To Dream or Not to Dream

The World - Shadowscapes Tarot 

I just finished reading Laini Taylor's new book, Strange the Dreamer. It's a story about a boy named Lazlo Strange who dreams of things no low-born orphan could hope to aspire to. The plot revolves around the blue skinned godspawn, a past slaughter, a lost city and the lucid dreaming of Lazlo and Sarai. It got me thinking about dreamscapes in fiction, something I've explored in my own novels as well. The funny thing is, while researching dreams in Fantasy Fiction, most of the sites that come up say, Don't do it!

Seriously? Why not?

It's considered something to avoid, but don't tell that to Laini Taylor, Elizabeth Knox - The Dreamhunter Duet, Suzanne Young and Tom DeLonge - Poet Anderson ...of Nightmares, and hundreds of thousands of writers who have used dreams successfully in their fiction.

So which is it. Avoid, or use? 

Yvonne Woon's Dead Beautiful Series uses dreams as vision, 
intragal to the plot.

Reasons to Avoid Dream Scenes in Fiction

According to K M Weiland, "A story opening that features a dream is a story opening that almost always fails to present a strong hook, character, setting, conflict, or frame."

Jackal Editing agrees saying, “Don’t put dreams in novels” isn’t a rule; it’s advice that emerged from readers’ negative reactions to dreams in novels, and it’s practical advice."

Surveys show that dreams sequences in fiction are often skimmed or skipped entirely. Readers report them as boring, distracting and irrelevant to RL, the real life of the story. It's a valid point. Because dreams aren't RL, they have no stakes. No matter what happens, what's revealed, learned or accomplished, in the end, 'is just a dream.' 

Jungian analysis aside, a dream sequence may have no relevance to the story save to tell the reader something about the dreamer's subconscious mind, repressed emotions or secret fears and desires. That may move the story along, or come off as a transparent plot device.

Other cons include:

Dreams in stories almost never ring true. Symbol is the language of the subconscious so in dreams, there is no order, no beginning, middle and end. Hence, dreams that play out as a textual mini-series can't happen, unless you premise your story-world with that ability, and explain why.

Dreams used to flesh out a character may be lazy writing. As Jackal says, "If you can’t develop your character while they’re awake, you’re already in serious trouble."

Dreams in RL are tricksters. They mislead, have dead ends, and rarely portray any concrete ah ha moments when considered rationally. NOTE: This could be both a pro and a con for writing dreams into the story, depending on how its used. 

Harry Potter is led astray by subconscious thoughts implanted by a dastardly villain. 

Reasons for Dreams in Fiction

If the dreams are visions, essential to the plot, as we see happening to the character Renée Winters in the Dead Beautiful series, by Yvonne Woon, and in all seven novels of the Harry Potter series, then they belong in the narrative. In these examples, dreams are portrayed as powerful, mysterious, dangerous, and a source of power. Good additions.

Our own Supernatural Author Helen Lowe adds, "Dream magic is an important part of the Wall of Night series world and also figured in Thornspell. You will notice, the dreams are not alternate to the main story but an integral part of it."

She has written about her approach to dreams in fiction here:

Magic In “The Wall Of Night” World 

Portent and Fate: The Mythic Aspect of Dream in Contemporary Fantasy

I find Dreams belong in the prose if they are forms of magical communication. Laini Taylor's Strange the Dreamer and Heartless (Tales of Goldstone Wood #1) by Anne Elisabeth Stengl are examples. Also George R. R. Martin uses dreams for prophecy and communication (particularly the wolf dreams of the Stark children) and in the above mentioned Elisabeth Knox duet, dreams are the premise for the entire story. 

Dreams may also bring humor, a kind of comic relief for the characters. This can work by highlighting their reaction to it, and the reactions of other characters when told the dream.

For writers, if you are Homer, Shakespeare, Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, Carrol, Bronte, Orwell and others of that calibre who have used dream narratives to great success, then don't hesitate. Dream sequences CAN work. But it might help to reread some of your favorite authors and see how they managed it.

For readers, I'm wondering how you feel about dreams in novels? Do you ever skim? Get distracted? Bored? Or do the dreams seem like integral, captivating additions to the plot? Somewhere in between?

I'd love to hear your take!

Kim Falconer's latest release is out now - The Blood in the Beginning - and Ava Sykes Novel. Find this novel in a store near you.

You can also learn more about Kim at AvaSykes.com, the 11th House Blog, and on FaceBook and Twitter.  Or on GoodVibeAstrology.com where she teaches law of attraction and astrology.

