in Writing
Dreams in fiction, and why readers skip them
Dream sequences are one of the most skipped passages in fiction. Why they so often fail, and what the rare successful ones do differently.
Ask a group of readers which passages they skip, and dream sequences come up often. Editors and agents are frequently wary of them too, particularly as openings. That wariness has reasons, and understanding them helps writers decide when a dream is worth including.
Dreams have a long history in literature, from the dream visions of medieval poetry to the frame of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. They are not inherently bad. But they carry specific risks.
Why readers skip them
The first problem is stakes. In a dream, anything can happen, and nothing that happens is real. If the character is chased by a monster, the reader knows no harm will come of it. A scene without consequences struggles to hold attention.
The second is the sense of being tricked. A chapter that seems real and is then revealed as a dream feels like a cheat. The reader has invested in events and learns that the investment was wasted. Openings that start with a dream and end with the character waking are especially disliked for this reason.
The third is symbolism made too obvious. Dreams in fiction often become vehicles for the author to deliver meaning directly: the character's fears, desires or guilt, dressed in imagery. Real dreams are rarely so tidy, and readers can sense when a dream is really a message from the writer.
The ending that undoes everything
A particularly notorious use is the ending in which everything turns out to have been a dream. It undermines whatever came before. Interestingly, some famous stories are misremembered in this respect. The 1939 film of The Wizard of Oz presents Dorothy's adventure as a dream, but in L. Frank Baum's novel Oz is a real place. Readers and viewers feel the difference.
When dreams work
Dreams work best when they do something a waking scene could not do. A few functions stand out.
They can reveal what a character cannot admit. A character who insists they are over a loss may be contradicted by what they dream. This works when it is brief and the reader draws the conclusion.
They can create unease. A dream that the reader cannot quite interpret, and that echoes later events, can build tension in a way that direct statement cannot.
They can be part of the world's rules. In fantasy and speculative fiction, dreams may be real, prophetic or shared. Then they are not dreams in the ordinary sense, and they have stakes.
Writing them well
If you include a dream, keep it short. Dreams lose power as they lengthen, and readers' patience is limited.
Make it strange in the way real dreams are strange: illogical transitions, familiar places that are wrong in small ways, emotion out of proportion to events. Avoid dreams that are simply waking scenes with a label.
Let the reader know early that it is a dream, unless you have a strong reason not to. Surprise revelations rarely justify the resentment they cause.
Most importantly, ask what the dream contributes. If the same information or feeling could be conveyed in a waking scene, it probably should be. A dream earns its place only when it does something no other scene could.