Dreams in Fiction

(developed from 12 Stories and Their Making,

a twelve-story anthology with interviews with the authors, edited by Paul Mandelbaum)

 

In his interviews with short story writers Elizabeth Tallent (“Prowler”) and Gail Godwin (“Dream Children”), Paul Mandelbaum poses similar questions to each about using dreams in stories.

 

“Aspiring writers are sometimes cautioned against using dreams to further narrative, but you’ve employed one in a crucial moment of the story. Talk a bit about your decision to do that” (Mandelbaum to Tallent 52).

 

Tallent says, “I think any writer who’s cautioned to exclude any aspect of experience should prick up her ears….I suspect there’s a cultural bias at work in this advice, a strong American preference for the forthright, the rational, for the plain light of day, but fiction isn’t supposed to honor a culture’s construction of reality. It’s supposed to seek its own original relation to experience” (52). To Godwin, Mandelbaum poses the question this way:

 

“Writing students are sometimes cautioned against including dream sequences in fiction, a ‘rule’ you’ve certainly managed to find exception to over the years! What do you advise aspiring writers about it” (Mandelbaum to Godwin 266)?

 

Godwin says, “You have to be discerning about making up dreams for your characters, but discernment is developed by practice. Meanwhile, here are some guidelines until you learn to trust your discerning powers:

 

• What is the dream you had in mind for your character? Did you create it for the character, or are you recycling a dream of your own? If it is from your nightlife, you may need to make some alterations to suit the character’s needs.

• What is the dream trying to tell the person/character who dreams it?

• Why does it belong in the story? Does it give us insight into the dreamer? Further the action? Warn the dreamer and alert the reader to change of pace? Prepare us for the next episode?
   

“Then go ahead and create it, put it in, and if it serves any or all of the above purposes, keep it there until you or someone else, like an editor, persuades you to take it out” (266).

 

Dreams into fiction

Consider working on a new story draft right before you go to bed, or read through notes and ideas you’ve written down, or read your first story again sometime right before you go to bed. Keep a dream journal next to your bed and try to record any dreams you remember. You can also use the journal to write down especially vivid and memorable dreams you’ve had in the past, for example a vivid childhood dream, or a recurring dream, or a dream you had during an important transition in your life.

See if any of these dreams either fit into a story on which you're working or if one triggers a story of its own.