There's no place like home... there's no place... Oh, it's you! That's funny, I just had the strangest dream. And you were there, and you were there, and you... well, no, not you, I don't like you. But most of you were there, and it was a beautiful place. Well, most of it was beautiful, but some of it wasn't very nice...
The part that I hated was that every movie ended with the reveal that it was all a dream. It made art seem an extra degree removed from relevance, so it was harder to engage with the plot.
Fiction is already fake, we know it's fake, but we set that aside when reading. However, it's a delicate balance (although some people are more willing to suspend their disbelief further than others). So, I don't know why stories go that extra step of saying that the fiction was fake.
You're telling me that the thing that I already know didn't happen, didn't even happen in the story? In a long series, sometimes this is done to maintain the structure of the continuity, and avoid the consequences... but if the dream (or virtual reality simulation, or vision quest, or story-within-a-story) doesn't have any consequences on the overall plot, then why waste time with it at all? Sure, some stories have character development, or someone changes drastically, or "doesn't wake up", or we learn that one of the people was fake, or some other cool thing that affects the story as a whole - that's awesome. But, unless you can come up with a real good reason to make the whole thing a dream, I think it's a bad idea. I once abandoned a story idea for a series, where it was all a dream, because I felt like it wasn't fair to the reader to have them buy a whole book that was all just a dream.
But, y'know, now that I'm awake, as much as I hate those kinds of endings, that's all I have to really say about it. But, there's another thing that been bothering me about dreams in stories. I understand why people like dreams in stories. You can get some insight as to how a character thinks, you can have some magical or prophetic vision to move the story forward or you can represent trauma with their nightmares. Sure, there are also some writers that abuse dream sequences for dumb fake-outs, jumpscares, or just the spectacle of weird or surreal imagery... those are some downsides, but either way, there are enough upsides to justify dreams in fiction.
But, how do you represent a dream in a story? In a story where it was All Just A Dream, the dream reveal is usually a twist, so the story is written pretty realistically, to try to hide the twist from the reader. Like, in The Wizard of Oz, a story famous (or, infamous, depending on who you're talking to) for its ending - I even paid satirical homage to it at the top of this post - and in that story it's all a dream in the end, but that was arguably foreshadowed by the existence of witches, munchkins, talking scarecrows and magic in the story. Or, there was a really, really bad movie I saw earlier this year... and I'm about to give MASSIVE SPOILERS for Stay, the 2005 Ewan McGregor, Ryan Gosling movie - but, in that movie, the whole plot turns out to be the coma-dream, or dying vision, or something of a character who dies in a car crash; but, several times through the movie there's just bad editing, flicking from one angle to another mid-dialogue, and that was supposedly done to foreshadow that it was a dream. Also, the main character always wears trousers that are too short because - and I'm not making this up - when the dying guy looked up at him from the road, he could see his socks, so that's how he always imagined him... what? You might think that's kind of interesting, but personally I think it's really stupid. Now, I admit that this is meant to be some kind of dying vision or something, so it's not the same as a dream, but my problem is that, it still doesn't feel right to me. I haven't died before, but for some reason, I don't think think "jarring editing" represents how that would feel. - END OF SPOILERS - for that, but honestly, it's a bad movie, I recommend you don't watch it. But with both of these movies because the surreal quality was the twist, it just rubs me the wrong way, even if they tried to foreshadow it.
See, there is a fundamental issue with dreams in fiction, and it is that when we dream, we're asleep. I mean, that's a given, but my point is that when we're asleep our brain isn't as active, so we're not as rational, or perceptive.
This means that you can be going back to your old primary school, or walking underwater, or even flying and it doesn't seem at all unusual - in essence, one of the symptoms of dreaming is chronic suspension of disbelief.