Kim posts here at the Supernatural Underground on the 16th of every month and runs Save the Day Writer's Community on Facebook. Check out her daily Astro-LOA Flash horoscopes on Facebook. 

Portent and Fate: The Mythic Aspect of Dream in Fantasy

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Dream magic plays a relatively significant part in both Thornspell and The Wall Of Night series and one of its more important aspects is that of portent, with fulfillment locked into whether—or how—the foretold doom or destiny will play out.

This aspect of dream and fulfillment is an essential element of both the Greek and Norse myths, as well as folklore. We all recognize, after all, that if our hero or heroine is told something three times, especially by an oracle of some kind, then the foretelling is likely to prove true …

(This is not just in Fantasy, by the way. In the now-classic SFF television series, Babylon 5, I believe careful perusal will show that the captain, John Sheridan, is warned three times that, “If you go to Z’ha’dum, you will die.” Just sayin’)

Yet any exploration of dreams and their “fated” fulfillment in Fantasy also gives rise to the alternative consideration: the extent to which characters have free will. Can they, like Will Thatcher (the mourned Heath Ledger) in the film, A Knight’s Tale, change their stars?

The Greek and Norse myths would answer that question with a resounding “no”—in fact it is usually the protagonist’s endeavours to avoid his or her prophesied fate that brings about the doom.

In The Wall of Night series I keep the fate vs free will aspect open by having the prophetic dreams occur very much in the “jumbled workings” of the subconscious. There is truth in them, but they may only imperfectly reflect events that occur in the daylight world. Nothing is certain … and every action a protagonist takes acts on the dream, creating alternative possibilities of fulfillment.

In exploring the prophetic dream tradition, both through reading other writers and in my own work, I suspect that we are also talking about aspiration—the innate human desire to affect our fate and exert control over destiny. The myths, of course, would say that any such aspiration is doomed, its fulfillment stillborn before it has taken the first breath of life.

But what do you think? Do you have a view on the use of dreams and portents in contemporary Fantasy, or a favorite book or series you feel uses them well?

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Helen Lowe is a novelist, poet, interviewer and blogger whose first novel, Thornspell (Knopf), was published to critical praise in 2008. Her second, The Heir of Night (The Wall Of Night Series, Book One) won the Gemmell Morningstar Award 2012. The sequel, The Gathering Of The Lost, was shortlisted for the Gemmell Legend Award in 2013. Daughter Of Blood, (The Wall Of Night, Book Three) was published this year.

Helen posts regularly on her “…on Anything, Really” blog and is also on Twitter: @helenl0we

What's Your Dream for 2013?

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There's something very special about getting to write a blog post for New Year's Day.

On the last day of the old year we look back: to what we've done that rocked during the course of the year, and to what maybe could have worked out better for us. But on the first day of the new year we start with a blank page, which is still ours to write on as we will.

A universe full of possibility; 

There's a considerable degree of excitement in that, the effervescence of the champagne cork popping and the bubbles rising in the glass—and no small degree of magic as well. The new year, after all, stretches ahead of us ahead, full of the unknown sure, but that very unknown is imbued with the magic and promise of one of the universe's great infinities: possibility.

Now we could talk resolutions, but somehow that seems to move us just a little away from effervescence and magic and possibility, into a more mundane realm of duty and—dear me!—self-improvement. (Not to be confused with home improvement and d.i.y., but close, dear readers, very close…)

I would far rather talk possibility and magic—what we would love to see written on that blank page of our new year. For the New Year is also the realm of wishes and the hope of dreams come true. And as the famous lyric from South Pacific goes: "If you don't have a dream, how're you gonna have a dream come true?"

So here we stand, on the threshold of a brand new year—and if we could each have one starshiny, rainbow-tinted dream come true in 2013, what would it be?

Here's my dream:

Recently, I was re-reading Friday's Child, one of the many delightful romantic-historical novels by Georgette Heyer. Something I learned about this novel from Miss Heyer's biography, was that a group of women who were imprisoned as political prisoners kept their spirits up by telling the story to each other. When finally released, the chief storyteller wrote the author to tell her how significantly Friday's Child had touched her and her fellow prisoners' lives. Not surprisingly, this became one of Georgette Heyer's most treasured fan letters.

As an author, my dream for 2013 is that my books may reach out to, and touch readers in as profound a way.

How about you—do you have a dream for this new year you’re willing to share here?

In any case, a very Happy New Year to each and every one of you. :)

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Credit for supernova image to: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Richard Cool (University of Arizona) and WIYN/NOAO/AURA/NSF.