Nightmare inspirations

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nortonew
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Nightmare inspirations

Post by nortonew »

From what I've read, some of Lovecraft's best writing was inspired by his nightmares.

Lately I've had a couple of really strange dreams that I've used to start a new story. Unfortunately, the dreams didn't give me anything past the beginning and now I'm stuck. I've tried to imagine what I would do in the same situation, but running away and hiding doesn't seem to be a very entertaining plot device...

So now I'm hoping that I'll have some more dreams that I can somehow twist into a continuing plot line. Unfortunately, now that my flu is clearing up, and my fever has broken, I doubt my dreams will be nearly as interesting.

Oh well, maybe I'll get lucky and contract some new disease soon...

Wish me luck :)
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Lagwolf
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Post by Lagwolf »

The guy I am writing a game for tells people the following:

"We call them nightmares; Andrew calls them research."
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Post by Aleister »

I used to always remember my dreams when I was younger.. but I rarely do any more. I am not sure why. Lucid dreams were a common occurrence for me back then..

As far as getting inspiration from them.. you could just deprive yourself of sleep, until you are in a dream-like state anyway ;) But most doctors would recommend against that I think.

And I won't even go into other methods ;)
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Post by nortonew »

If you want to remember your dreams, it helps to keep a notebook and pen by your bed. Just scribble down anything you can remember when you wake up. The more you do it, them more you'll remember.
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Post by nortonew »

I love that quote Andrew :)
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Post by Lagwolf »

Yeah me too...so did a friend of mine who is a senior producer for the BBC.
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Post by Jesus Prime »

Usually, my dreams don't involve anything that could be remotely useful for my fiction (unless blowing up the moon with a rocket-propelled monkey launcher counts as horror). However, I do tend to daydream a lot, about dark and grotesque things, which can help. One particular vision, when I was about to doze off in a local coffee shop, consisting of a vast oceanscape pierced by a sinking ship, inpsired 'The Lure of the Kraken', while an image of a faceless crowd marching down the ame city street morphed into 'The Crowd - A Parable".
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Nightmare stories

Post by nortonew »

My dream was perfect, there was actually this weird thing menacing me and I was trying to dispel it with uncanny results. As I said earlier, however, it never went much past that.

Damn that fever for breaking...
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Post by NickolausPacione »

That is a main body of my work Eric, writing from a lot of my nightmares and that is how my book I am working on in parts are coming to be. It is tricky stuff writing from the nightmares. I will post a link to my nightmare I wrote about on another thread but if you can get that down you got some strong stuff.
Online Publishing Company of Cthulhu Mythos Writer, NICKOLAUS A. PACIONE. Dirty Black Winter is out now the career spanding collection. An Eye In Shadows is available on Amazon.com and Lulu.com.
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Post by Jesus Prime »

NickolausPacione wrote:That is a main body of my work Eric, writing from a lot of my nightmares and that is how my book I am working on in parts are coming to be. It is tricky stuff writing from the nightmares. I will post a link to my nightmare I wrote about on another thread but if you can get that down you got some strong stuff.
You should either take a lot of the emotions or descriptions that the nightmare evokes, and use them, or take the basic plotline or events from the nightmare as your framework - but don't attempt to replicate the dream entirely, it's folly. Stories written like that tend to be fool's gold, fool's gold, I tells ya.
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