Using Dreams as Prompts

A slightly esoteric and tricky method of idea generation for your stories

“Dreams are messages from the deep.” — The opening lines of Denis Villeneuve’s 2021 adaptation of Frank Herbert’s Dune are spoken in a droning, throaty voice rising out of the darkness. Like our own dreams, the audio comes through distorted and alien-sounding, but the meaning is plain to us in the moment. However, dreams are fleeting and usually we forget them by the time we start our morning routines unless we make a conscious effort to remember them from the moment we wake up.

The suggestions in this post are likely nothing new in that there are probably entire self-help books about documenting or using your dreams to inspire writing or other artistic endeavors. With that in mind, I’ll be presenting how I’ve managed to utilize my dreams as prompts using simple intuition and simple, organic techniques to memorize and expand upon not only images and plots I see in dreams, but the logic of certain episodes that came to me when I had very vivid dreams.

Before beginning I want to state that I’ve never attempted or practiced the method of lucid dreaming so the events I am recounting were never conscious efforts to take control of my dreams.

One of the most prominent dreams I had that led to the drafting of an entire novel (which I am currently in the process of workshopping and am open to beta-readers!) came to me during October 2020. I woke up sometime before six in the morning after having dreamt about being back in college in an unfamiliar apartment with my friends having some kind of party. I kept thinking about the location and the people I had seen in it, longing a little bit for my undergrad days after not having seen my friends in person for a long time. However, as I geared up to go to the gym I started thinking, Where exactly was that apartment? The exact layout I saw in my dream didn’t exist anywhere on my college campus or in the surrounding town. Furthermore, I wondered, What would happen if something crashed this gathering? I kept mulling on those questions and replaying the dream in my mind, memorizing it before it slipped away. When I sat down later that morning to write, I started the very first chapter of my novel by describing that apartment and party for the opening scene. For over a month I became obsessed with telling this story which grew out of the mere seven second-long dream I had that drizzly October morning. By writing the story, I answered those questions I had asked myself and even went beyond the scope of what I originally wanted to be a lean Lovecraftian horror story set in the fictional town of Arkham, Massachusetts, turning it into a more globe-trotting adventure/romance. It was one of those ideas that only comes once every few years and most definitely the placidity during the Pandemic allowed me to even have enough time to write in as quickly as I did.

I often have dreams that I’ll just jot down as fragmented notes, which sort of works for the more “on-the-fly” storytelling and worldbuilding I tend to do even when I’m awake. Some of these dreams even gave rise to original monsters, sometimes complete with their own lore and functions that defy normalcy or even traditional verisimilitude. H.P. Lovecraft’s nightgaunts, black, faceless, winged humanoids with barbed tails native to his fantastic location known as the Dreamlands were borne out of nightmares he had as a child. As with other phenomena from the Dreamlands—or really most of Lovecraft’s creations in general—they act under completely alien logic, but readers can at least buy into the idea of “this is how this monster is supposed to act” if they let go of trying to devise reasonable explanations. I have an entire note document on my phone cataloguing entries for monsters I either thought up on the spot or had dreams of. The latter kind usually have qualities about them that aren’t really “logical”; when my dreams give me information about these creatures, my mind just accepts that a creature has particular, weird tidbits that don’t really have any logical explanation or even speculative theories that could back up their oddities. For example, one monster I dreamt up had the quality of taking 10 years off the lifespan of whoever killed one. The plot of the dream gave me no explanation as to why this was the case, but I accepted it as something inherent to this creature, making it stand out as more than just a weird thing that my subconscious conjured up; there would then be stakes and pitfalls were I to use this thing in a story or as an encounter in a roleplaying game, characters would have to consider their options carefully if they were to deal with this monster, perhaps finding other ways to neutralize it without killing it.

