Writers' Challenge 9 - Dream Sequences

The challenge for this month is dream sequences. The dream sequence is one of those things that is employed in a wide range of mediums from Television to Movies and of course in novels. However, while some dream sequences work, others are sorely lacking and quickly disolve the reader's suspension of disbelief.

Your challenge for this month is to write a dream sequence that is believeable, and also to write the end of the dream sequence (where the character wakes up) in a believe fashion also.

Are you up to it?

Kithera

 

*Swing swing*
*bash bash*
Rawwwrrr!
Rawwrrrr!!!
*bash bash rip*
RAAWWWWRRRRRR!!!!!!
RR- . . . Hrmmmmmmm? Rar. Zzzzzzzz....

-------

that was terrible and I apologize in advance as I hit the post button.

 

In this context, is said dream sequence supposed to NOT seem like a dream? I.e. (even though we all know it's a dream because that's what the challenge is ) that the reader isn't supposed to figure out it's a dream until the dreamer awakens? Or is it all right to establish from the get-go that this is obviously a dream? Sorry for any confusion.

 

It can be established (or not as the case may be) that this is a dream at any time you desire.

The objective is to make it seem real and believeable, as most dream sequences never quite do.

Kithera

 

Quick question:

Where do we submit these pieces?

 

The objective is to make it seem real and believeable, as most dream sequences never quite do.

But...but...how can dreams be "real and believeable?" What, pray tell, dost thou mean?

GAH...brain...cannot...comprehend! *head explodes*

 

Gah!

The dream sequence isn't supposed to be dodgy like those that you normally encounter. Like the cross-over challenge we are trying for pieces that don't tear up and destroy the suspension of disbelief for the readers. Try and make the dream sequence fit in while still maintaining the suspension for the reader.

If it is of a resonable size then post it in this thread, otherwise post it in its own thread on the appropriate board and link it back here.

Kithera

 

Crap, I'm still confused. I'm hopeless. (You can sure tell I'm a bit thick, can't you? )

Well, I'm gonna assume you mean by "suspension of disbelief" that the reader doesn't get jolted out of the dream sequence by some...odd thing that would make them stop thinking it was a dream...or vice versa. Oy. *sigh* Methinks I better just put something up and find out the hard way.

 

Okay, I have NO idea if I did this the way it was intended. But this is what came to me, the plot bunny bit and it had sharp teeth.

A Clone's Luck

I renamed this, that is what I get for trying to do anything requiring brain function too early in the morning.

 

YAY! An example at last! And such an excellent one!

 

Here's a dream sequence I wrote as a prologue for my epic "Council of the Sith" to get readers up to speed without reading the miserable first story of my trilogy (I was 13 when I started the first book--it's primative). Anyway... the prologue to "Council of the Sith":

The Pomojema Temple

Dravis Sky was there again, he knew what was happening, and he wished he could awaken from this dream which had haunted him for almost a year. But he knew he could not, he knew the scenario would have to play itself out to its wrenching conclusion.

Familiar sounds: the air groaning with thunder from the passing storms, his boots scratching against the dusty black stones, and the lapping of running water, falling in sheets from the collapsing ceiling. Sunlight streamed down with the water, refracted, sending rainbow patterns into the darkest reaches of the temple, but did not illuminate the pitch-black shadows.

Dravis could only rely on his physical senses, his Force senses were overwhelmed, blinded by the pure power that radiated from the hidden prize. He could not even feel his companions, though he could see some of them, spreading out through the darkness, searching for the Kaiburr Crystal, the one thing that could save a dying Luke Skywalker.

He knew them all well, but in the dream, they were mere shadows, their names just out of reach. All but one? her name was Casey Vadis.

Her home colony of Brygone had been ransacked by the Empire after Supreme Admiral Pellaeon's suspected assassination. She had been liberated from an Imperial penal colony in an attack of which Dravis himself had been a part. Freed, she had joined the New Republic military and become a communications specialist.

Each component of her tragic past, Dravis was sure, contributed to why she was here, on this Force forsaken world in Imperial Territory.

She looked so insignificant under the stone eyes of Pomojema, God of the Kaiburr. The gigantic statue seemed to be watching her, and him.

