Dreams, glimpses, and other tantalizing story morsels

To start, I’ll be speaking and signing books in Rhode Island on Saturday, October 15th, along with a bunch of other terrific kids’ book writers. You can find out where and when on my website. Hope to see some of you!

And, a few questions have come in about my Disney Fairies books and about Writing Magic and others. If you want to ask me about any of my books, please let me know and I’ll answer in a post – if I can. Sometimes I forget what I had in mind when I was writing and sometimes ideas pop out of nowhere and I can’t explain them.

And, puppy Reggie is almost nine months old and got his first haircut. My husband has posted new photos on the News page of my website. My fave is the one with his best friend, Sage, in which Reggie is revealed as a supremely happy maniac.
                       
Now for this week’s post topic. On June 25th, 2011, Maddie wrote, ….I keep on getting very vivid “glimpses” of stories, but I don’t know anything about the characters or plot besides what is in the “glimpses.” Can you help me with this? I think that I can probably start working on a story if I can get past this.
    Also, I had a dream a few months ago, and since I wrote it down, I’m thinking about basing a story off it. Do you have any suggestions?

And on July 2nd, 2011, Josiphine asked a related question: ….I’m an aspiring writer and have completed several books. But my problem is making my books book-length. Most people I know say that each time they do a rewrite they cut back so their novel isn’t as long. I’m in the opposite predicament. My books are never long enough, a short story, or a novella at a stretch.
    Do you have any suggestions about making my books the right length? I know that my plots have enough meat to last…I just can’t make them do so.

Some fairytales remind me of dreams. Putting a pea under twenty mattresses to test potential princess is dreamlike in its lack of logic. I love to work with these kinds of fairytales. The ones that make complete sense, like (in my opinion) “Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves,” offer less fodder for fooling around. So I say, Maddie, go with your dream.

You can begin with the events that lead up to the dream. These are some questions you might ask yourself:

∙    Who is the main character in the dream? Is it you? Or someone else?

∙    Who are the other characters? Describe them.

∙    What is the world of the dream?

∙    What happens after the dream ends?

∙    What is the conflict?

∙    What scenes can you write to dramatize the conflict, extend it, deepen it?

∙    What concrete, specific details can you include in your scenes to make the dreamscape real?

If you make your reader aware that the story is a dream, he may not get emotionally involved, so I would avoid this. Likewise, I suggest you not end your story by having the main character wake up, which usually results in a reader feeling cheated. In other words, the dream should be the story’s reality.

Same approach for your glimpses. Ask yourself questions to flesh out what you have. What went before the glimpse? What can come next? What’s the conflict? Write the answers in notes. Try writing the glimpse, fragmentary though it is, not in notes but in story form. Just the writing may elicit more.

As I suggested in an earlier post, think about your other glimpses. Can you string them together to make a fuller story? Is there anything else you can bring in? A memory? A myth? A news item?

Suppose you try, and you write part of a story then can’t go any further. I say, count this as a victory. Save your pages, of course. Maybe the fragment needs something for completion that you can’t get to yet, something you’re going to write next month or even three years from now. Or maybe this bit will seed a seven-book series. Or you’ll cannibalize it in five other stories – or for the rest of your life.

Josiphine, my most helpful writing teacher used to say there was no right length for a story, which needs to be as long as it needs to be. I’d add that padding isn’t the right technique for achieving length.

Having said that, my suggestions for Maddie may work for you, too,. Look at your conflict. Have you come up with a variety of ways to reveal and intensify it? In Ella Enchanted, for instance, I kept devising ways to have obedience make Ella suffer. She loses a friend because of it early in the book and then, when she’s older, is forced to give up Areida. The ogres show the physical side of the obedience curse, the parrot Chock the humorous aspect, and so on. If your reader cares, she won’t tire of new ways for your main character to struggle.

Are you including your main character’s thoughts and feelings? Leaving these out will speed up your scenes, but in a bad way, because the action is likely to fall flat. Adding them will probably engage the reader more deeply and may involve you more, too. You’ll know your main better, and that inner understanding may suggest follow-up scenes that you hadn’t thought of before.

