I woke up in the middle of the night last, absolutely convinced that the dream I'd just had was the best idea for a story ever. I laid there for the rest of the night, only about three-quarters of my brain actually awake, developing a plot to apply it to. It wasn't until I my alarm went off three hours later and I was able to think about my idea while fully lucid that it struck me: "Normal guy becomes God" is not a new or original idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what roughly 50% of progression/cultivation webnovels are about.
I Don't think dreams have anything to do with this, we all have moments where we think of genius plans for them to be either generic or stupidly stupid, and sometimes the plans are indeed great but our perception get in the way , especially if you aren't optimistic.
I woke up in the middle of the night last, absolutely convinced that the dream I'd just had was the best idea for a story ever. I laid there for the rest of the night, only about three-quarters of my brain actually awake, developing a plot to apply it to. It wasn't until I my alarm went off three hours later and I was able to think about my idea while fully lucid that it struck me: "Normal guy becomes God" is not a new or original idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what roughly 50% of progression/cultivation webnovels are about.
Dreams help us process things without our preconceived notions bleeding in. I think you might have a new appreciation for cultivation.
That said, I've had both dumb ass dreams that I thought were cool, and super insightful dreams that helped me understand complicated concepts in physics and math. It just depends on what you've been thinking about lately.
I still remember waking up about fifteen years ago wenting to write about an evil teacher who kidnapped kids and brainwashed them in an underground art museum, and if they misbehaved he threw them into one of his magic paintings. One kid got thrown into an ocean painting, made friends with a giant fish, and rode it back into the real world where it ate the teacher.
I woke up in the middle of the night last, absolutely convinced that the dream I'd just had was the best idea for a story ever. I laid there for the rest of the night, only about three-quarters of my brain actually awake, developing a plot to apply it to. It wasn't until I my alarm went off three hours later and I was able to think about my idea while fully lucid that it struck me: "Normal guy becomes God" is not a new or original idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what roughly 50% of progression/cultivation webnovels are about.
I woke up in the middle of the night last, absolutely convinced that the dream I'd just had was the best idea for a story ever. I laid there for the rest of the night, only about three-quarters of my brain actually awake, developing a plot to apply it to. It wasn't until I my alarm went off three hours later and I was able to think about my idea while fully lucid that it struck me: "Normal guy becomes God" is not a new or original idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what roughly 50% of progression/cultivation webnovels are about.
The last one I remember waking up from involved flesh eating worms devouring their way out of me.
From my womb 0___o
Which… I think you could make a story out of that. (Maybe. It’s not an uninteresting thing), and I only see the occasional story in the same sphere at all (there’s this one where a bunch of high schoolers or college age folk are stuck on an island with massive bugs, and it is… generally unpleasant, but strangely so interesting I cannot quite tear my eyes away from what is way too much fatal attraction going on.)
But excepting that one, no, wait, did that arachnid assassin manga have such a scene? Doesn’t matter, still super, super freaky. Insects and bugs of all sorts should not be considered people and are absolutely horrifying when they’re our size.
Oh, Flow doesn’t have quite the same thing going on, but the Rykz are so cool I don’t care that they’re freaky murder bugs that would totally eat me.
Back to my dreams of monsters eating their way out from inside a particular organ I do not and have never and will never possess:
I also had a dream where spiders did the same thing. My mother and father both came running down from two flights of stairs the screaming was so long and so loud.
I’m sure someone could make a story out of this.
Or the one where my husband was a skeleton and I woke up screaming and screaming and screaming at him despite him comforting me with his voice and his hands and all I could see was his dark black skull with too many teeth and no eyes and his long dark bony fingers touching me.
Or the one where my house (the beach cabin specifically) was in a tree and was on fire and I was alone and a giant snake somehow wrapped around the whole thing and slid its long unhinged jaw toward me ever closer and its fangs getting bigger as it continued to draw closer to me very quickly over a very long period.
I put that one in a story of mine — a fictional memoir.
Or the sweet and peaceful slumber I was having when I dreamed that a bear broke into my house, and into my bedroom, and I escaped out the window to meet another bear on my way to find a car to drive away in, and then I ran into the pool room with the bear on my heals and played keep away because it was faster but I could pivot easier in the small space and then the third bear fresh from my parent’s devouring and covered in their blood had my fathers gun and came downstairs and I locked myself in the bathroom but they got axes and broke in despite me locking the door, and I didn’t have a cell phone to call the police because it was in my bedroom, so I hid in the bathtub as low as I could go, but realised that I could hide among the towels, so I squirrelled inside and they broke in again because dreams are weird that way and I was way back deep in a place they couldn’t find or reach, which is when the claws started to come in from above me on the other side, because my house didn’t have those ceiling panels back then, and the bathroom was connected to the game room which had a map I scribbled on when I was younger, and which appeared right next to me and the claws slowly tore through it as the bears began to speak to me in the voices of my parents and little sister and then they clasped around me and I was pulled out through the bathroom door and they all three had their way with me (including the lady bear, and I’ve never dreamed of being anything but a woman, so that was interesting l guess) then I was eaten alive.
I didn’t wake up for a while that time.
Dreams are… scary. I prefer not to dream; so rarely are my dreams pleasant.
Last night I couldn’t even sleep for the longest time, because every time I turned out the light I felt… them coming.
The dreams were closing in on me from every direction, and I knew:
They would be bad ones.
Edit: Bonus round!
I forgot the box.
The box with the pinprick out of which I could see perfectly the box with no holes in the top. The box where I couldn’t scream, or whimper for rescue, or even breathe. The box I was left in as the people who might have saved me left. The box I couldn’t breathe in, the box I couldn’t move in. I died with my eye pressed tight to the pinprick of light.