But its not just the experience of dreams that's a little odd but also the look and feel. In dreams, because you're asleep (and because your brain uses a lot of shortcuts to conserve energy and effort), your brain often doesn't recreate things "fully". For instance, your language centres are usually inactive when you're asleep, which is why people don't speak properly, and why it's often difficult to read books or any written words - or, if you can read, if you look away from written words then look back, the words often change. Also, because your motor cortex has been disabled, movement can feel restricted or floaty, like you're underwater. Also, because the hippocampus plays a role when you're asleep, making it harder to recall finer details, some things in dreams can be incomplete, fuzzy or barebones.
This can be an issue when it comes to fiction, since if you try to do all of that in a book or a movie, the audience can't suspend their disbelief that far - because they're awake - and especially if you're going for an "all just a dream" twist you can't make dreams feel too dreamlike, or it will either be blatantly obvious that it's a dream, or it will confuse the hell out of your reader.
Now, I have some seen some interesting stories that play into the weirdness of dreams for their plot. I call these metadream sequences, wherein the dreamer is aware that they're in a dream... I suppose you could call these "lucid dream sequences", but I don't, and it's my blog post so... pbbt.
For one example, you need look no further than House, especially the Season 4 finale two-parter "House's Head"/"Wilson's Heart" - in this story, brain trauma causes Dr Gregory House to forget some vital clue in a medical mystery, so he dreams, hallucinates and even hypnotizes himself to search his mind for the clue. In the episode, House indulges in fantasies, blurry visions and mind games to show that he is dreaming as well as the flaws in his memory and way his mind manifests his obsession with puzzle-solving. There are some brilliant uses of lighting and cinematography in this episode. I especially love that he has several dream sequences in a bus - as he had a bus crash, causing his brain trauma - and as he's on the empty bus, there are patterns of rolling light past the windows, since he would most distinctly remember the bus when it was moving, but the bus is empty, and there's nothing visible outside. It's a pretty cool effect, and I think it does a great job of creating that dreamlike quality.
Or, for another example, there's a cool dream sequence in The Wild Thornberrys Movie that serves as the call to adventure. The dream is amazingly trippy and surreal. Eliza sees the lost cheetah cub, Tally, in her dream, floating as if in water. Then, at the top of a pile of rocks, Shaman Mnyambo appears in the form of a talking tree. The sequence perfectly recreates the floaty feeling of a dream.
In fact, this sequence is what first opened my eyes to the many possible ways that people can represent dreams in media.
I'd seen my fair share of dream sequences in television shows, but because they have to manage a limited budget, most shows just reuse the main set (or animation frame), and just start and end the sequence with a wobbly screen transition, and harp music. Seeing something that tried to make a dream look like a dream?
Now these are all movies, but I write my stories... and when it comes to literature, there are advantages and disadvantages when it comes to dream sequences, and both are due to the facets of the medium itself. Namely, when reading a book, all of the imagery, characters and scenery are being composed in the reader's mental theatre - pieced together by their own mental props. So, if you say "Stacey was standing in her high-school", then even if you don't describe anything else, the reader will imagine some vague "high-school" either like their own, or one they've seen in media. This is the same sort of thing your brain does when you dream, so you can make a scene feel dreamy just by these kinds of vagueries.
However, the big disadvantage is due to the same issue. If you want the main character to encounter a clown-faced cockroach with chainsaw-claws for hands, well, you're forcing the reader's "mental costume designer" to build this thing from scratch. And that's just a monster, what if you want them to be in a school, which is furnished with the desk, bed and cupboards from their childhood bedroom? If this was a movie, you could just do that, but for a book, you can't get away with that without telling the reader to imagine it first - hiring their "mental propmaster" to do it for you - so, it's a lot harder to sneak in surreal stuff. It's still sort of possible, but it takes a lot more effort, and it's rife with potential for sustainment of disbelief, which will take your reader out of the story.
