How to Turn Dreams into Science Fiction

When you dream, your unconscious mind is processing your life experiences, shuffling around your emotional baggage and feeding you information about your body. Dreams can defy or amplify logic and morality. They wake you up with a head full of strange ideas. They put you in a space similar to where a science fiction book or movie might take you. Hey, is there a connection? In the words of a popular 24th century starship captain, "Make it so."

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

1. Keep a notebook next to your bed for jotting down memorable dreams as soon as you wake up. If you have time, describe them in detail. Otherwise, a few descriptive sentences or words will have to do.

2. Read your dream journal for ideas that suggest a story. Just as the strongest story ideas come from personal experience, the strongest dreams engage your emotions. If you felt fear, wonder, lust, happiness, loss, etc., and if your dream journal reminds you vividly, there's your starting point.

3. Using a different notebook, a separate piece of paper or a computer, write a summary of the idea suggested by your dream journal. Diverge from the dream to make it more story-like; your dream muse passed you the baton, and now you're awake and running with it.

4. If fantastic events happen in your summary, explain them logically. This is where the science fictional elements come in. Why is someone flying through the air? Anti-gravity technology? Wing grafts? Why does sudden darkness fall? A proactive weather satellite? A small planet with a faster rotation? If you love watching, reading, writing or thinking about science fiction, this step will be easy.

5. Create a back-story to support your fantastic logic. What are the uses of anti-gravity technology? Who started grafting wings onto people? Which government or corporation is operating that proactive weather satellite? Why are you on that small planet with a faster rotation?

6. Science fiction may be the literature of ideas, but without real, believable characters, all you have is a cartoon, a tech manual or a white paper. Expand your characters. Invent new ones. Give them personalities, lives and reasons for being where you put them.

7. Apply all the usual principles of fiction writing: story arc, major and minor themes, idiomatic dialog, etc. If you follow through on this, you'll turn that strange dream into a readable work of science fiction.

Tips & Warnings

• Write in your dream journal as soon as you can. The longer you wait, the more your waking experiences will overwrite those images and details.
• Don't rewrite a story by another author. If you find yourself in familiar territory, add another plot element or create very different characters to keep your story unique.

Resources

• Tips from the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America
• Study of dreams
• Interpretation of dreams