We all experience dreams, these random scenes and experiences that happen when we are asleep. Sometimes they are wondrous and strike us with awe, sometimes they thrill us with amazing delights, and sometimes they terrify us. Dreams have the power to transport us to many places and allow us to see and experience many things that we might never experience otherwise. They can be so very vivid and real, connecting with us on many levels. We have all awoken part way through a dream and thought ‘Wow! I wonder how that turns out!’ and then gone back to sleep hoping to find out. We’ve all awoken with our hearts pounding in our chests, gasping for breath, having just woken up from a nightmare. Our dreams are rich with inspiration. They often influence great works, including literary ones.
Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde began as a dream. Apparently, he was upset with his wife who awoke him from it. He had just dreamt the first transformation scene. Stevenson later wrote an entire essay on his attempts to extract story material from his dreams.
Steven King is an author that is outspoken about dreams and his writing. On dreaming, he says “I’ve always used dreams the way you’d use mirrors to look at something you couldn’t see head-on, the way that you use a mirror to look at your hair in the back.” He credits dreams for inspiring many of his stories. King once fell asleep while reading Evelyn Waugh’s The Man Who Loved Dickens, a story about a South American man who is held captive to read Dickens to a tribal chief. He dreamt of an author being kept captive, tortured, and then using his skin to bind his own book. He changed a few things in turning this dream into Misery.
Anne Rice supposedly dreamt there was something wrong with her daughter’s blood and that she was dying. Soon after it was found that she had leukemia and died. Anne had been struggling to write for some time, and returned to this dream in writing Interview with A Vampire shortly after her daughter’s death.
Speaking of vampires, The Twilight Series began when Stephanie Meyer dreamt about two lovers, one of which was a sparkly vampire, were lying in a field discussing why their relationship wouldn’t work out.
Countless other succesful authors credit their dreams, including Margaret Atwood, H.P. Lovecraft, Edgar Allan Poe and Charlotte Bronte. Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein began as a dream, too. So, the next time you’re struggling for writing material, the best thing might just be to sleep on it.