This type of weird, dream-logic has been used in mythic stories for centuries. In stories about dreams, such as the Welsh tale “The Dream of Rhonabwy” from the Mabinogion features a segment where King Arthur’s squires do battle with an army of ravens. There are likely symbolic meanings behind it, but never do the characters question or explain why this conflict is happening. Similarly, the plots and events in mythology overall require a suspension of disbelief that goes beyond what modern writers of fantasy and sci-fi have been taught to create for a “believable” experience. Jackson Crawford has spoken on this, calling the actions many characters take in myths as “forced solutions.” The texts containing the myths do not provide any explanations as to why characters go the routes they do, but the plot nonetheless says, “This is how it must happen.” Crawford likens this to a Dungeon Master “railroading”¹ their players into getting to a particular encounter or scenario they had set up, abandoning logical explanations other than because they want it to happen.

Although this runs counter to what writers are told to do in modern fiction, I think there are some cases to be made about having little quirks or “forced solutions” that contribute to dream-like qualities stories may have, especially in speculative fiction. If a writer does want to give more solid explanations behind things they take out of their dreams, that is their prerogative, but sometimes not explaining anything makes stories all the more interesting.

To conclude this post, here is a summary/list of tips that I find work for me when it comes to using dreams for prompting your stories or other artistic creations.

Tips for Turning Dreams into Stories

1. Write down ideas as soon as you wake up: This is a given with anything related to dreams or dreaming, not just wanting to gather prompts for your stories. The details of dreams fade quickly so with whatever materials you can, write down as much as you can remember without pausing to question or edit a single thing. Much like the first draft of a story, if you get too hung up on making sure everything is “perfect” then it’s just going to get away from you. If you don’t have something to write it down for whatever reason, try running it in your head as many times as you can while you go about your morning routine, or tell it to yourself as you would to a friend or coworker later in the day. Sometimes a single idea you dredge out of your dreams might not go anywhere immediately, or it might not even be the focal point of your story, but at the very least save it before you forget it.

2. Answer questions you have about your own dream: Once you have your notes down, start asking questions about certain aspects of your dream that would help ground it if you decide to turn it into a story. For example, when I had the dream that led to writing a novel, one of the first questions I asked and answered was, “Where was that apartment I was in?” I later “answered” (or decided) that it was going to be in Arkham, MA. Although I said that some things from dreams may be more interesting if left alone, there will be certain details that require explanation, primarily setting, characters, and major plot points. Likely, your readers are going to want to have those questions answered once they pick up your story; having it live solely in your head isn’t helpful even for yourself as the writer and giving yourself ground to stand on will help your story run.

3. It’s okay not to follow the original plot: Plots in dreams are going to be frenetic and very difficult to put into the written word if you’re trying to translate what happened into a traditional short story or novel. Unless you’re willing to go the full David Lynch route, feel free to deviate from the plot your subconscious provided to you as it likely doesn’t follow storytelling conventions that are easy to follow as a reader, let alone write in a semi-coherent way. Stories in general are going to change as part of the redrafting process and “killing your darlings” is an inevitable reality of the craft, and as long as you’re able to tell a solid, good story in the end, it isn’t really going to matter if you stray from what came to you in a dream.

4. Follow the dream-logic especially if you write speculative fiction: At the risk of contradicting my last two points, I will say that this mostly goes for people writing in speculative fiction genres (sci-fi, fantasy, supernatural horror, etc.) and for those people who aren’t particularly hung up on fleshing out a fictional world so that everything is “sound” or “logical.” This tip also mostly goes for the smaller details of stories, such as aspects of certain creatures, locations, or characters’ actions. This, I believe, can add to the mysterious and fantastical elements of your stories, making them closer to the ancient myths that had inspired these modern genres with “forced solutions” or strange logic that adds qualities peculiar to your own tales and imagination.

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Thanks for reading this week’s post! Have you had any dreams lately that inspired a good story? Leave a comment below and share it with us!

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1. Railroading is a term in tabletop roleplaying games that refers to when a scenario or adventure is “on the rails” leading to the beginning and end, or certain encounters, with little deviation or player agency.