Story Element: Dream Imagery
destinyes-fate asked:
I know the general rule is to avoid dream sequences at almost all costs, and most readers don’t like them. I’ve been doing a lot of research on the unreliable narrator, and while that’s not what I’m going for, I do want readers to question the legitimacy of the world when the book ends. My piece is a Wonderland retelling, and as the story goes, Alice falls asleep and “wakes up” to see a white rabbit. Would it be horrible to have a dream-like sequence before waking to see the white rabbit? For further explanation: I want Alice to dream of a woman’s eyes, filled with terror and innocence, before the world turns red. So that, at the end, when she goes to chop off the Queen’s head (who’s frozen in time), she sees those terrified and innocent eyes when it’s just too late to stop herself, making both the reader and Alice question everything that has been said about the Queen and the world.
I think there’s a way you could do it without it being a full-on dream sequence. Its important to understand that there’s a difference between a character simply recounting the contents of a dream, versus letting the dream play out in real time so that the reader either knows it’s a dream and is bored, or doesn’t know it’s a dream and feels cheated when they realize it is one. In other words, you can get those images across to your reader without it being a full-on dream sequence. Here’s an example from another story: I was safely tucked into my bed as dawn began to creep over the horizon. Inside my head, however, a horrific nightmare played out in harrowing detail. It started with a gunshot that broke a silent night. Then there were screams and chaos, and an unnameable fear that spread through the darkness. I was running through the forest and tripped over something–a body. Gasping for air, I turned over the body and saw my own face staring back at me. And then I woke up. This method has two things going for it: 1) It’s very short. The dream imagery takes up only a few sentences and they’re very specific. There’s nothing meandering or unimportant to waste the reader’s time. It’s all very quick and straightforward. 2) It’s not an actual dream playing out in real time, but rather a narrator telling the reader about the imagery of the dream. Having that middle man between the reader and the dream takes it out of the danger zone, because you’re not asking the reader to invest in a dream that’s playing out before them, you’re not risking them being confused by what the imagery is (they know it belongs to a dream they’re being told about), and there’s no risk that they’ll feel cheated, because they’re simply being given important information about the dream. Give it a try and see if it works in your story. :)
