Dreaming

In general, my dreams are pretty entertaining (excepting that week where I dreamt I was doing really boring things like cooking and shopping…no idea what that was about). They’ve certainly yielded a lot of potential stories for me, and if I was ever a famous writer being interviewed on television and they asked where I got my ideas, I could answer “From dreams” and it would be true. Although perhaps not exactly the whole truth.

Dreams, or at least, my dreams, are both hectic and scattered, so writing a good story from them wouldn’t be translating exactly what happened because that would just be a big mess. And also a bunch of stuff I’d be embarrassed for people to see.

Saying I get my ideas from dreams undersells the whole process. While a dream inspired me to write COLLAPSE, exactly none of it made it into the final product. Hell, none of it made it into the first draft.

The creative process isn’t just imagining something and making it happen. It requires thought, it requires focus, it requires a bunch of stuff that’s BOOOOORING to the casual observer (and about everyone else, too). But “From dreams” is the easy answer, the one that doesn’t require me to explain every detail about my thought process, some of which even I don’t fully understand.

So now I’m opening the floor to other opinions: How do you (or will you) answer the question “Where do you get your ideas?” Is it even possible?

Inception

Let me set the scene for you.

It was the middle of the night. I was asleep in bed. Dreaming. For some reason, there was a repetitive

BEEP.

beep about once a minute. Finally, I opened my eyes and realized that the beeping was in real life, and what the hell was making that noise because

BEEP.

nothing was on, not my television, not my laptop, not my phone. Eventually, it occurred to me that the only thing that made sense was the

BEEP.

smoke detector, although since it wasn’t a steady OMG YOU’RE GOING TO DIE GET OUT OF THE HOUSE warble, it had to be something else. The

BEEP.

batteries were running low. But I was so tired and being the middle of the night, I was feeling extra lazy and

BEEP.

didn’t want to get up and change them. Still, it was kind of hard to sleep with that thing beeping every minute, so I got up to change get that stupid thing new batteries. Except

BEEP.

that was a dream. So I really got up to change the batteries. Except that was a dream. Then I went into a normal (i.e. crazy) dream, but still, every five seconds it felt like

BEEP.

there was another beep. Cue another dream where I got up to change them. By six a.m., I knew I wasn’t getting anymore sleep, but I

BEEP.

wouldn’t give it the satisfaction. I let it beep. I let it feel the pain of knowing it was slowly dying, every beep a burst of energy it could not

BEEP.

afford, but there were worse alternatives, there was death, there was non-existence. And perhaps I would show mercy, there might be new batteries restore it to life

BEEP.

but for a few seconds while I changed them, it would be dead, just a hunk of plastic, less useful than a doorstop.

BEEP.

Long story short, I’m really tired today.

Dream Weaver

Liz mentioned in one of her “What If” posts the possibility of recording dreams, something scientists are actually working on. They use MRIs to scan people’s minds when they’re asleep and then interpret it to recreate an image they were shown. It’s pretty rough, but you can kind of see what they were shown (it starts at about the 33 second mark). Someday (I’d say a decade at the very least) this could be the next app. Hook some electrodes to your head, plug the other end in your phone, and bam! You’ve got a recording of what went on in your head last night.

Part of me is like, cool! Sometimes I dream of things that I think will make awesome stories but upon waking I can’t remember what made me so fervent about them. But then another part of me remembers some of the crazy, messed up dreams I’ve had (the curse of being imaginative, I’m sure), and I’m a little less eager and a lot more OMMFG no one can see this ever.

Once the initial embarrassment passes (yes, embarrassment over this hypothetical technology sharing my future dreams) and I can start wondering about it again, I can actually start to think of how writers could use a technology like this. Most of my ideas that have turned into full-length manuscripts are nothing like the original dreams that spawned them. Would it even help me to look at a dream record? I’m leaning towards no since it seems my books get better the further away they are from the nonsensical, jumbled dreams whence they came. But still. Those dreams evoke powerful emotions. If I could study them, analyze them, maybe I could translate that better to the page and from there, draw in readers.

It’s an interesting idea. And not much else since this is all speculation on a technology that may never come into existence. It sure makes me wonder, though (anyone else notice I used a lot of parentheses in this one?).

When An Idea Strikes

I think I've mentioned that my chief source of ideas is dreams. In particular, the dreams I have after I've woken up very early, tossed and turned for an hour, and then fallen back asleep provide great inspiration (these dreams tend to be of the lucid variety and have a clear story to them). And yes, I had another good one last night : )

I really like this idea although I only had a clear dream of a couple of scenes. It's relative briefness means I don't know much about the plot other than it centers around the murder of a girl. I know who the main character is and thought up a few others while ruminating on the dream, but there's still a lot missing.

Because I am a pantser by nature, I'm not going to let this hold me back. I'm going to start typing and find out what happens as it comes. This book definitely will have a mystery quality to it, but I'm not sure it will be a whodunit, so to speak. No, I'm not going to blurt who did it right away (I'm not even sure!), but a lot of it will be about  how terrible events can haunt you (the bulk of the story will take place ten years after the murder--it's the inciting event, but not necessarily the main plot).

I want to go write it now : ). Like lightning, this idea has struck and it's catching fire. I can't wait to see where it goes.

On Ideas

I got a new idea this morning, this one from a dream. For me, dreams ares not an uncommon place for ideas to come from--I would put it at fifty-fifty--but I still haven't decided whether or not the idea is workable. In that fuzzy place I wake up in, I can think the worst ideas are golden, but come noon I stomp it down into my subconscious because I'm so embarrassed to have thought of it in the first place.

However, this one has survived the noon critical point, so maybe it is. I'm still in the midst of editing another book and don't want to lose momentum, which means it will be around a month before I get around to this new idea. Who knows what I'll think of it by then? And let's not forget the twenty or so other ideas I have rolling around and waiting to come out. When I decide what to write next, it's usually easy. I look into my idea file and see what still interests me, what I just have to get out now. This one...I want to get it out now, but I have doubts about its staying power.

It's a horror story, something I've never written before and am not sure I could execute well. As you may have read, I have been reading horror since I was seven or eight years old. Even younger than that, I started with the Scary Story books (although the pictures were more terrifying than most of the stories), then Steven King, Lovecraft, and anything else I can get my hands on. But writing it...hmm. I've written fantasy, action, violence, suspense, and a few pretty gruesome scenes. But none of that is horror. It can approach horror, but e^-x approaches zero. Go look it up and find where it crosses in.

Still, I'd like to do this. The story is forming in my head, the ending is in mind. Details still need to be created, but they're lurking around somewhere. We'll see.