19. Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream*

Writing about dreams is tricky.

If you’re a reader who in real life likes hearing about friends’ nighttime rambles or of parsing your own, then they’ll work for you as a storytelling device—at least you’ll be open to them. If, however, your eyelids descend at the mention of dreams or you find the recaps near impossible to follow, the same thing can happen when encountering them on the page.

In both nonfiction and fiction, they tend to come off either as conveniences—tidy maps between points A and B (or G or V)—or as a deliberately indirect means of adding psychological complexity to a story or character. I can think of few tropes that are more a matter of personal taste (on the part of readers). Waking life is plenty interesting on its own, so just be sure the dream is worth it.

*I posted this, then had second thoughts and deleted it, and now am posting it again. The last thing I want to do is stifle creativity—just offering a perspective to think about.