Nature of dreams
Published by Deanna Hoak April 14th, 2008 in blogSo my son was telling me about a bad dream he had last night. It was all very complicated, with an evil computer virus that was taking over the world, and some monsters that were trying to stop it. When he was done describing it, I asked him what he had done in the dream, and he told me he wasn’t in it.
That gave me pause. I’m not at all sure that I’ve ever had a dream wherein I wasn’t somehow a participant. You?
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I'm a freelance copyeditor specializing in fantasy and science fiction. SF/F novels I have copyedited have been finalists for (and have sometimes won) the Hugo, Nebula, Arthur C. Clarke, Golden Spur, John W. Campbell Memorial, Quill, Locus, Philip K. Dick, British Science Fiction, British Fantasy, and World Fantasy awards. In 2007 I was short-listed for a World Fantasy Award for my copyediting.
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That happens to me quite often. Sometimes they’re more fitting for movies. Sometimes they’re fitting for plays. But I will dream stories that have no association to anything I’ve read or watched involving people I do not know. Like the young professor at the Sorbonne that was killed by her jealous lover who was trying to marry above his class.
Occasionally it will be so graphic that I will actually “cast” the parts with popular actors of today. So I’ll dream of Ryan Reynolds playing a part in the movie I’m dreaming, or some such.
Hmmmmm. Yes and no. I usually wind up having a viewpoint character, who isn’t necessarily me. Sometimes I’m just a disembodied inanimate viewpoint, though. (But I tend to wind up picking a viewpoint character somewhere along the way.) But, yes, now and then the dream is more like reading a book or watching a movie — no me-character.
Yeah, I’ve had dreams where I wasn’t myself, but I was still a character who was participating. That’s interesting.
I actually had a dream about a month ago that featured smell, and that was the first time I remember smell being a part of a dream. It was a kind of liniment my grandma used to use, and the odor within the dream was so strong that I woke up in alarm, convinced someone was in the house.
I’m usually the star of my dreams. But I remember once having a dream where the POV character was a pregnant woman who was chased and then murdered.
I’ve had these type of “movie” dreams before. I don’t get (or remember) them very often — probably once a year or so. I’ve also had an animated movie dream once or twice. No idea what the significane may or may not be. Perhaps whatever he’s working out in his mind is something that doesn’t directly affect/involve him, or something he feels he has no control over.
Newbie here.
I often have dreams in which I don’t participate in the action. I’m simply watching it unfold, as I would in a movie or TV show.
It’s a relief to know other people dream this way as well, because up until now, I’ve never met anyone who does.
It happens to me on occaision. Those are strange dreams, and I wake up feeling disconnected.
Sometimes I am someone else in the dream, those aren’t as odd.
There have been dreams that had the plot go pear-shaped, and I became someone else/observer.
Those too are strange, and I wake up somewhat out of myself.