Unfortunately, the most common example I've seen of dream sequences in fiction stem from Goosebumps books. Goosebumps books love using dream sequences for cheap fake-out scares, and false starts. There's a lot of Goosebumps books which start with a nightmare sequence, just to confuse you. Ironically, even though there's a book called "Don't Go To Sleep!", the story with the most dream sequences is apparently "Monster Blood II", even starting off with a two dream sequences, back to back. The entire first chapter is a dream, meaning the introduction to this book never happened, and the second chapter ends with a daydream sequence. That's right, an imagine spot, which only exists to make the chapter cliff-hanger more suspenseful, but just seems lame, and makes me a little concerned about this kid, since it features animal abuse. The first chapter uses the same trick as The Wizard of Oz, capitalizing on the fantastical aspects of the story - the first chapter has Evan Ross dealing with his monsterfied pet dog, after it ate monster blood. You can see how that might be a believable opening in a Monster Blood sequel...
So, in a sense, it's a good and a bad example of how to do a nightmare sequence since it's clearly surreal, yet the reader might believe it's happening, making it a good "dream"; but, it makes the story worse, since your first line is the initial handshake you have with your reader, the greeting that can help define your relationship. If the first line - let alone the first whole chapter - is all a pointless dream sequence for an unearned scare? What does that say about the way you treat your audience? To me, it says you're willing to waste their time to scare them, rather than use your own time to earn that emotional response, and develop a good story.
But hey, how about another example - this time, a good one. I'm a big fan of the Wardstone Chronicles books (also called the Spook's Books, because of the titling conceit), and in the first book, there is a minor, but fascinating plot point about knowing when you're dreaming, and when you're awake. The first book, "The Spook's Apprentice" is about an apprentice monster-hunter (called a Spook), learning the tricks of the monster-hunting trade, especially witches. It may, or may not, have partially inspired my own Hunter's Guide to Monsters series... In the book, one of the lessons Tom must learn is the difference between waking and dreaming, because some subtle magics can trick you into dreaming while awake - seeing things that aren't there. There's even a moment in the book where Tom, the main character, is being tormented by a monster, and has to wake up before he can escape. I won't spoil the moment, but I think it's very well done, and the important thing is - because the nightmare is caused by magic, and the main character has to wake up so he can escape, the entire dream helps move the plot forward. That's the hardest thing with dream sequences...
But, even in these literary examples, whilst fantasy and horror stories with speculative fiction elements can have monsters and madness happen - and due to genre conventions, it doesn't seem out of place - they can toy with surreality, but they're still not quite right, are they? The reason I enjoyed the example from The Wild Thornberrys is because it felt dreamy, floaty, flowing in the way that sleeping minds flow from idea to idea.
I think, after this investigation, I've been lead to two key things to keep in mind when working on dream sequences - or nightmare sequences - in stories.
Firstly, it doesn't matter whether your story is speculative fiction or not, because there's a variety of ways that dreams manifest. Yes, sometimes you're floating through space with your koala sidekick, and sometimes you're going through a memory, and things are just slightly off. So, whilst I applaud dream sequences that take a deep-dive into the surreal, that's not the endmost and utmost of dreams - sometimes, dreams are boring, and so some dream sequences can be understated, and still be realistic.
But secondly, fiction is already playing a complicated game of suspension of disbelief, and so if you try to stretch that with a freaky-deaky dream sequence, you might be going a stretch too far. So, whilst it isn't always the most realistic that characters have full conversations in their dreams, and the rooms they're in seem to remain solid and unshifting, despite how warped settings can get in dreams... the story has to come first. So long as you put in a little effort to add a surreal quality - don't get lazy, and rely on harp music and wavy transition effects to convince the audience you're in a dream sequence - then cheating a little can be forgiven for the sake of the story.
I'm the Absurd Word Nerd, and I've learnt that there's no place like home, and I don't want to go anywhere else ever again... wait, really? That's the moral of The Wizard of Oz? Well, to hell with that! I've stayed at home enough with these quarantines and lockdowns, and I'm looking forward to getting out of my house.
So, Until Next Time, can you tell the difference between waking and dreaming?