Dravis knew that his physical body was thrashing on the sleeping pallet in his cold and dank room in the Jedi Academy. But still the dream went on.

Somehow, in this twisted dream pseudo-reality, he stepped out of himself, and Dravis watched himself walk into the blackness--in retrospect, the most definitive mistake of his life.

Casey looked down to the base of the statue, and noticed a glint; a flash of red across the surface of a small stone. She cocked her head and stood peering at it for a moment, before advancing.

Dravis wished he could call out! As though warning her in time would change the past, alter the now, and erase a year of regrets. But he could not make a sound; he was a captive to the dream as he had been so many nights. He could not even look away.

Casey knelt over the stone and picked it up off of the floor with her gloved hands. She brushed fifty years worth of dust from its surface, revealing its true brilliance.

"I think I've found it," Casey whispered as she stared unblinking into the heart of the Kaiburr Crystal, the dazzling lights reflected in her wide, mesmerized eyes.

Then, she carefully removed her glove. And touched the crystal. "NO!" Dravis heard himself yell now, only when it was too late.

Suddenly, Casey threw back her head as the awesome powers of the Force flooded into her. Shafts of red light exploded from her mouth and eyes, lancing up into the heights of the Temple, washing every surface in its glorious, blinding illumination. After a second that stretched on forever, the light retracted into the crystal.

And Casey was gone.

Now, Dravis' eyes flew open; now he sat bolt upright on the sleeping pallet. Now the dream was finally over.

Dravis found he was breathing hard, his brown hair matted to his forehead with sweat. He closed his eyes and concentrated on slowing his rapidly beating heart, slowing his breathing. He was training to become a Jedi, and part of that was in learn

 

Interesting challenge, Kit'. I'm hoping to get something together for it.

 

Well, I've given it a shot

http://boards.theforce.net/The_Saga/b10476/16352903/

It isn't much, but anything is worth trying. Enjoy.

 

I know this has probably been asked in other challenges a gazillion times before... but can we use something we've already written and maybe play with it a little?

 

This is supposed to be brand new stuff, otherwise I'd be posting faster....

 

I'm still not sure what Kit's going for, but this is semiautobiographical.

---

Title: The Myth of Dreams -- A Drabble
Timeframe: post-AotC
Focus: Padme


Padme stood frozen, unable to move as Anakin ignited his saber and swung it in a tight arc. The world seemed to spin, and she watched her body rising past her. No, it wasn't, she realized; she was tumbling past it. She hit the ground and rolled to a stop. Only then did her body start to fall.

Reality snapped back into place. She lay in bed, Anakin beside her. "It's not true," she said aloud.

"What?" Anakin mumbled.

"If you die in a dream," she explained, "you don't die in real life."

"That's nice," he said, already asleep again.

[hr]

The inspiration for this was a dream I had a few weeks ago. Jason Voorhees (y'know, the hockey-masked guy) was chasing me with an axe. I tripped, and he decapitated me - pretty cleanly, too. I just lay there dead for a prolonged moment before I woke up.

 

This is an excerpt from my fanfic. It's a vision/Force induced dream(hehe) that starts off with Ben's recurring dream verbatim. Ben is having an out of body experience and watching the dream unfold.

_________________________________________

And so they sat and regulated their breathing, meditating in on the Force. Ben felt a strange tug on his essence by the Force, and he knew it was a call. He allowed it to grasp him, but felt as though he was being taken underwater. The room began to blur and morph into something completely different, and suddenly Ben was outside looking in. On himself. In a strange, lush forest.

A boy sits. Around this boy, there is a forest. In front of this boy is a stream. Through, and through, the frequency of life reverberates. It streams through the boy, around him, in a waltz of energy called the Force. The boy gathers it around him, yet gathers himself within him. Each life, each natural substance becomes attuned to the child as he meditates. He feels what they feel, his awareness expands infinitely yet confined to the small grove of life. The boy finds his self and his control within this field of life, a white light that gives him vision yet clouds it. The Force around him embraces, and it embraces. White, yet, dark, yet one.
The reverie takes the boy's awareness into the stream, towards the stream, deeper and farther until he feels no more of the natural harmony of life, the natural harmony of the Force. All that is here is an abyss of dark, of evil, of rage with dominating intentions. The child closes down his awareness before he is consumed. Flustered, the child flees the area.

