How to Write Dream and Nightmare Sequences Your Readers Will Love

Master the art of dream storytelling with this detailed writing guide

This article was co-authored by wikiHow staff writer Dev Murphy, MA. Dev Murphy is a wikiHow Staff Writer with experience working as a teacher, ghostwriter, copyeditor, and illustrator. He likes to write how-to articles because he likes to learn new things and because he believes that knowledge should be free and available to the world. Dev’s creative writing and visual art have been featured in many places online and in print. When she’s not writing for wikiHow, she draws pictures, makes perfume, or writes hybrid songs. In 2017, Dev received her MA in English Literature from Ohio University. She lives in Pittsburgh with her cat Nick. There are 11 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of all facts cited and confirming the authority of its sources. Find out more…

Dreams can be such an effective and believable way to move the plot along in a novel—but it can be difficult to figure out how to write a dream sequence that isn’t deceptive or implausible. While you are free to use the creative license here, there are a few rules of thumb that might help you get started. Below we’ve listed common features of effective dream sequences, the purpose and use of dreams in fiction, and the many different types of dreams your character can have, plus what to consider when designing a dream scene.

• Use a dream sequence to move the story forward in some way—for example, by shedding light on a character’s fears or desires, or by predicting future events.
• Use logic in the dream sequence, but try not to be too logical: dreams are usually surreal and vivid and often don’t make much sense after waking up.
• Use symbolism in a dream to express a character’s complex abstract thoughts, fears, or desires in a concrete and compelling way.

1. Make sure your dream has a purpose for the novel. Dreams are weird—but weirdness alone isn’t usually reason enough to include a dream sequence in your novel. If your character’s dream has nothing to do with the plot or his character development, you risk boring or confusing your reader (or both). As you create your dream, think about what it contributes to the overall story.[1]

   • You may not know from the very beginning what the sequence of your dreams contributes to. This might be something you figure out as you write (and rewrite and rewrite) your story, so don’t feel pressured to know everything before you even start writing.

2. Be logical…but not too logical. Think about your own dreams: they make sense while you’re in them…but once you wake up, you can’t remember how they made sense. While many readers will appreciate being able to follow the narrative of your dream sequence, consider adding some “dream logic” to the scene to give it that surreal quality that most real-life dreams have.

   • For example, while in real life you may walk to the refrigerator for an apple, in a dream an apple may suddenly appear in your hand, or you may find it in the closet and not think about it.

3. Use vivid images. Even the most bizarre and illogical dreams can be as vivid as waking life – sometimes even more so. Don’t be afraid to use lots of descriptive imagery to really give readers an idea of ​​what’s happening in the dream.

   • Remember that using vivid images doesn’t mean over-describing—a few well-chosen words can paint a more vivid picture than 100 poorly-chosen ones.

4. Use symbolism. If you’re a Freudian, everything in a dream makes sense.[2]
   All. Even if you don’t like Freud, symbolism is an effective tool for conveying a deeper message in a work of art: by representing an abstract thing with something concrete, you can communicate complex ideas more easily and satisfyingly to your readers (without beating them over the head with the answer).

   • Ask yourself if what you’re writing should be in the form of a dream, or if it could (or should) just be incorporated into the actual plot: when the events of your character’s dream are exactly as they would be in real life, beg the question—why are they dreaming it instead of experience in waking life?
     • For example, your character may be afraid of death in their everyday life, but in the dream, instead of them or someone close to them dying, you can represent their fear with a huge black cement block looming over them, or a shadowy closet, or something else completely ominous that helps the reader to better understand their anxiety.

5. Consider using narrative distance. Narrative distance refers to how closely the narration reflects the character’s thoughts and feelings. No narrative distance means readers get a clear insight into how a character is feeling or thinking at a given moment, but significant narrative distance will give the scene a less certain, more mysterious atmosphere—perfect for creating a dreamy vibe.[3]

   • Narrating the book in the character’s spoken language and clearly expressing every thought and emotion would be an example of almost no narrative distance.
   • On the other hand, a narrator who expresses almost no subjective thoughts and feelings of the character, but only objectively describes the actions of the character, creates a significant narrative distance.
   • While prescriptivists might argue that you must maintain the same amount of narrative distance throughout the story, as long as you have a clear purpose for varying the narrative distance, it can be extremely effective.

6. Express your emotions. Because dreams are where your character’s subconscious lives, they give you the opportunity to explore your character’s underlying emotions more deeply than you could in their waking life. So take advantage of this! How do they feel about any strange, scary, beautiful, sad, happy or just plain confusing events that happen in their dream (or nightmare)?

