For the writers here: do you guys use dream sequences in your stories? It is something I rarely use but I am finding it being used in quite a few stories I have read recently (particularly this Laird Barron collection) and I am wondering if it is a useful device that I should try to incorporate.

Why or why don't you use them?

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Mike Styczen: As far as I can tell, all of Toronto is on the lookout for some sort of demented leprechaun. If Toronto didn't exist, we'd have to invent it

I hate them. They are a mark of the unimaginative writer who can't let a plot develop on its own. Unless the story or novel is about dreams, the whole purpose of a dream scene is to use up space, to further a word count. They usually are used to reinforce fright, but when it comes down to it, a dream is just that, something of no consequence to the plot and forgotten later. Did I mention that I hate dream sequences in stories or novels?

Bloody hell, Tony, don't hold back, man.


I've seen it done badly, and I've seen it done well. I suppose the main thing is to make sure they're integral to the story, and not just an add-on that could easily be red penned, as Tony says. Or worse - fuck up the plot and create confusion.

I had dream sequences in Carousel that related to the physical changes Luke and Emma were going through. I also had Emma dreaming about her subject of study at one point (when she was sitting beside Elliot's swimming pool), to illustrate her passion for history, and to leave her a little disoriented and susceptible when Elliot arrived. I multi-tasked, in other words. But I still tried to keep everything short. Just a paragraph or two. There's always a danger in running off with it, and ultimately I think you have to keep the main elements of the story in real time.

Incidentally, I do the same thing with thrashing-around-in-bed scenes. There should always be something else going on - plot development, character enhancement - otherwise what's the point?

I never write them, and whenever I encounter one in a story or novel I skip past it. To me it is a cheat and it irritates me as a reader. Tell your story with action, dialog, description and a sparing use of thought process, not with a dream.

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Keith Minnion

I think, in terms of weird ficiton, the blurring of lines between dreams and waking life can be very effective - dreams are after all a reflection of our unconcsious desires and the like, and good weird fiction is very often using a horrific or surreal element to represent the same thing...

I don't disagree dream sequences can be used in a cheap way, but to me that's just a sign of a bad writer, not something to hold against dream sequences in general.

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Scattershot Writing:

I understand -- and agree -- where the majority of folks are coming from as regards dream sequences in fiction as plot cheats and as gimmicks, and even as word count padding, but...

Dream sequences were very often used in the works of the famous circle of Wierd Tales authors. Can anyone say the "Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath", "The Silver Key" or "Through the Gates of the Silver Key" by H.P. Lovecraft? How's about the works of Clark Ashton Smith? The work of James Branch Cabell? How about Lord Dunsany, a.k.a. Edward Plunkett, especially his work "A Dreamer's Tales" or William ("The Wood Beyond the World" and "The Well at the World's End") Morris?

We shouldn't write them off entirely. It just takes a lot of hard work, not to mention imagination and major talent, to make them worthwhile and effective in fantastic fiction.

My two cents.

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"We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe."

- Johann von Goethe