Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Edit: As in, the night visions you have while asleep :D

Come on, writers... we're an imaginative bunch. I bet you've got some doozies to share :)

My dreams often play out like a movie with a very disjointed plot. Here's my latest stumble into Weirdville: a young girl is hanging out with her grandmother. Grandma has made a deal with some unseen entity - she gets new knees and youthful energy for one day so she can run with her granddaughter. In trade, she gives away all her memories from after age 20. She knows her granddaughter as someone she loves, but not exactly who she is. They run together and have a great day.

At the end of the day, the granddaughter plays the old woman's memories back for her like a movie, but she can't take them back in. They're lost to her. It's like she's seeing images from someone else's life, because the memories on the screen haven't "happened" for her yet.

I'm guessing this one came from my grandfather being diagnosed with Alzheimer's.

Oh, our actual dreams? Like the ones our minds conjure up while we are sleeping helplessly in our warm beds? Eeek, I really don't think you want me to go there. I've always had vivid, sometimes wicked dreams - sometimes I think I should write horror instead of romance LoL.

My recurring dreams are the worst. Seriously, I've had the same dream probably over one hundred times since high school. Creepy. Oh, I've got more than one recurring dream. I hate the one where my entire family is attacked by dinosaurs. I'm not kidding, either. And it's not after I watched Jurassic Park or anything. T-Rex has something on me...now only if I could figure out what it was ;-)

Flying? Yup.
Dying? Yup. For those who say if you see yourself die in a dream, you do in real life, that's not true. I have watched myself die more times than I can count. The creepy recurring dream.
Loving? Yup.
Leaving? Yup.
Falling? Yup.
Crying? Yup.

It's like an alternate world for me, my dreams, and sometimes it totally creeps me out.

~JD

LOL, yes, I'm referring to sleeping dreams :D

I have had two dreams in the last month that are going to be VERY helpful if/when I write a literary horror. :) Seriously. My stuff leans more towards lit/book club stuff, but if I can translate those dreams onto the page? :D

Dreams can be so powerful for writing, if you can translate them well. Dreams are usually important to the dreamer only. Using dreams in writing can be tricky. How often do you retell a dream scenario to someone and they just stare at you, wondering why you think it's so significant? ;)

I have a fear of water towers. Yep, silly. But when I've tried to use that in my writing before, it was VERY hard despite my own irrational fears supporting it. :D

Anyway, I like this thread. I think it's good to pick our imagination when it sleeps as an aid to the daily writing...

*Now I will turn and walk away so you can all taunt me for my irrational fear. And that wasn't even my best one!*

My dreams aren't usuallly dark.

My number one recurring dream is that of flying. There are interchangeable characters, but it always has the same core elements. This awesome power to fly is superman-like, and stuns and amazes my family, friends and foes. It surfaces most when I have the least power over what is going on around me and I need some artificial superiority. What is truly remarkable is that there are always high-voltage power lines menacingly stretched in my path, presumably as a metaphor for the danger of having such power. However, in all the years I've had this dream, I've never been zapped. There is enormous freedom and beauty in it. And, I get to rescue people.

Of course my other recurrent dream is that I've started smoking again and I can't stop. I wake up feeling guilty, like I've really blown it, even though I haven't smoked for almost 30 years.

It seems like every single night I have a dream where I'm in high school again and I can't remember the combination to my locker.

Most of my other dreams have to do with needing to get somewhere and coming across obstacle after obstacle. I think I may be more stressed than I realize.

I do not have good dreams. Does anybody really have good dreams?

yeah, i think i've had all those dreams (except maybe's and seamus' smoking one) but when i dream about flying, i can't ever stay in the air. usually, it's more like a super jump to escape something terrifying and then i start falling, falling, falling... and splat. my dreams are usually disturbing and quite bloody. which is really strange because blood makes me sick to my stomach.
my sister says that she dreams in black and white, does anyone else here do that? the colors in my dreams are ultra-saturated, so i always thought black and white dreaming was so strange...

I've always had eye sight troubles and wore glasses for a good majority of my younger years. I used to have dreams not only in black and white, but with the edges black and hazy. It was like black and white tunnel vision or when you squint your eyes real tight and can just barely see out of them.

I have nightmares of being married with three daughters... Oh damn, that's reality.

I have a goofy one where I try pulling my gums out of my mouth with my finger and no matter how much I pull it all comes out like taffy!!! It's really freaky!

Here's one I had two nights ago:

My officemate had convinced me to attend DragonCon with her this year. But when we arrived, DragonCon was not a convention happening at several hotels here in downtown Atlanta... but rather a cross between a creepy-ass carnival and a Renaissance festival. It was outside, half of it situated in a treeless field, and the other half situated in a forest. It was midway games and food booths and old-fashioned rides that people had to power by themselves.

Also, it was full of balloons (of which I've had a phobia since I was a little kid), and, as far as I could tell, absolutely no food I could eat (I'm a vegetarian). The big trend was hot dogs dipped in Kool-Aid -- because apparently in past years, people started buying a hot dog, and a cup of Kool-Aid, and then drenching the former in the latter. The Con organizers had caught on to this trend, and were now offering the "Kool Dog" for $7.50.

I ran into Neil Gaiman. Amazingly, he was not flanked by fanboys and fangirls. I said, "Hey, Neil. I'm really enjoying American Gods. And have you seen any vegetarian food around here?"

He said he hadn't. I was left to keep on traipsing down the midway, flinching at the balloons. (My officemate had long abandoned me by this point. She had been wearing full-on Ren Faire garb, and she ran off to find a panel about Dr. Who fanfic.) Eventually, I found my way into the forest, where a number of "infant games" had been set up. There was one called Baby Orchestra, at which parents sat their babies down in car seat-like contraptions, and any motion they made (including screaming and crying) triggered instruments to start playing. All the parents were nuts over it, and it was surrounded by mom and dads with iPhones and video cameras.

The rest of the dream was rather disjointed, and it involved me either trying to find my way back home, or find a way to escape civilization for a while. But I couldn't do either one, and eventually I found myself at a public bathroom in the forest, where I ran into my dad, who, I suppose, was going to help me get home. But I woke up before I could find out.

... Most of my dreams are bizarre and detailed like that. My dreams usually bring together people I know, and elements from things I'm reading, writing, or thinking about at the time. And they often have more plot than the stories I write! ;)

That's a crazy one, Harper! I'm cracking up about the Kool Dog. Probably not out of the realm of possibility for a carnival/state fair.

Mine are a bit lame I think.

For years I use to dream about being strapped in an abandoned house out on a bluff of some sort in a terrible night time thunder shower. Outside, the house was surrounded by flesh eating big foot. In the dream I am fighting them off while rescuing other people trapped in the house. This one started after my older brother put a nasty looking picture of Bigfoot in my toy box every day for a year. Gotta love older brothers.

The other one I have is where God comes down and gives me the power to change anything I want in my life as often as I want for up to a year. The rules are that the changes can only be in areas that are directly related to my life (no world peace or feeding all the children in India) and that I can go back in time but not forward past the day I start making changes. I have had this one so many times with so many different outcomes.

Besides that there are the usual flying, falling, romances, etc. kinda stuff that everyone has from time to time.

Jason