Consider your setting, too. Our goal is to start a movie in the reader’s mind. Have you put in enough detail to get the movie going?

Look at your transitions. Have you filled in the movement from one scene to the next? Are there any leaps of logic that leave the reader flummoxed? Are you jumping from plot point to plot point?

Last, you may get the best help from a reader. Ask a fellow writer (the best choice, if possible), a friend, a teacher, a librarian, a relative to read one of your stories. Then ask this person if anything seems to be missing, if your tale seems truncated. Ask her to be as specific as she can be. Then, if you want a second opinion, ask someone else as well.

Here are three dream prompts. First, I offer two of my dreams to turn into stories if you can. For these prompts you’ll need to do a lot of expanding.

∙    This is a recurring nightmare. I’m climbing the subway stairs in New York City and my legs become very heavy. I can’t drag them up. The people behind me are angry and I’m terrified because I don’t know what’s happened to me. That’s it. It hasn’t visited me lately, maybe because I turned it into a pantoum (a poem form), which appeared in a book of short horror fiction for kids called Half-Minute Horrors (because each one can be read in thirty seconds).

∙    I’m at a dinner, a wedding or some other celebratory event. I know that if I eat the shrimp I’ll turn transparent. I don’t serve myself any, but they appear on my plate anyway. Use this any way you like.

∙    Write down your own dreams for a week. Keep a pad next to your bed. Use one or all of your dreams in a story.

Have fun, and save what you write!

33 Responses on “Dreams, glimpses, and other tantalizing story morsels”

  1. welliewalks says:

    I love this post! Thanks so much, Ms. Levine!
    Turning dreams into stories has always seemed like a cool idea to me, but I never know how and this helps me to do that! I like, in the shower, to remember my dreams. With practice it has gotten easier. 🙂
    Reggie is *adorable*! Thanks for posting pictures!
    Im preparing for NaNoWriMo… have been for a few months now. Any tips? I did it last year and it was awesome. My best friend and I are writing an article on how to survive it but Id love to read more stratagies that other writers are using!

  2. Jenna Royal says:

    I had a dream a couple months ago that I'm dying to use in a story, so this post will really help me! It didn't come perfect, of course – it was a little illogical, as my dreams often are. But my main characters were really vivid, and so was the basic story, and this post should help with the rest.

    Actually, when I first had the dream, I did an exercise that I got from Spilling Ink by Anne Mazer and Ellen Potter. They suggested that you try interviewing your characters and see what happens. So I wrote out a sort of dialogue between them and me, and it was really helpful. It gave me a lot more insight into what they were thinking and why they did what they did in the story.

    Also, in relation to the fleshing-out thing . . . I've been trying to fill out my dialogues lately with action and thought. (BTW, the prompt for that in Writing Magic was really helpful – thanks!). I'm having a hard time with it, though. I often forget to add one element or the other, and when I do remember to add them both, it sometimes sounds forced. I know it needs it, but I can't seem to make it work.

  3. Inky says:

    Ms. Levine, I enjoy your blog so much! Today specifically, thank you for making the point about creating additional struggles for Ella. From the first time I read it (MANY reads ago), I appreciated as a reader the way that the obedience conflicts escalated. Each scenario upped the ante a little more than the one before it, and that also helped (in my humble opinion) to prevent readers from losing interest. Not to mention that each conflict made readers like myself care more and more about Ella! 🙂

    If I get a revision request to add length to my current project, this is the exact approach I will take. Thank you again!

  5. Rina says:

    I have had three very vivid, emotional dreams in the last few months, all of them involving myself and people I know, which doesn't often happen. I've been hoping to turn at least one of them into a story – or, if not a story, at least as inspiration for parts of stories.
    Dreams are a great resource for authors, I think, since they often tell us what we would feel like in a situation – while dreaming, I thought at least two of the dreams were really happening, and I found myself reacting as if they were.

  6. Emma says:

    I love the Reggie pics! He is so cute! And I love his new haircut! Very, very adorable!

