As you read, your body remains in a space called: "Reality Land"--but the inner you, the thinking, feeling, imagining, real you, was really elsewhere. You were walking the suburban streets of a cloud city or underwater alleys, forest paths or sandy beaches of a fictional world, as you shared the adventures and thoughts and emotions of that world's people. People you had come to know and care about - Friends. Fiction has been called a "waking dream." When you sleep and dream, you experience the dream as real. And when you enter the waking dream of a well-written short story or novel, it is just as genuine.
Just like in real life, your characters must have dreams as well as "waking dreams". Your characters will read and write, watch TV, listen to the radio, daydream... within the confines of your story.
You can use dreams as a way to get to know your characters. It is a great way to delve into your character's psyche and see what is really going on inside. A dream can be a goal. Furthermore, it is a means to show your readers who your character really is. Dreams can affect plot as well as the character. The most common example I can think of is Harry Potter and his long corridor nightmares.
But dream sequences have been used a lot, right? Yes, but there are other ways and this is the "waking dream" concept. Depicting not only the story your character is reading but also their mental notes as they read the newspaper, a book, tarot cards... Making your characters write is a great way to demonstrate what they are thinking. TV is the ultimate representation of a world's culture. How often have you made mental notes while watching TV: "Oh he's a fool, listen to the way he speaks." TV can be used to show your character's opinions of the world surrounding him or her.
Dreams and the waking dreams are very intimate and can tell us a lot about others and ourselves. The same goes for fictional characters.
This week, you chose a hero and a villain and do some digging around regarding their backstory and the motivations of their creators. Today, take one of those characters and create one of the following scenarios for him/her:
1) Depict your character writing a note to someone they feel they need to spend more time with. Make sure you include people, descriptions and settings that inhabit that characters world.
2) Have your character experience a dream or nightmare that he/she has to describe to someone else. Depict why that experience shapes something that character is well-known for to the rest of the world.
3) Depict a scene where your character dreams about becoming something other than what they really are.
