I think Neil Gaiman once said that dreams cannot give us a story. Perhaps he meant that dreams cannot present an entire story to us and that we won't remember it all upon waking up and long afterward. I can almost argue this, but he still wins in the end. A few years ago, I experienced a dream that presented a story. It was like watching a movie with a bunch of different subplots and intriguing elements. It was as if I was separate from it all and wondering how it would end, what it would do next, and how it all worked together. I could feel that it was weaving together to form something spectacular. Upon waking, I tried to get up to type it all down, then woke up again and had to rush to the computer to remember everything.
Sometimes when we try to remember dreams and write them down, we discover that we have yet to actually wake up and we lose everything we had been trying to remember. It's as if the act of trying is the very thing that erases the memories as we work through them. I was able to get a lot down, though, and the idea tugs at me to this day. It is the mark of a good story when it sticks with you for years and you feel compelled to finish it. However, there were elements that I couldn't remember properly, like a twisted nursery rhyme that is the key to everything. It took a couple years until I realized that I should give a character the same hassle of a faulty memory. Did he hear one word or another? Did he misinterpret? Of course he did, because he's not perfect. And yet the dream ended before everything came together, so I have to figure out everything that happened in between, all the side characters, and how it all ends. That is probably why Gaiman said that dreams cannot hand us a story; they can give us ideas, but not a full story.
That said, this afternoon I had a dream that was like... the first page or so of a story. Nothing was explained. It was as if I was just living this character's life for about 30 seconds. I was a girl who usually goes out running with a set of headphones and an ipod/mp3 player. I was in a neighborhood park, somewhere around the early evening on a partly cloudy day (the sky looked to be yellowish-orange). In order to get back to my apartment, I had to travel through a pedestrian tunnel that went along the ground through a massive brick wall. An upbeat song started to play that set my body jumping like I wanted to take off running and let the rest of the world fall away, but I couldn't do that because a woman was walking her baby in a stroller ahead of me on the narrow paved pathway. I had to slow down and wait, like I used to do when stuck behind a slow walker in a school hallway. The woman veered to the side and took the baby out of the stroller, and I swerved around them and up the stairwell, pulling at keys that were hooked to one of my belt loops. The woman was a few paces behind me. I unlocked a large arched door, as if I was unlocking the main door to an apartment complex, and inside was a long, dark tunnel. We needed to turn on lights before entering. It was pitch black because the door on the other side was also shut and locked. The woman held the door for me with her free hand. The dream ended as I reached to turn on the lights.
After waking, I thought of Beth's personal challenge. Her story-a-day goal. Then I started to deconstruct the dream. Why was there a tunnel? Was the park private and somehow separated from people who did not live in the neighborhood, as if the sheltered park was a perk for residents only? Were there apartments in the wall that housed the tunnel, or was it just a wall? And why did its doors have to be locked? Why was the tunnel (and thus the wall) so tall, wide, and long? It was easily a quarter of a mile long and the wall itself stretched far past the limits of my periphery vision. So there must have been more tunnels along it, or there was a corner of the wall/enclosure that was just past the treeline. My dream self imagined/remembered what the tunnel looked like with the lights on, which is not too different from a tunnel we drive through in the real world. And where was the dream going? The characters would go in one side and out the other and that was it? For such an uncommon structure, nothing happens? Surely my subconscious had something planned before someone accidentally rang my shrill doorbell and yanked me from sleep so quickly that by body barely had time to register proper movement while I tottered to the intercom.
Then I realized that this is a classic scenario. Not my waking, but the tunnel. This is no different from the setup and exercise of "place a couple characters in an elevator and have it break down, thus forcing the people to interact." My elevator was the tunnel. Much longer, much darker. Would my dream characters be locked in somehow? Is the other door barred or broken and thus won't open? What would prevent the characters from turning around and going back into the park? Would they come upon a scene on the other side that would require remaining in the tunnel for safety? Would the power go out? Is it a survival story or a waiting-for-help story?
Remember, the woman had a baby. That alone presents numerous possibilities. If they need to hide from someone, the baby cannot be trusted to remain quiet; it would reveal their presence. And what about feeding? If the mother took the baby out for a run, she might not have provisions for a few hours. What then? The baby looked to be less than a year old, so is it teething or weened from breast milk? What about food, diapers, entertainment, somewhere to nap? How does the main character, the girl with the ipod, feel about and react to babies? How would the mother react to being stuck in a tunnel with a stranger? How many "mother" instincts would surface, if any? Would she remain calm and placate the baby as best as she could, or would she turn into a cornered mama bear?
So much to think about, and it all leaves me with the question of whether I sit down and sketch the beginning scene, or ponder the overall story to figure out what happens and why.
No comments:
Post a Comment