Dreams
I tend to have really intense, consistent dreams. When I say consistent, I mean there's a basic plot and I stick to it. There are no dancing hippopotami, ever. I don't remember the last time I had a wacky, hilarious, silly dream. I dream predominantly in action-adventure.
Sometimes, I really like my dreams. I mean, of course I would. I want adventure. I had a dream where I was a spy with top-secret information, taking it to a drop point, and the world the dream took place in was incredibly cool. I was riding in a hover train designed like a steam engine, which snaked through a desert canyon. It was like steampunk plus the apocalypse plus the future, and a little bit of deep south in the design of the clothes and the houses. I would love to set a story there. My dreams are super, super cool.
But my dreams are also thematically linked. There's this feeling of desperation that keeps coming up, like an anxiety dream where you need to get a certain thing done. I had a dream that I was in New Orleans, in front of three houses, each of them very tall and thin and ramshackle. I was looking for someone in them, a girl I had to protect or save, I'm not sure which, I just knew I had to find her. It's feelings like that, where I'm looking for someone or trying to help someone. They always come up. I run around the dream and get hurt and am terrified, and then the person I am looking for almost always dies. (Warning: Long dream ramble after this point.) The hover train dream? In the end, I made it to the drop point, an almost empty bed and breakfast. There was an old woman and a young man there. The phone, which I needed to use, didn't work, so the old woman sent me upstairs. The young man told me not to go up. He said it looked scary or something, he was trying to stop me because I was a girl. I thought it was funny, because he didn't know I was a spy. I told him that if I wasn't down in five minutes, he could come up and look for me. Then I went up the stairs. From the outside, it looked like a three-story house, but I just kept going up and up with no end in sight. After a while I realized the young guy was going to come up after me, and he'd have to keep going up, too, and he'd be trapped, and the old woman was a double agent who had sent me upstairs to trap me. And I had no way of telling him not to go up, even though he didn't deserve anything so bad. (end of ramble.)
I would say the most common themes in my dreams are: I am running to find someone who cannot be found; I am trying to protect someone particularly death-prone; I am fighting someone or something that I cannot win against. These are kind of depressing, but not really scary. However, recently my dreams have taken a turn for the fucking nightmarish.
Last night in my dream, I was in this area full of hills and empty houses. The houses were easy to break into -- in fact, we had more trouble getting them to lock from the inside. I was with a group of about five people. I knew more about the situation than they did, so I had to stop them from freaking out and show them how to defend themselves. Basically, there were a bunch of people who were kind of like werewolves. As soon as night fell, they turned into various animals and tried to kill everyone. We had to barricade ourselves in the houses and hide from them, because even a tiny scratch from one of them would turn you into an animal, too. More often they would try to disembowel people.
The thing that made it really creepy, though, was that they weren't just dumb animals wandering around. They stood upright and thought like people. They could laugh. They got into the house we were hiding in -- they saw us because we lit some candles -- and one of them, a bear, maybe? grabbed me from behind. I was fighting back, but I didn't really have a weapon. It was kind of useless.
I woke up from this dream absolutely certain that I was going to die. The feelings it gave me, of basic dumb terror and being trapped, were so real that I had to really convince myself it wasn't happening.
I recently had another dream about being hunted down, which I'm not going to elaborate on, because I've talked a lot about my dreams so far and that seems plenty self indulgent. But there were a lot of similarities between the two. And when I wake up from these dreams, the second I close my eyes, I fall right back into them.
I don't know. I don't really have a point here. Do you, writer-friends, dream in plots this way? Are my dreams trying to tell me something? Does this shit seem as creepy to you as it does to me, or is it silly if you haven't experienced it? Am I insane? Give me insight.
Sometimes, I really like my dreams. I mean, of course I would. I want adventure. I had a dream where I was a spy with top-secret information, taking it to a drop point, and the world the dream took place in was incredibly cool. I was riding in a hover train designed like a steam engine, which snaked through a desert canyon. It was like steampunk plus the apocalypse plus the future, and a little bit of deep south in the design of the clothes and the houses. I would love to set a story there. My dreams are super, super cool.
But my dreams are also thematically linked. There's this feeling of desperation that keeps coming up, like an anxiety dream where you need to get a certain thing done. I had a dream that I was in New Orleans, in front of three houses, each of them very tall and thin and ramshackle. I was looking for someone in them, a girl I had to protect or save, I'm not sure which, I just knew I had to find her. It's feelings like that, where I'm looking for someone or trying to help someone. They always come up. I run around the dream and get hurt and am terrified, and then the person I am looking for almost always dies. (Warning: Long dream ramble after this point.) The hover train dream? In the end, I made it to the drop point, an almost empty bed and breakfast. There was an old woman and a young man there. The phone, which I needed to use, didn't work, so the old woman sent me upstairs. The young man told me not to go up. He said it looked scary or something, he was trying to stop me because I was a girl. I thought it was funny, because he didn't know I was a spy. I told him that if I wasn't down in five minutes, he could come up and look for me. Then I went up the stairs. From the outside, it looked like a three-story house, but I just kept going up and up with no end in sight. After a while I realized the young guy was going to come up after me, and he'd have to keep going up, too, and he'd be trapped, and the old woman was a double agent who had sent me upstairs to trap me. And I had no way of telling him not to go up, even though he didn't deserve anything so bad. (end of ramble.)
I would say the most common themes in my dreams are: I am running to find someone who cannot be found; I am trying to protect someone particularly death-prone; I am fighting someone or something that I cannot win against. These are kind of depressing, but not really scary. However, recently my dreams have taken a turn for the fucking nightmarish.
Last night in my dream, I was in this area full of hills and empty houses. The houses were easy to break into -- in fact, we had more trouble getting them to lock from the inside. I was with a group of about five people. I knew more about the situation than they did, so I had to stop them from freaking out and show them how to defend themselves. Basically, there were a bunch of people who were kind of like werewolves. As soon as night fell, they turned into various animals and tried to kill everyone. We had to barricade ourselves in the houses and hide from them, because even a tiny scratch from one of them would turn you into an animal, too. More often they would try to disembowel people.
The thing that made it really creepy, though, was that they weren't just dumb animals wandering around. They stood upright and thought like people. They could laugh. They got into the house we were hiding in -- they saw us because we lit some candles -- and one of them, a bear, maybe? grabbed me from behind. I was fighting back, but I didn't really have a weapon. It was kind of useless.
I woke up from this dream absolutely certain that I was going to die. The feelings it gave me, of basic dumb terror and being trapped, were so real that I had to really convince myself it wasn't happening.
I recently had another dream about being hunted down, which I'm not going to elaborate on, because I've talked a lot about my dreams so far and that seems plenty self indulgent. But there were a lot of similarities between the two. And when I wake up from these dreams, the second I close my eyes, I fall right back into them.
I don't know. I don't really have a point here. Do you, writer-friends, dream in plots this way? Are my dreams trying to tell me something? Does this shit seem as creepy to you as it does to me, or is it silly if you haven't experienced it? Am I insane? Give me insight.