in which women suddenly stopped getting pregnant. I have no idea why my subconscious stewed on that horrific notion, but the takeaway was the global terror upon realizing that we as a species now had an expiration date. Lately, two other dreams had to do with me getting older, so it's pretty obvious what's behind that inspiration.

Another source of dreams are hallucinations from drug use. Here in Denver, we have Initiative 301, in which we get to vote on decriminalizing the use and possession of psilocybin mushrooms. I've known people who've indulged in "magic" mushrooms and then shared their mind-blowing experiences, which by the way, included plenty of vomiting. None of these psilocybin tourists ever got around to writing anything, so the best way to cultivate inspiration remains to sit at the keyboard and hammer out what the Muse delivered.

Dreams, Schemes, and Character Creation

I've been fascinated by how often dreams have been coming up in our posts of late. As I mentioned in my last post, I learned some important information about the villain in the book I'm working on as I was waking from a dream. I now also have the plot for my book. On Wednesday, after struggling for months with the question of how I could focus my research on 1939 and the years leading up to World War II, it finally came to me. I have the scheme. I can pull out the important details from the book and articles that I'm reading. J. Edgar Hoover may even make a cameo appearance. If he does, I will know enough about him to be able to handle that walk-on.

But that leaves my other characters. I know their names. I know some basic information about the major characters. However, this process of writing a stand-alone book is much different from writing a book in a series. I am five books and a couple of short stories into my Lizzie Stuart series. After all these years, I know Lizzie and John Quinn and my small cast of continuing characters well. I can step in and set everything in motion. Although I have written only two books in my Hannah McCabe series, I started by creating an ensemble cast and identifying the initial relationships among characters that I hope to develop and explore. But with the stand-alone, I am creating characters that will live and exist only in this book. Everything that is important about them needs to be there and drive the plot. I can't leave issues that I will deal with as a part of the series arc.

I feel obliged to spend more time than usual on character creation -- particularly the secondary characters. I have a complex plot that spans months in 1939. I don't want to end up with 10 or 15 characters that are playing supporting roles and that readers can't keep sorted. I need each character to do double duty and to work hard to justify his or her existence.

This weekend, I'm going to try to identify the characters that I need. I've done this once before, even giving the characters names. But now I need to go back and take a hard look. I need to look at how my two groups -- the good guys and the bad guys -- fit together internally. I want conflict and tension among the members of the two groups. I want each member to bring something to the table that will turn out to be an asset or a hindrance.

Once I've gone through the list, I'm going to spend some time working on individual characters. Bios are helpful, but I also have pulled my books on character creation off the shelf. Here are some of the books that I've collected over the years:

Debra Dixon -- Goal, Motivation & Conflict:  The Building Blocks of Good Fiction
Orson Scott Card -- Characters & Viewpoint
Brandilyn Collins -- Getting into Character: Seven Secrets a Novelist Can Learn from Actors
Tami D. Cowden, et al. -- The Complete Writer's Guide to Heroes & Heroines: Sixteen Master Archetypes
Linda N. Edelstein, Ph.D. -- The Writer's Guide to Character Traits
Nancy Kress -- Dynamic Characters:  How to Create Personalities that Keep Readers Captivated
Eric Maisel, Ph.D. and Ann Maisel -- What Would Your Character Do?
Robert Newton Peck -- Fiction is Folks: How to Create Unforgettable Characters
Victoria Lynn Schmidt -- 45 Master Characters: Mythic Models for Creating Original Characters
Lynn Seger -- Creating Unforgettable Characters

I am something of a compulsive buyer of books about writing. I always hope there will be one book that provides the magic solution to a writing problem. I find each of the books above interesting enough to keep. Now that I'm facing this stand-alone challenge, I'm going to read back through them and see what useful tidbits I can find.

I suspect that before this is over, I will also have resulted to assigning my characters astrological signs and reading their Tarot cards. I am not ashamed to admit that I've occasionally done that with continuing series characters. Usually, it's been a way to tap into my subconscious. This time, it could be desperation.

Will keep you posted about how this is going. Meanwhile, does anyone have favorite techniques for creating characters you'd like to share?