Dreams Come True...

Good afternoon, glorious writers! I hope you're awake, because today's topic is dreams.

Dreams. Hmm. Who ever knew a word could hold so much emotion? Relaxation, distress, anger. They can be, well, surreal, or they can be nightmares and hold your deepest worries and stress-producers.

A dream in your novel should hold some sort of premonition or foreshadowing for what's to come, or at least give us the mood. They don't have to be smack-in-the-face obvious, but certain dreams can definitely hint oblivion or that something bad is going to happen.

To get ideas, I usually go on a dream dictionary site and look up some of the words to see their meanings, like I do whenever I'm trying to decipher one of the dreams I've had. I also look around the dream forums on the website, looking at the dreams other people have posted. I've used similar ones, just changing them around to fit my purpose. I sometimes use similar dreams to my own, or completely make them up entirely.

I think dreams are very useful in stories--they're much better than flat out telling--but you have to make them foreshadow something. Foreshadowing is never clear-cut, so don't worry if the dream doesn't shout out its meaning, as dreams never do. Happy sleeping!

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to email me at penelopepaige@rocketmail.com. Time to go sharpen that pencil...

Question: Do you use dreams in your stories? If so, what information do they tell us?