   • Just talking about what’s happening in the dream might be vaguely interesting (“I floated up to the ceiling and then a sentient cheese puff told me I was going to die”), but unless readers get a sense of how your character feels about with what’s going on, they can write off the whole scene as unimportant – or worse, a waste of time.

1. They push the story. As a general rule, if your dream does not reveal any new information to the reader, then it may not be worth including in your book.[4]
   The most effective dream sequences offer something that the reader couldn’t learn from your character’s waking life – insight from the character, understanding of your character’s motivations, insight into past events that affect your character’s present, etc.

2. They foreshadow events to come. Dreams are a wonderful way to subtly predict what will happen later in the novel.[5]
   However, foreshadowing is a delicate art: if your hints about what’s to come aren’t subtle enough, the reader will pick them up too easily, spoiling the narrative. On the other hand, when foreshadowing is done skillfully without being too obvious, it can make the narrative as a whole feel more cohesive and thoughtful.

   • For example, in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, Jane is told that dreaming of a child is a bad omen; the more time she spends in Mr. Rochester’s mysterious house and the closer she gets to an uncertain romance with him, the more she herself dreams of children—hinting to the reader (as well as Jane) that trouble is ahead.[6]

3. They show the character’s fears or desires. Dreams can reveal a lot about your character’s motivations and inner conflicts, including what they fear and desire most. After all, dreams are where our unconscious lives and runs wild: things your character might not actively seek out or talk about in their waking life, they can dream about. That way, your readers can get a better, more honest sense of who your character is and what motivates them.

   • For example, if your character’s marriage is suffering, you can have them dream of their partner without a face, or replace their dream partner with another person or thing to illustrate that they feel distant from them or that they no longer know them.

4. They help the character understand something. Part of what makes good characters believable is that they’re not perfect: they might not see things happening right in front of them, or they might not realize they’re behaving the way they shouldn’t. Maybe they don’t know themselves well. Dreams are an effective way to show the reader what’s going on in a character’s mind and guide them toward deep-seated truths they previously couldn’t (or wouldn’t) recognize.

1. nightmares If you want to illustrate your character’s fears, a nightmare is the perfect way to do it. Nightmares are horrifying at their most extreme and disturbing at their most subtle, but any “level” of nightmare can help your character face his deep-seated fears and anxieties.

   • You can even choose to provide your character hypnopompic hallucinations: visual, auditory or tactile hallucinations that are felt while the person is waking up.[7]
   • Giving your character sleep paralysis can add an extra layer of horror: sleep paralysis is only a temporary loss of muscle control after falling asleep or waking up, but it can be quite alarming for the sleeper and often includes hallucinations or a feeling of suffocation.[8]

2. Lucid dreams In most dreams, you’re probably not aware you’re dreaming—until you wake up and realize it was all in your head. In a lucid dream, however, the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming and may even have some control over what he is doing in the dream.[9]

   • You could give your character a lucid dream as a way to show what would happen if it were up to them in real life: what would they do? How would others react?

3. Fantasies Because dreams often reveal our deep-seated fears and desires, dream sequences are a great method for exploring your character’s wildest fantasies. What do they crave more than anything? If it were their way, how would your novel end?

4. Recurring dreams If your character suffers from unresolved issues, such as PTSD, recurring dreams can be a useful way to show this.[10]
   You can choose to retell the same dream over and over, or you can adopt small (or significant) changes from dream to dream that say something about the character’s progress in overcoming unresolved issues.

5. Related dreams Want to add a supernatural element to your novel? Having two different characters share the same dream or be able to communicate in dreams can be a compelling way to illustrate the connection between characters or even move the plot forward within the confines of “dreamland”.

   • You might even connect your character to someone who has passed away: maybe he’s getting guidance from his deceased mother, for example.

1. Make it clear that it is a dream. Indent the text, write the dream scene in a different font, or put the dream in italics: “I light a candle and it turns into a human head.”

   • You can also choose to keep the same format throughout, but specifically indicate that the character is dreaming, as JK Rowling does in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets: “He dreamed that he was shown in a zoo, with a card reading JUVENILE WIZARD attached to his cage. “[11]

2. Keep the formatting the same if you want to leave readers unsure. In some cases, you may not want readers to know it’s a dream, or you want their grip on the reality of the novel to be more precarious. In this case, avoid shaping the dream in a way that indicates it is not part of the character’s waking life.[12]

   • An example of a novel in which the reader is not sure which scenes are really happening, and which are just dreams, fairy tales or the character’s imagination, is Kate Bernheimer’s The Complete Tales of Ketzia Gold.[13]

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Source: HIS Education