Nov. 15: Capturing the Inner Logic of Dreams

Mr. White starts today's reading by stating that "even in our sleep we are storytellers". The stories are of course our dreams. He again makes the suggestion that we keep dream journals so that we can better understand the content and sequencing of our dreams. Then we can use this to develop the inner compulsions and desires of our characters. For me my dreams have a certain repeative nature, particularly of settings and characters. Many of them are about my past. It is rare that I dream about the current happenings in my life or even future ones. I not certain what that says about myself. Maybe I just have a unconscious wish to never grow old or to relinquish a certain point in my life.
For Further Reflection:
Here Mr. White states that "keeping a dream journal is a kind of biofeedback phenomenon: The greater your effort to cature your dreams, the more vividly your dreams become," Now I don't know that my dreams are any more vivid than they were before I started keeping a dream journal but I know that they remain rather bizarre, as they always have been. There are times though when I know that some of them might make the basis of a good story and I do have a couple of story ideas that are a result of the rather repeatious scenarios of my dreams.
Today's Try This assignment:
1. Give yourself a full month to get into the knack of recording your dreams. First , you will need a dream journal that you'll keep on the nightstand within easy reach. Every morning (or in the middle of the night as the case may be) upon awakening, immediately jot down as much of your dream(s) as you can recall. Don't take time to edit. Even seemingly wrong or inappropriate usage can be revealing.
2. Over the next few weeks prepare lists of desires, fantasies, compulsions for some of the characters in your short story or novel in progress.
I keep my dream journal in the bathroom because that is the first place this old woman heads when she wakes up. It is here that I record as much of the dream that I can remember. I'm not certain about making these desires, fantasies, or compulsions apply to the characters in any of my works but I might some day.