Then box that I woke up in.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. But I could see. They couldn’t see me. I wheezed to call for help. They didn’t hear me. I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t breathe!
I was suffocating and I couldn’t move and everything went dark for me as I watched my salvation turn out the lights and close the door and leave.
And I woke up in the box.
Anyway:
I wish I had good dreams in such detail. I could be a princess, or a mother, and I would have friends and children who would all be happy.
A vapid dream is to be treasured truly, and what’s not interesting about being God?
Dreams have potential in storytelling, even the scary manic ones.
I saw something like this on an anthology series on television a few years back (and strongly suspect one of the two seasons of American Horror Story that I have not watched, American Horror Story: Beauty, borrowed from this but with spiders instead of worms).
Or the one where my house (the beach cabin specifically) was in a tree and was on fire and I was alone and a giant snake somehow wrapped around the whole thing and slid its long unhinged jaw toward me ever closer and its fangs getting bigger as it continued to draw closer to me very quickly over a very long period.
The box with the pinprick out of which I could see perfectly the box with no holes in the top. The box where I couldn’t scream, or whimper for rescue, or even breathe. The box I was left in as the people who might have saved me left. The box I couldn’t breathe in, the box I couldn’t move in. I died with my eye pressed tight to the pinprick of light.
Then box that I woke up in.
I couldn’t move. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t speak. But I could see. They couldn’t see me. I wheezed to call for help. They didn’t hear me. I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t breathe!
I was suffocating and I couldn’t move and everything went dark for me as I watched my salvation turn out the lights and close the door and leave.
Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus was born out of a dream (Mary Shelley dreamed of the Creature's eye and patchwork face watching her through windows everywhere she went one night, and spun the entire story out of that).
My strangest dreams were probably my two Controller Dreams - dreams where I was not really a character, but the angel (or, perhaps, devil) on a character's shoulder, advising them (in one the character actually had discussions with me, in the other I was just there to "help steer").
I still remember waking up about fifteen years ago wenting to write about an evil teacher who kidnapped kids and brainwashed them in an underground art museum, and if they misbehaved he threw them into one of his magic paintings. One kid got thrown into an ocean painting, made friends with a giant fish, and rode it back into the real world where it ate the teacher.
I saw something like this on an anthology series on television a few years back (and strongly suspect one of the two seasons of American Horror Story that I have not watched, American Horror Story: Beauty, borrowed from this but with spiders instead of worms).
Ragnarok, Yggdrasil and the Jurmungandr Serpent...
Now THAT one is terrifying!
Sounds kind of like getting an MRI... only worse.
Frankenstein: Or the Modern Prometheus was born out of a dream (Mary Shelley dreamed of the Creature's eye and patchwork face watching her through windows everywhere she went one night, and spun the entire story out of that).
My strangest dreams were probably my two Controller Dreams - dreams where I was not really a character, but the angel (or, perhaps, devil) on a character's shoulder, advising them (in one the character actually had discussions with me, in the other I was just there to "help steer").
Funny you should mention the spiders. At the time it was my worst nightmare ever. That didn’t last long.
So I stay as far away from horror as I can. No need to arm my brain with anything particularly bad.
But the problem is: I understand horror. I appreciate what it is, I find it fascinating. And one day, something compelled me to watch Attack on Titan season 1 one day.
Didn’t sleep for a little while, but the terrible dreams didn’t come.
… Until the week after. Nothing impressive though.
I may well be a prophet of my Norse ancestry’s end times — but I think since I was four: it might also have been Aladdin, Tarzan, Pinocchio, and the stove in the beach cabin.
I was in Alaska: I’d never seen a real snake before, but because I was so young: I barely understand what I saw back then — it’s just revision on revision on revisitation.
That box one left a mark on my psyche, because I continued to wake up in that box for a very, very long time.
Sometimes I would escape the box. Then I would be in a trunk, with no light at all, being jostled to and fro as I slowly ran out of air where no one could see me. It took… so many iterations for me to escape the whole thing, and I think I did it by embracing mania while asleep— proceeded to actually wake up not in bed but pacing in an empty bedroom in my apartment where no one else was.
I wasn’t claustrophobic before that dream.
After, I couldn’t sleep with blankets on, my own clothes felt like they were strangling me, and I did not appreciate small spaces in the least.
Took a while to fix, and I still do not like claustrophobic spaces.
I believe I’ve been lucky so far to only have the hospital scans of X-rays and maybe a CAT scan, but I can tell you I would have a very hard time being in an MRI now.
My god, poor Mary. That’s genuinely freaky. Like, Perfect Blue level freaky (a film that almost broke me).
“Help steer”
XD Honestly, that can’t be too bad either as a story: you’re the Jimminy Cricket of their story, save them from themselves!
I hope you'll reconsider on following your dreams. Some of the really good story ideas I had, I had a dream that helped me figure out how to adapt it or give me a plot idea for a story. Its not led me astray yet.
And regarding the idea that other people have done a similar plot before. That's not a good reason not to use an idea you had, because too many people will not follow through. Or they'll not write it the way YOU would have wrote it. And if you are serious about it, you can make that story better and more appealing than people who aren't serious.
It wasn't until I my alarm went off three hours later and I was able to think about my idea while fully lucid that it struck me: "Normal guy becomes God" is not a new or original idea. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's what roughly 50% of progression/cultivation webnovels are about.
"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, it must be said again." -- Andre Gide
It never ceases to amuse me when I listen to some of the plots the Zoomers come up with:
Zoomer: What if people's minds were downloaded into a computer?
Me: We did that back in the 1980's. It was called Max Headroom (I have the DVD set! ? )
My story plots are mostly from dreams. Especially the really old ones. I have short books written when I was 7 or 8, with whimsical, absurd, Alice in Wonderland feels, because that was how my dreams were like back then.
