Thursday, April 14, 2011

I had this weird dream...

You know how people like to tell others about the weird dreams they've had, but no one is particularly interested, so they nod politely or turn the tables and start talking about their own dreams?

I have a theory about this.

First, I think we'd be more interested if people could show us their dreams, a la Inception. All you writer-types know that showing is better than telling.

Second, I believe that most dreams are poorly told. Dream-sharers shouldn't describe the action, but instead would get better responses if they could distill the essence to a sound-bite or a punchline.

"Had my dream again where I'm making love, and the Olympic judges are watching. I'd nailed the compulsories, so this is it, the finals. I got a 9.8 from the Canadians, a perfect 10 from the Americans, and my mother, disguised as an East German judge, gave me a 5.6. Must have been the dismount."
 - Harry Burns in When Harry Met Sally

Anyone have any good dreams recently?

I was playing a Massive Multiplayer Online Game... State Legislature. We so passed that bill! 

7 comments:

Unknown said...

Thankfully nothing much to mention,the ones that come in vivid colour are not occuring so often, so all is well. Happy Dreaming! :0)

Disgruntled Bear said...

Thanks, Carole Anne!

Unknown said...

I actually started doing a 'drwam log' thing on my blog, for when I have those bat-s&*t crazy writer's dreams. Last week I had one.

It involves velociraptors. Lots of them. There's always a T-rex in there, too, but he usually has bigger fish to fry and if I don't bother him, he don't bother me. And when I'm surrounded by thousands of sneaky, hyper-intelligent velociraptors with a craving for Becky-flesh, he's simply too big and too far away for me to worry about. But he's always there.

This time, I was in a monstrously large building filled with trees and assorted other flora, all perfect for hiding the raptors from me but in no way hiding me from them. This building had dozens of automatic sliding doors that led outside, because, you know, that's just how you'd want to keep velociraptors from escaping. My mission during this dream was to lock all the sliding doors and keep the dinos from escaping, and I had this tiny, tiny, highly ineffective key with which to do it. I could only lock them from the inside, or at least that's what I was afraid of, and I'd largely consigned myself to die, and was ok with it. As long as I could keep the raptors from escaping.

Strangely, this one wasn't quite as terrifying as the raptor dreams usually are. Although the next night, I was certain that in that fraction of a second between when I hit the light switch and when it actually went dark, I'd see a raptor snout poke through the open bathroom door...a door I know I shut five minutes ago.

Unknown said...

Dwarm log. Ugh. I meant dream log. Typos make me want to eat my feelings.

Disgruntled Bear said...

Love it, Becky!

Deniz Bevan said...

Goodness, yes! I had my second dream in the past few months that was a fully plotted out story! Scary, because I can't afford to be distracted by new ideas, but oh so much fun, when the characters and scenes come fully formed. I wake up and feel as though I've read the book. Um, now I just have to write it and share it with everyone else!

Disgruntled Bear said...

Deniz, I write down notes in as much detail as I can. If the idea stays with me, I'll have the start of an outline. And I never know when I might be able to use a short version; there's a thing with spiders and cupcakes in Ganzfield #4 that's from my own weird dream notes.