Dream Inspired Writing?

All but one of my novels was inspired by a vivid dream. I have many more dreams written down for future novelization.

Every so often, I have fully-fleshed out "novel" dreams, with plots, subplots, characters, dialogue, everything. Actually, I suspect it happens more often, but the trick is waking up right after the dream, so you can remember it later. If you roll over and go back to sleep, the dream will vanish by morning.

I've had middle of the night this is the best story ever ideas that come from dreams, but so far they turn out to be pretty stupid in the light of day. That's just me personally, though. I think it could definitely work if the dream itself were good enough and not *too* dreamy. I mean, concrete enough to have a plot.

Then again, we live in a world where Finnegans Wake is a thing, and it is supposed to more or less be a dream...but I don't know how publishable it would be today.

Oh, yes. This is where MOST of my story ideas come from, actually.

Most of my dreams work better as inspiration than actual, fleshed-out stories.

At the time, yeah, they feel solid enough, down to the cut-scenes and the theme songs. But there's a lot of intuition involved in the dreaming process, leaps of logic that are hard, sometimes impossible, to translate into waking-world writing.

Not many of my dreams are interesting enough to inspire a story, much less a nine part series! That's impressive. I do make a point of writing down any dreams that I remember, though.

I can really only think of two or three dreams that were worth any follow up in writing. Usually it's just a short story worth, but I did have one that inspired a novel and two ~20k word stories. All three stories were pretty different, but for some reason every time I wrote one I thought I was being so true to the dream. I recently re-read what I wrote about the dream after having it. Turns out none of the stories were anything like the dream. Even the one I started just a couple days later. There was just one tiny detail that had made its way into each of them.

In response to the nagging, continuous sort of dreams, I had one dream that helped me fix a huge plot hole in the book I was working on. I had it twice, a bit varied but basically the same idea, before I got around to implementing it. So it might seem weird, but it definitely happens. Gotta love it when my subconscious takes care of things for me!

A lot of my stories are inspired by dreams. Sometimes they come out of nowhere and sometimes, after I've been thinking about the premise a lot, I'll have a dream that sort of fleshes out the idea a bit.

I've had shorts come from dreams, and solutions to sticky parts in novels. I've even scribbled them down, half-asleep, although my handwriting is definitely uninspiring in the light of day. Still, I can usually read it. I can't always understand it, but those are the breaks, I suppose.

I've always been a bit jealous of people who are able to come up with good ideas from dreams! I have very vivid dreams sometimes, but most of them are very surreal and lack real plots. Also, it's more common for me to dream about existing fictional characters, TV shows, or celebrities than my own characters/ideas.

I have had a couple dreams that have given me ideas that I was interested in pursuing.

I've written lots of dream inspired stories. I also get story ideas in that state right when dropping off to sleep or waking up. Freebies, yay!

Don't psychologists say that dreams are when our subconscious mind tries to make sense of the ideas and problems that our conscious mind has been processing?

So perhaps it's not surprising that ideas sometimes come to us in dreams. Not of all our brain is fully asleep. Part of it is still chuntering away on its own, putting two and two together and getting orange.

Yes, it happened to me few times. But dreams are often too crazy and incoherent for building a whole story upon them. Still, I take some scenes, cues or details and weave them into my writing. By doing this I add vividness and zest to my stories.

I happened a lot more to me in the past than in recent months, but yes, I've gotten dozens of ideas from dreams ranging from small, two-sentence descriptions to coherent plot, characters and character names, and more. Some are stronger than others, but it's helped me build a big backlist of ideas.

My first-ever published story was a write up of a dream I had. My next big WIP novel project (unless a newer, shinier idea comes along) is based on a dream.

So yeah, lots of us do it and it works as often as it doesn't.

I never have dream-inspired writing because 1) I'm usually too lazy to write it down, thinking I'll remember it later. And then ALWAYS 2) I end up forgetting it.

I dream them up during the day also. It's all just one big dream...until one wakes up.

imo.

Yes, I have vivid dreams that inspire story ideas or work out my plot points. My subconscious tends to work things out in dreams but I also get epiphanies during the day as well.

Not usually in full dream stage, but the stage of doziness before I drift off to sleep. That's when I do my best creating. I used to use it for planning digital paintings (see http://www.greendragonartist.com/Galleries/gallery_digital.htm). Now I use it to create a scene, a plot, a book, a character. I've trained myself over the years to remember it when I wake up, by writing down things as soon as I woke up. I kept a notebook on my end table for years. Don't need it any more. I can feel myself working out details, shifting things so they work. Will I need to change that over there? Yes, and how about this? OK, that should work. Close and sleep. ZZZZZzzzzzzzz....

Forgot to add - yes, I get this during the day as well. Driving to work, sitting in a boring meeting, even when answering emails at work or watching TV. Inspiration strikes at odd times, and if you are quick, you can grab the tail of it before it slithers away, and make that muse talk to you before she hides again.

I dreamed the first line and scene of the first novel I ever wrote (first draft then put away till I didn't suck so much), but nothing after that.

If you count daydreams, then every story I ever wrote is dream-stuff.

I keep a log of all the dreams I have that I can remember. The epic fantasy I'm plotting was inspired by a dream about animals flying a spaceship. The story I'm going to write isn't about them, but the world they left behind.

I do have dreams that inspire my writing quite a lot! A few of my plot twists in one of my MSs came from a dream, and then another story entirely came from a dream of a character and her best friend wandering around in the woods