Not All Ideas Deserve Writing

Wile E. Coyote: Super Genius

I have an abundance of ideas. Creative ideas, I would say. But I'm not yet very good at turning that initial spark of brilliance into an awesome story.

I try. I brainstorm.  I doodle. I research. I plot-bubble my way to something pretty good(I think), and then I run with it until I slam into the plot-problem roadblock--like what happens to the coyote after he's jumped and dropped the bomb.

The solutions to these roadblocks don't present themselves when I'm looking them, but I'm digging the way they are starting to appear when I'm not looking. It's kind of like when you KNOW something, but you can't think of it, and it bugs you and bugs you and you still can't think of it so you give up... and then two-weeks from Tuesday, when you're standing in line to buy gum because it's after lunch and you're sure you have dragon breath... and you suddenly shout out 'David Hasselhoff!' and  everyone looks at you like you're crazy? You know, the usual.

Or in this case, at 2am when you should be sleeping but you're reading blogs(or a craft book), and you suddenly realize why your plot went blammo in that story you started months ago.  (<---Look: Justification for not sleeping!)

Dreaming Stories

I dream stories. Always. The stories might be glimpses at my own special brand of insanity, but there's always a plot. There's always a goal, this relates to that(action and consequence), and there are themes. Themes that seem to have nothing to do with my daily life. For years, it's been a running thing with my family and friends, me telling my dreams. Frequently they are answered with: I would watch that or I would read that. A decade ago, when the idea that I could ever write was just a dyslexic fantasy, I ignored it every time someone suggested I write the dream-story down.

My husband, during pre-husband days, harangued me into making a character on the roleplaying game where he played. I didn't want to. I was terrified. Everyone would know I was a bad writer. No one would want to play with me. I made him make the character, and every now and then I would stumble onto the grid, run into someone, type a ridiculously bad sentence, and then flee. I did this until some storyline happened I couldn't bear not being part of, and that one story-arc got me addicted to the whole thing. That's what got me started writing.

Over the next several years, I worked on my writing chops on online text-based RPGs, and didn't consider that I could be a writer. Not until the past 3-4 years did I give it serious thought. Then, my dreams became a way for me to try and build some platform of confidence that I was pursuing an entirely reachable goal. God, the Universe, my subconscious... whatever your moral compass is directed by... wanted me to be a storyteller. It had been giving me stories for years, so I could do this.

The natural progression was to begin writing romance -- that's what I read, after all. But I don't dream romance stories. I dream science fiction, almost entirely. Aliens? Yup. Psychic phenomena? Yep. But I also dream anthropological, alternate-universe, society-based science fiction. If my whateveryoubelieve-spiritual-divining-rod gives me stories, and I use that fact as some kind of guidepost to assure myself I'm finally doing what I am supposed to be doing, shouldn't I be writing that kind of story?

Do you dream stories? Do you ever incorporate real dreams into your plots?