This week, we welcome Gregory S. Close as a guest in our Quills panel discussion of Dreams as Plot Devices. You can read more about his works at Light, Dark and Shadow. Regarding our topic, Mr. Close has this to say:
A dream sequence can create an ethereal mood of otherworldliness, reveal hidden truths, foreshadow victory or doom, or even represent a second, hidden realm that parallels the waking world. That can all be very cool. It can also go very wrong, very easily.
A dream sequence can create an ethereal mood of otherworldliness, reveal hidden truths, foreshadow victory or doom, or even represent a second, hidden realm that parallels the waking world. That can all be very cool. It can also go very wrong, very easily.
(Read more of Mr. Close's article over on Robin's blog!)
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Author of As the Crow Flies and two short stories
Robin's WebsiteDreams can be such marvelous, intricate, eye-opening, exhilarating, or terrifying occurrences. They can inspire us to do things, be things—or write things. Do they belong in fiction? Are they useful as plot devices? Well… it depends!
(Read Robin's blog!)
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Author of the short story Sanguis Dei
and the poetry collection Light and Dark
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub: For in that sleep of death what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil must give us pause...
-- Shakespeare, Hamlet
My own personal jar of dreams! |
And yet... some of the best stories have dreams that start them, end them or play a significant part in their impact. I remember my astonishment the first time I realized that when Caractacus Potts sings Hushabye Mountain to his children in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the rest of the story might possibly have been a dream the inventor had when he went to sleep that night.
There are countless other examples. We are not in control of our dreams and that can terrify us. Better, as Hamlet thought, to deal with the known terrors of life, even the dreams we cannot bear yet wake from, than the dreams that might come in death. Dreams are a little death and in literature, dreams open up a variety of doors.
All dreams of the soul
End in a beautiful man’s or woman’s body.
--W.B. Yeats, The Phases of the Moon, 1919.
Dream on!
Since he weighs nothing
Even the stoutest dreamer
Can fly without wings.
--W.H. Auden, from Thanksgiving for a Habitat, 1966.
Author of Oathtaker
Very much in demand, Patricia is away on business this First Friday!
Thanks for reading and we'll see you in our next Quills in June. In the meantime, what's the strangest dream you've had? What do you think of dreams in books, television or movies? I'd love to hear from you!
Dreams are funny things, to be sure! Perfectly logical while they're happening, then utterly confusing when you wake… The best are those that play out like a movie!
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