Monday, January 19, 2009

Writing Exercise #9

This week's exercise is about how dreams can inspire your writing.
Dreams have always inspired my writing - whether they gave me a plot, a character or an atmosphere to recreate, they are woven through much of my work. I also have notebooks full of interesting dreams that I have written down to use when the time is right.
Have you had an interesting dream recently? Perhaps you had a dream years ago that has stuck in your memory. Even a nightmare can inspire writing.
The exercise is to write down a dream you remember clearly, making a point to highlight the part of the dream that struck you as most important.
After you have done that, read what you have written and structure a story from the inspiration your dream has given you. Remember your story can be as short as 50 words!
When you have finished your story, read it and the dream again to see how similar or different they are.
I don't expect you to post your dreams or stories in the comment section, but if you did the exercise, I would love to hear how you got on.

6 comments:

The Monster said...

the one dream i remember most is being told by a giant teddy bear that my family could no longer aford to keep me ie i was being kicked out onto the street. :(

Anonymous said...

I never have interesting dreams. Although I occasionally have nightmares, usually I try to forget them!

S. L. Boots said...

Unlike a lot of others, I absolutely adore my nightmares, even if they aren't conducive to sleeping. They give me the more interesting dreams when I remember them. I do recall one I had a good two years ago now. That one sticks out like a sore thumb in my memory.

Two men standing at the side of the road looking at an abandoned Church that somehow, even through years of neglect, remained intact and unharmed. I remember these that these two men stood and talked about the rumors that went around about this abandoned Church.

Quite a dream.

I think there was another but I can't immediately recall it. I have it written down somewhere I'm sure.

P. S. - I happened across your blog through Mercedes. I'm not sure if I've ever commented on your blog or not. So, here I am.

http://shad-boots.blogspot.com/

Anonymous said...

I will try this exercise to-night,

Inkpot said...

That is so sad Monster! I hope you don't mind me taking the dream and turning it into a story? :)

I'm sure your dreams are interesting Valpot. Write them down - even the nightmares - you will be surprised what you can get out of them.

Hi Shad! Welcome to the Files. Thanks for stopping by and leaving a comment. I think nightmares are great for inspiring stories. The scarier they are, the better!

Yay Docpot! Good to see you. I look forward to hearing your dream. Don't forget to email it to me. :)

Inkpot said...

I've been having really vivid dreams recently. I ususally have very vivid detailed dreams, but they have been odder than usual lately. In the most recent one I was on a reality tv show and was best friends with Death, who had cheated to get me onto the show. He had a list of all the ways people could die and he would let me choose how his next victim would go. He was a very cheerful, funny, good humoured guy. It was a cool dream, but weird.