Ben sees this child and knows that it is himself. At his present, or close age. No, it can't be... The vision that haunted Ben's childhood dreams had never gone past this point.

A ship zoomed into space and the stars dripped into star lines. The ship landed on a planet, and suddenly Ben's dream body was thrown an indistinguishable amount of time into the future. A metal device that reeked of the dark side lay on a pedestal on a city in the sky, wind blowing furiously. Crackling dark energy erupted around a dark mist, and from that mist was a hand. And that hand reached slowly for the dark device...

It's too late! I can feel it. That person is me! Ben wailed, watching the vision slowly unfold before his eyes in this strange vision realm. The Force is telling me that I'll be lost to the dark side...

In the real galaxy, Jacen was panicking. Ben's body was in his arms, convulsing in unending spasms. Jacen shook Ben, trying to wake him up, but it only solicited moans and Force shrills radiating from the apprentice.

"Too late...too late for me," Ben repeated over and over. Jacen stood with the teenager in his arms and tried to sense the nearest Jedi.

Aunt Mara! he called.

She sent him feelings that she also felt the disturbance. Jacen took off at a run for Mara's location.

On my way.

 

Title: Dream Reality
Summary: This is greatly inspired by my story, Broken, which is ungoing in the Beyond the Saga forum. This is also a little weird, but I think all dreams are.

***

::I'm always with you::


A woman walked slowly in the dark chamber, her robes amber colored, her hair flowing into nothingness and everywhere.

::I'm always with you::

A chill, cold and unbearable, ripped up her backside, making her hug her arms to her chest as the end of the corridor neared.

::I'm getting closer. Feel my arms::

She was being followed. He had touched her skin. The cold buried itself deep inside her bones and she shivered.

::I'm going to make you pay::

Jacen was inside the Council room, laying in the center of the room upon the floor. Blood flowed from his wounds.

::He's not dead. It was the other one. You know that::

Jacen faded away into nothingness and the other one appeared.

Jaina turned herself away, but something pushed her forward and the doors slammed shut, sealing her inside the hall.

"No!" She screamed, running for the doors.

::It was me. It was me and you run::

"Leave me alone."

::IT WAS ME::

The voice thundered around the room, shaking Jaina to the core.

She turned back toward the room and he touched her skin once more. Cold, dead eyes staring at her from a bloodied face.

"It was me, but you run," Kyp breathed, touching her again. "Don't run! Don't run!"

"Kyp, no," She whispered. "Please, you were all right. Please, leave me alone."

Bloodied hands touched her face, pulling her into a kiss that she didn't want. He was forceful and demanding in his kiss. Making her see what was before her.

Making her finally see what was always there.

But it was only a dream. And seeing was believing.

 

Hope this is okay:

Swirling mists surrounded Olus Spiritwatcher as he tried to make sense of his surroundings. He knew this was a dream as his vision was always a misty, blurry view. A pair of modified flare-s swoop bikes levitated in front of him, while the vague sounds of a battle thrummed nearby. The right swoop had the Idiot card from sabaac painted on its side. Olus was drawn to the left bike, however, something about it reminded him of home. As he stepped forward to examine it more closely Olus saw the glyphs of his ancesters had been painted all over the bike, while the side had the Master of Sabers card. Suddenly a man tackled him as an explosion blew up one of the swoops. Rolling the man's body off him, he drew into a combat crouch; his krys knife already in hand. An AT-ST chicken-walker loomed over the walls of a compound in the distance, but it's blaster cannons were now arcing towards another target out of view. Slowly he returned his knife to the sheathe at his side.

