Ever had that one Great Idea in a Dream....

...which you completely forgot the moment you woke up!?!? ARGH!!!!

I just had that one last night. Dammit, and it seemed so good too! It wasn't that big, it was just a plan for converting the squatters in my area and their land into farmland....it seemed like it would even work!

• SIGH*

That is the power of the unconscious mind you've discovered, when the mind roams free beyond conscious restraint and it babbles the ravings of geniuses and madmen. I also had a great idea— an experience more like from a dream, and right now I'm following it down the road years later.

Can't say so.

I have however had ideas that I put down on paper and then immediately realized they're not suited to written format.

My 5 hour sleep period prevents me from getting dreams often, much less dreams that are avid enough to be memorable.

Most dreams don't string together coherently.

They might, however, make for interesting youtube videos.

My most coherent dream involved interdimensional sewer systems, gratuitous movie cameos, and a talking earthworm named Bob.

My dreams are messed up.

My few dreams are boring. They involve water and...

...

...You know. -hides-

My dreams tend to be like Lord of the Rings on hallucinogens, which, come to think of it, pretty much describes their creation process, and I have had that experience.

Mine run a gamut from seemingly normal to "Hey! There's a pink animated heart in the sky! And the sky is purple! And suddenly everything looks like a case of Katamari Damacy mashed in with a half dozen other things and I never took drugs yesterday!"

My dreams turn into outright Widget Series. In turn because of that I've had a few ideas come to me to write that I still remember!

edited 11th Oct '11 7:22:21 PM by MajorTom

My dreams tend to feel more real than when I'm awake. Vivid colours, and no words are spoken. The part which sucks is when it seems like I'm about to come to an ending when suddenly my clock radio blurts on and I realise it's early in the morning.

My dreams are the end result of my brain doing the one thing it wants to do — tell a story.

Only, now, there is no fucking logic to run it. So it just goes all WHOOOOOH and comes up with crazy shit.

...also some mildly scary stories as well, actually.

I've been known to have dreams about my own work, and from time to time I've incorporated something from one of those dreams into the work it was related to (or rarely, a different work altogether). This has always just been imagery or the like, as opposed to a plot point - I have had dreams with a coherent plot, but rarely.

Well, I would agree that most of those kind of ideas seem to slip away from me as well, but the few that I do remember usually turn out pretty cheesy... so don't worry about it too much.

Some of my random dreams do provide interesting story ideas/seeds, but other than the stories about dreams, they tend to be too... disconnected for direct application.

I like it when I don't dream at all.

But my dreams tend to fix themselves squarely into nightmare territory, and I remember most of the most horrifying ones, which is, funnily enough, where my more gruesome ideas come from. And they usually make it into the story.

Things like being chased, systematically hunted, and devoured alive by a hoarde of monsters. Or being chained to a disemboweling rack. Or just a regular rack, which is personally one of the scariest things I've ever dreamed about, because I woke up covered in bruises, unexplainable welts, and all four lmbs were dislocated, and I remember the dream perefectly, five years later. If I even hear racks mentioned in conjunction with torture, I can't stop mmyself from shaking... So, yeah, my nightmares are fuel for my gory stuff. Things that I would, frankly, love to not remember when I wake up.

My dreams are all over the map. Murder, Time-Travel, Eldritch Abominations, Star Crossed Lovers etc. It's because of this that I actually have a notepad and pen on my bedside table, so when I wake up I can always jot down what I remember before it goes.

To be honest I'm not sure that dreams are the correct term for what I remember. It has been a long time, well over a decade now, since I've had a dream I remember upon waking. Most of what I refer to above happens rather in the eyes-closed-but-awake state before or after sleep.

I've had a few ideas that I got from dreams. A lot of them have been hard to turn into stories. One of my least successful attempts involved a woman who was lost in a maze and being chased by some sort of spirit-demons, then escaping through a green door. I never did find a way to turn that into a good story.

The problem is in those kinds of dreams you feel as though you know the characters in them intimately, as if you were childhood friends, nevermind if they had lobster heads (one of my dreams had one). When you wake up and try to adapt that into a story, you suddenly realize you don't know anything about them, and will end up struggling and wasting time to give them a background.

My dreams tend to be either "normal but not" or "utterly disturbing."

In either case, I haven't had one to supply a truly brilliant idea—even a one that I think is the pinnacle of genius—in a while. Which is not to say that it has never happened; it simply hasn't in quite a long time. And, yes, sometimes only until I wake. It is a great frustration.

edited 12th Oct '11 8:18:00 AM by JHM

I never have "great" ideas, but I do dream about my stories often. I keep a notebook on my nightstand in case a decent, workable idea comes up.

An idea from a dream? Hey, I've had one of those before — it was to make a Darker and Edgier finale for The Magic School Bus where Ms. Frizzle abandons the class for their final, epic field trip, and Arnold —

Oh wait. You said great idea? Never mind.

To be fair, I have had some wild dreams, but nothing that I'd ever want to write about. My stuff's random enough as it is without getting my unconscious involved.

I'm pretty sure if I wrote most of my weird ass dreams down, the result would be akin to a real life Necronomicon. Or I could sell em as surrealist movie screenplays.

Last night I dreamed that some chick released an indescribably evil entity loose in a shopping mall. I had to run as fast as I could to keep away from it.

Funny thing is, I'm currently working on a story, where the characters had to take refuge at the far end of a shopping mall...

Most of my dreams are actually surprisingly coherent once you trim them down a bit... well, trim them down a lot.

My dreams are usually rated higher than PG-13, and may or may not be weird.