I may or may not have an obsession with writing dream scenes (and anyone who read the original version of WWCA can remember that HORRIBLE prologue on dreams). 

BUT I HATE IT WHEN AUTHORS DO REALLY BAD DREAM SEQUENCES !!! So here's my tips/rants/problems with dream sequences that I see!

Let's start with cliche dream sequence steps:

- character opens their eyes

- character has no idea where they are

- character hears a voice or sees something magical

- character talks to that voice, which gives them cryptic advice, or lives through something from the past, or sees something from the future, which they know that they must prevent no matter what.

- character jerks awake and remembers their dream perfectly forever and it applies to the life lesson they learn or bad guy they face.

And there are MANY MANY MANY problems with this and THEY ANNOY ME SO MUCH. (I'm sorry if I sound very aggressive here, I've very passionate about this.)

01.
It's not weird enough

Good books are realistic, at least to some degree. Do you know what's realistic about dreams? That they aren't.

Why is it that characters in books always have very realistic dreams? They're in a place they know or think they know or can recognize during some point in the book. They see someone they know or will know. Sometimes they're haunted by a loved one who's dead, or see the villain they're supposed to conquer. 

True story:

I had a dream that I was a bee who created this beautiful colony in a tree trunk, but then it became too crowded so I had to go out and make a new one. I didn't really want to go out but I was 'the Chosen One' and so on and so forth, so I did. I tried to make one in an old lady's house, but she chased me out with a broom. I tried to make one on a telephone pole, but it didn't work either for reasons I don't know. I was lamenting that I was never going to make another successful colony when this other bee comes along and tries to help me but ends up being really annoying. He tried to tell me that the telephone pole was a good place to make a colony, which I did NOT appreciate. We're finally starting to become friends when I drift awake. 

Does this make sense theoretically? Yes.

Does any human being turning into a bee and trying to make a colony make any sense? No. Especially because I'm not a Bee Keeper or a Bee Hunter or a Bee Anything. The closest contact I've had to bees is eating honey and getting stung that one time when I was six or seven. 

I'll talk about remembering dreams in a second, but why is it that characters always dream about something right after they've experienced it? When I watched Stranger Things, Hopper appeared in my dreams like four days later, or something like that.

NOT EVERYONE IS GOING TO HAVE A VERY REALISTIC DREAM ABOUT SOMETHING THEY'VE SEEN THAT DAY. PLEASE STOP DOING IT. It annoys me to no end.

Please have characters have weird dreams. Please have characters have dreams where the landscape changes completely and the person they're talking to turns into a cow but they don't notice because the dream tells them it's totally normal. I've had people I'm talking to completely change and not notice it at all in dreams. I've had the 'plot' (if you can call it a plot. Storyline maybe?) of the dream change and it's totally normal. How does one go from searching for their friend at a motel to riding in a space bubble with Black Widow? Ask my crazy brain. (That actually happened to me.)

Remember that dreams are incredibly versatile. They move in weird ways and don't usually have the same landscape or characters stay for very long. Dreams are fluid and changing, and they do incorporate things from everyday life. Try and make dreams crazy, but with kernels of plot in them. Why do dreams have to be very obvious hints and clues?

02.
Remembering dreams.

I, by some magic, manage to remember a good portion of the dreams I dream and have a dream diary (which means I'd probably be very good at Divination if Hogwarts existed). Most of the time, I don't remember the exact words I spoke, or who spoke them, or what happened exactly, only that I went from a garden maze to my house while chasing thieves, one of whom turned out to be one of my friends.

PEOPLE DON'T REMEMBER EVERY SINGLE THING THEY SEE OR HEAR FROM EVERY SINGLE DREAM. I hate that SO much.

I am begging you, please stop making characters remember a perfectly detailed conversation they had with their guardian angel. I'm sure there's scientific research somewhere on how likely it is to remember a dream, or what people usually remember, but I'm too lazy to find it right now.

Let's stop having characters who can recite everything down to the pauses someone in their dream did. Please.

03.
Waking up

Ah, waking up. Another one of the really, really, really badly done parts of dream sequences. Once again, I know there are scientific studies about what part of sleep you dream in and when you dream, but I'm not that dedicated right now.

Why do people always say, "they felt themselves waking up," or "they were dragged back to the waking world," or "they awoke with a jolt"?

Here are the different ways I usually wake up (and I know it differs from person to person):

- My alarm rings in the middle of a dream

- I slowly open my eyes and I'm awake but it's hard to keep my eyes open

- I wake up at some point, and toss and turn until my alarm rings or I drag myself out of bed

- The light wakes me up

Usually, I can remember my dream very well right after I've woken up, but it fades from memory the longer time goes on unless I specifically commit it to memory. Even then, I've lost many dreams because I've told myself 'you'll remember it later!' and then I forget.

In short: people usually can't tell when they're going to wake up, but fiction is fiction, and describing waking up is hard.

Let's please try to avoid having people know they're being dragged back into the waking world. It's one of my biggest pet peeves!!

Am I guilty of using all of these in my own writing? Of course. Can bad dream sequences be essential to the plot? Of course. Should we work on making dreams more 'realistic'? Of course.

I realize that the whole idea of dreams being realistic is kind of hilarious, but these are my opinions as someone who dreams of really weird things! Let's all move on from writing dreams where the character appears in a long-forgotten temple to meet a king or queen from days past who warms them about the shadow of doom that has returned. Instead, let's include dreams that make absolutely no sense because sometimes, that's what we need.

DREAM ON!!!