Turning back to the man who had thrown him clear of the blast, he examined the man's injuries. Shrapnel had lodged itself in the man's upper left shoulder and part of his skull knocking him unconcious. Although the nameless man's injuries were critical, he was barely breathing, there was still hope. Running to the Master of Sabers bike he eased the repulsors down to ground level, and then slowly dragged the man's body to the speeder. Another loud explosion echoed through Olus' ears, turning he saw the smoking rubble of the AT-ST's cockpit. A door in the compound's wall slid open and a squad of stormtroopers filed out. They immediately spotted him and his mysterious rescuer and started a brisk run towards them. With more haste Olus pulled the man's body over the chassis and then raised the altitude back up. Just as Olus was about to saddle the bike blue energy washed over his right calf dropping him to the ground. Stunners; they want prisoners. He quickly drug himself up to the terrain mapper on the center of the bike and hit the autocruise toggle. The bike sped off towards the horizon. The whitehats are probably almost on me now, Olus thought grimly. Pulling The knife again from his sheathe he tried to stand, and found the numbness was gone.

The swirling mists had enveloped him again, and a nudge brought him to full awareness. He was on a tramp ship bound for Baroli. His joints felt stiff, so he rolled out of his bunk. Stretching, he saw a friend of his, Fiolla escorting a man toward him. Not just any man, though, the man from his dream. Fiolla spoke as they neared, "Olus, I'd you to meet another member of our team. Doctor Phanan a new graduate from the University of Rudrig." With a tight smile Olus commented, "It is an honor to meet you sir, destiny it seems will make us brothers." Phanan stammered at the strange words, "Yes, uhhmm... thanks, but please call me Ton." Smiling Fiolla led Ton way whispering, "Don't mind him, he's a little weird but a good guy. When I first met him, he said he'd been looking for me, but he didn't know my name?!"

 

Here's my entry.

 

If you want to have a surreal dream sequence that can still make sense...

Watch the finale of Season 5 Buffy, Restless, and learn from tat. It's essentially a 45-minute tone poem.

But some basic hints learned from the episode...

If you've ever been on a movie or TV set, remember the way that sets connect to each other in ways that they wouldn't on the real show. For example, Buffy and Willow's dorm room might connect to Xander's parents' basement.

There must be at least one thing that, no matter how you look at it, never makes sesne. In the case of Restless, the Cheese Man.

People in places or doing or saying things they normally wouldn't...but to everyone (including the person who has the dream, until he wakes up) it makes perfect sense.

Following things to their source--i.e., you might follow a cord that for some inexplicable reason has caught your attention back to the wall where it plugs into, and there the next important thing might happen.

Things vanishing or appearing suddenly. See esp. clothes.

In dreams--especially if it's a nightmare--if you think you need something or another person in the dream is about to tell you something that he claims is important, the means of attaning that information or thing suddenly become elusive. For example, the person speaking to you might suddenly switch to a language you don't understand.

Dreams sometimes don't take place from the first person of the viewer. It feels like it does--i.e., not disconcerting at all--but in my dreams, I often see myself from the point of a spectator. Especially in the embarrassing, "Hey, where'd my clothes go?!" way.

When you get right down to it, people don't usually remember dreams. They might remember bits and pieces, sometimes for years afterward (I still remember two parts of a dream I had when I was about eight--it involved Madonna, as in the singer, a kid I was going to school with at the time, and the crocodile from Peter Pan), but generally, dreams are the subconscious fixing of the mind while the conscious self is shut down to sleep, and so the conscious mind doesn't really try to retain it.

 

First, it was the S4 finale. "The Gift" ended S5.

Second, as far as it goes, I agree with most of these points. What this ep did relatively well that most other dream sequences didn't was including the weirdness. Usually, dreams are limited to existing sets and characters, a bit of arbitrary goofiness, and a plot that's too on-the-nose. Within limits, "Restless" had a truer dreamlike quality. However, the dreams can come off as a series of barely connected set pieces than parts of a larger dream world (which would probably have been prohibitively expensive).

 

Whoops. You're right on the seasons point.

As I understand it, it wasn't expense, but the simple fact is that Restless was intended to be four character studies, and since each character is very distinct, to have the dreams of all of them be similar in more than a few respects would be...odd.

 

PresidentKang:
*Swing swing*
*bash bash*
Rawwwrrr!
Rawwrrrr!!!
*bash bash rip*
RAAWWWWRRRRRR!!!!!!
RR- . . . Hrmmmmmmm? Rar. Zzzzzzzz....

I know that wasn't a serious entry... but it had me in stitches! Witty.

 

I had to take a swing at this...

A New Dope
Timeframe: ANH
Characters: Leia, Vader, R2D2, C3P0