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| Writing A Book In A Lucid Dream. |
 Posted: Mon 11 Apr, 2005 |
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I'm a novelist, and I am just starting out on a new book, but I'm facing massive writers block. I'm going to plan out and write the book in the dream state where my conscious mind will be subdued and my creative subconscious can work unhindered. I was just wondering if this was possible, and how I could conceivably transfer my work from the dream to waking life, any suggestions?
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| Posted: Mon 11 Apr, 2005 |
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Robert Louis Stevenson would ask his subconscious for story ideas and solutions (though he refered to this source as his dream "pixies"). Quite often he would wake up recalling dreams that provided at least some useful images, and sometimes virtually complete story lines.
You probably (like RLS) don't need to go lucid to take advantage of your dream "pixies".
In fact, in this circumstance mightn't it even work better just to elicit a few good dreams, and let your subconscious mind work freely, unhampered by any restaints that may be interfereing with your conscious work?
<edit>
My mistake -- RLS apparently actually refered to them as "Brownies". I'm not really sure how (or even if) "brownies" differ from "pixies"
</edit>
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| Posted: Mon 11 Apr, 2005 |
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Is he the guy that wrote Dr Jekyll and MR hyde... because a program was on about that the other day. He said the story came from a terrible nightmare from his brownies ...pretty intresting i think...
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| Posted: Mon 11 Apr, 2005 |
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Oh yes, I think it can definitely work. I've had a few dreams where, although I wasn't writing a novel, I was reading one. These books didn't exist in real life, and were very good stories, too! Actually, I'm currently in the middle of writing a story I hope to get published someday which is based on some of the ideas I've read in dream books! Although, I must say, usually things I read in dreams are very difficult to remember after the fact. 
But if that can happen, it certainly seems to follow that you could write a story in a dream. I think the best way you can transfer the information is to immediately write down everything you can in a dream journal, just like for a normal dream - then pick out the strongest ideas and themes you can remember and use those in your story. If your dreams are anything like mine, you probably won't remember much exact detail, but if you can just recall the main points, that should be enough to base a story around.
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| Posted: Mon 11 Apr, 2005 |
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HI mapreader, welcome to the forum.
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| I'm going to plan out and write the book in the dream state where my conscious mind will be subdued and my creative subconscious can work unhindered. |
Do you mean you are going to write the book entirely in your (lucid)dreams? Or like the others seem to suggest, merely get ideas and themes from your dreams? I dont think anyone has tried to do the 1st, and I think it would be extremely hard to exactly remember all that you "wrote" inside your dream. However it should not be impossible if you have extremely good dream recall and lots of patience and LD's.
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Posts: 131
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| Posted: Mon 11 Apr, 2005 |
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| freedom88 wrote: |
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Is he the guy that wrote The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde Dr Jekyll and MR hyde... because a program was on about that the other day. He said the story came from a terrible nightmare from his brownies ...pretty intresting i think... |
He did write the story of Jekyll and Hyde, and it was based on a dream he had.
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| “I had long been trying to write a story on that strong sense of man’s double being … For two days I went about racking my brains for a plot of any sort; and on the second night I dreamed the scene at the window, and a scene afterwards split in two, in which Hyde for some crime, took the powder and underwent the change in the presence of his pursuers”. |
From this dream, over a period of the three days that followed the dream, Stevenson wrote madly so as get the story down while it was fresh in his mind, and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was published very shortly after.
He was badly troubled by nightmares when he was young, and this impelled him to develop some degree of control over his dreams. It's my understanding that this was mainly a self-taught ability to interupt bad dreams, and to pre-determine or incubate more desirable dreams while awake, rather than to dream lucidly.
Last edited by Bernard on Tue 12 Apr, 2005; edited 1 time in total
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| Posted: Tue 12 Apr, 2005 |
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Hi mapreader! Welcome to the forum ! 
Someone here on the forum was a painter, and he used to visit dream museums and choose a painting which he reproduces IRL. So it's possible.
But I think you've better to imagine situations in LD's than writing them. If you write something in your LD's, I'm not sure that you can perfectly recall it when you wake up.
You may perhaps dream you're staring at a movie, or reading the summary of a novel, etc.
I hope this can help you. 
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| Posted: Tue 12 Apr, 2005 |
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Thanks everybody, yeah now that I think of it, writing a whole chapter, then bolting upright in bed and writing it word for word doesn't seem like a good idea.
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| Posted: Tue 12 Apr, 2005 |
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If I may ask, mapreader, what other books have you written? Just curious, I wonder if I've come accross some of your work already.
Also, what are you thinking of writing about in this new book?
Good luck by the way.
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| Posted: Tue 12 Apr, 2005 |
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Here's an idea:
You could always use a LD to act out a scene you wished to write about. It'll make it easier to describe the characters, setting and actions. It would also give you a more flexibility - if the dream starts to go off in a direction yuo didn't origionally plan, then stick with it and see where it leads.
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| Posted: Wed 13 Apr, 2005 |
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Robert Louis Stevenson was also on a six day cocaine binge while he wrote The Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
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| Posted: Wed 13 Apr, 2005 |
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| mrvanhalen wrote: |
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Robert Louis Stevenson was also on a six day cocaine binge while he wrote The Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde |
It's only an hypothesis. And if it weren't wrong, it was not a binge, it was as a remedy for tuberculosis. The Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde was written in 1885, and if you look at his letter to Dr. Scott (the one which is written in Samoa, January 20th, 1890), this hypothesis becomes more and more dubious. Moreover, it's well known that Stevenson has waited for 5 years before he found in a dream the solution for his plot (a chemical which changes Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde). And as the story is very short, it seems normal that he wrote it in 6 days.
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| Posted: Wed 13 Apr, 2005 |
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Cocaine binge? RLS? Any source for this info?
I know he credited his dreams for a lot of his creative writing. He even wrote an essay about it. I don't recall any mention of cocaine.
Last edited by Bernard on Thu 14 Apr, 2005; edited 1 time in total
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| Posted: Wed 13 Apr, 2005 |
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Heh, I had a cool dream last night. And I now want to write a story about it  .
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| Re: Writing A Book In A Lucid Dream. |
| Posted: Mon 16 May, 2005 |
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| mapreader wrote: |
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I'm a novelist, and I am just starting out on a new book, but I'm facing massive writers block. I'm going to plan out and write the book in the dream state where my conscious mind will be subdued and my creative subconscious can work unhindered. I was just wondering if this was possible, and how I could conceivably transfer my work from the dream to waking life, any suggestions? |
Hey, I'll admit I'm just a wanna be novelist. (Not Published or anything) But most of the story ideas I get are from dreams and the best ideas for plot, chracters etc... happen just before I fall off to sleep. Hence very difficult to remember and write down. Mostly I have to repeat remember to write this over and over. kinda like people do when do a LD mantra. It doesn't interfere with the flow of ideas either. They just seem to pop up over the mantra. The downside would be I have alot of peices to different stories but nothing complete
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