Writers sometimes use dreams to show something about their story, but do you know why that’s not necessarily the best approach?
-The cliché: Dreams have been used too often and by too many writers, so the idea is no longer fresh. It’s cliché. With the publishing industry being harder to break into as ever, is it worth taking the risk? I know many writers who tried to get traditionally published and came close but just couldn’t get their foot in the door. (Don’t you love it when I use clichés in the same paragraph where I preach about why you shouldn’t use them? Do as I say, not as I do. Oh, there I go again!) These same authors were told by acquiring editors that there was nothing wrong with their writing or their story, just that it wasn’t unique enough. Still want to use a dream in yours?
-The super dream: The actual dream can sometimes be more powerful and exciting than the regular story, leaving the reader feeling disappointed when the character wakes up and gets on with his regular life. Remember Bobby’s dream on the TV show Dallas? I was just a kid, but I recall my mom talking about this and how everything that had happened on the previous season was dismissed by having Bobby wake up from a dream in the first episode of the new season. That was the beginning of the end for that show. They lost many viewers that night. Why? Because the viewers felt cheated. They’d wasted a year getting to know characters and plots that weren’t real and now they were expected to readjust and pick up where everything had left off before “the dream”.
-The long-winded dream: Writers have a tendency to create long, detailed dreams, which take the reader away from the true story for too long. You’ve heard the term “keep the story moving”, right? What editors mean when we say this is that you need to continue to develop characters and the main plot. Stopping for a flashback or dream is fine as long as it doesn’t happen so often that the reader loses sight of the real plot, and as long as the distraction/backstory isn’t so long that the reader disconnects with the characters and main plot or is jolted when she returns to the actual story.
-The scratch-your-head dream: Starting a novel or chapter with a dream can sometimes be confusing for the reader. If this is the beginning of the book, a reader may grow to like the characters and situation in the dream only to be disappointed when she realizes what she’d read wasn’t the real story. I’ve had that happen before and can tell you I wasn’t able to get into the actual plot after I discovered the characters I’d fallen in love with weren’t going to reappear because they were a part of a fabrication. Maybe I would’ve liked the main plot had I not been introduced to these characters and this other world, but that’s not the way the author chose to write the novel. As a result, I was disappointed and didn’t finish the book.
If you’re considering having a dream in your story, figure out why you feel a need to do so. What are you trying to accomplish by using the dream? Is it a way to show backstory or foreshadow an upcoming event? Is there another way you can show this without stopping the flow of the main story? If there’s absolutely no way around using a dream, make it brief, using only the strongest elements and quickly returning to the real story.
Have you ever used a dream in your book? Why did you choose to add this element to your plot? Looking back, did it add or take away from the main story?
Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com
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Hm, I don't typically use dreams, though they can be done well if incorporated into the actual plot. I have a scrapped story that utilized dreams as battle sequences, where a subset of the antagonists could infiltrate my protagonists' dreams to attempt to "reprogram" them from the inside out (note: protagonists were cyborgs).
ReplyDeleteBut, yeah, I find dream sequences annoying most of the time, mostly because they're used in the ways you talked about almost 99% of the time. A unique spin, however, can add some good flavor to a story.
Nick: That's right. There are some stories that need dreams because they are a part of the plot. It's when they're used as a backstory device that readers get turned off.
ReplyDeleteLynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com
Ah, dreams. For some reason, I'm yet to write even a snippet of a dream in the projects I had written in since May. There doesn't seem to be any places where they are needed, even though emotions are a huge element of my current project.
ReplyDeleteCo: That's probably a good thing. :)
ReplyDeleteLynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com
The trouble with dreams, I've always found—and I think that anyone who has tried to write a story based on a dream will say the same—is that the logic upon which dreams operate is a purely interior one: What seems logical in a dream, or what evokes an emotion, is guided only by the barest rules of the unconscious mind. Translating that kind of self-reflexive, circular logic into prose, especially when writing something otherwise much more straightforward or realistic, is not a simple thing, and can quite easily confuse the reader if one goes "too deep," as it were.
ReplyDeleteOn the other side of things, going directly into a character's mind, if done right, can say a great deal about that character in relatively few words, which is generally useful. So that's something to take into consideration.
All in all, I think that it's up to the author: Do they think that they are capable of making the dream "realistic" without wasting words?
I used multiple dreams in the WIP called Blood Dreams. They were necessary because it was how the main villain communicated with the heroine - they were both dream-walkers, so their magic was intricately tied into dreams. It was never just random "fore-telling" or something like that.
ReplyDeleteIn Blood Rage, again bad-guy communicated with good guy. Great way to stay anonymous, which is critical for him.
Interesting post. I avoid writing about dreams unless something happens in them. I had a protagonist in one story that was a Dreamer - she controlled other people's dreams - and that was the only time I went in that direction.
ReplyDeletePlease do stop by my blog. I'm having a holiday book giveaway. :)
I have to laugh my first novel as you know my lovely editor is filled with dreams meshed in with main character reality does that work? LOL
ReplyDeleteJ.H.M.: Great point. As with anything in writing, if it's done well, it's a keeper.
ReplyDeleteTory, Christine, and Keisha: There are definitely times when you need to use dreams because they are a part of the story. It's when the author uses them as a device to show backstory that they can usually be cut.
Lynnette Labelle
www.labelleseditorialservices.com