    Fantastic post (as always). Actually, all of my books and story ideas, except for the children's series, are based on dreams I've had. I never knew that other people do that too. Boy, I'm kind of curious now about how many famous books were based on dreams! I don't usually get all of the story in a dream, but I get good chunks, and from there I ask questions until I've got a complete story. It's great! To Maddie, I would just say that use your dream as inspiration and see where it takes you. Good luck!

  7. Lizzy says:

    Hello
    I would first love to say that i LOVE all your work! Reading the books you have written make me feel really happy, no matter how many years go by, my love for those books never dies down. I have read Ella Enchanted at the least six times (and the movie countless times) I have actually started to collect the Ella Enchanted book, so far i have 4 copies. I think that all the covers are different, but i have 1 left to get.
    I do have a question or two though. If you had started writing Ella Enchanted today instead of a couple years ago, how different would you think the story would turn out. Do you think that it would turn out as a totally different story, or would it stay around the same? I have always wondered if one fate of time in the book if something else happened if the book would turn out very different. I have one more Question: When writing a book, have you ever started on a idea that you were so excited about but 20 pages later you wish their was one this that you could have changed at the beginning but that it would change the whole course of the story. I am in that tight spot, i started writing about a 13 year old but as i continued the story i realized that the events i want to come would be much better if she was a couple years older. But if i change it now, i would have to change most of the story. The mind between a 13 year old and a, say, 16 year old are much different and live different lives. Should i change it? Should i continue so far in the story until she is around 16? Have any advise?
    Thank you for your time, and keep on writing 🙂

  8. gailcarsonlevine says:

    From the website:

    I loved this weeks post! I like the write down your dreams for a week thing–I'm going to do it. Reggie's nine months old? That's great! He's adorable! Now I have another book question–I was just going to post one but this one came to me last night and I really wanted to ask it. Does A Tale of Two Castles take place in the same world as Ella Enchanted? And does Ever take place in the same world as Ella Enchanted? Basically, how are all the different countries in your books related to each other and which ones are?

    Thanks for being great and answering our questions on the blog and guestbook–it makes me so happy to be able to read your answers to my questions! You're definitely one of my role-models. And now a question for anybody (and everybody) who is a writer and posts on this blog or guestbook! Who is doing NaNoWriMo this November? I am and I'm really looking forward to it! NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month, a program where you write a novel in a month! If you haven't heard of it, you should go to ywp.nanowrimo.org and check it out.
    Elizabeth

  9. Jenna Royal says:

    @Gail – another book question – do you draw maps of your fantasy worlds? If so, do you have any particular methods you use or would recommend?

    @Elizabeth – I'm doing NaNoWriMo! I did it last year and had a lot of fun – fingers crossed I can finish this year, too. 🙂 my usernames are Sparrowhawk on the young writer's site and Sparrowhawk96 on the main site. 🙂

  10. Josiphine says:

    @Jenna Royal: My first suggestion for the drawing of the maps is to not really care if it turns out right. I always draw my maps–normally to realize where everything is–and I always draw it on scrap paper a couple times first, until I really know where I want everything. Then I draw it with a nice pen, on nice paper. My other suggestion would be to not overdo it. My first maps have way too many trees and mountains and city names and everything. Three or four A's will be enough to see a mountain range.

    Hope this was helpful, 🙂

  11. gailcarsonlevine says:

    Jenna Royal–If you can come up with gestures to accompany the dialogue that go with the character or with the situation the forced feeling may disappear.

    I do draw maps, but they're very rough. I use them to keep track of places for myself, not for anyone else to see. The maps that appear in my books are drawn by professionals with my guidance.

    Lizzy–I'd suggest going all the way back even if you have to revise a lot. We writers have stamina!

  13. Silver the Wanderer says:

    Hi Mrs. Levine!

    I wonder if you remember me…it's been a while since I last visited, and I really miss coming here. Your advice is always so great! 😀 If only my life were a little less busy…sigh. I plan to do NaNoWriMo again this year, but I don't know how successful I'll be due to time constraints.

    I took a long break from writing because honestly I was feeling burnt out, but the good news is I'm getting back into it again! The downside is, I didn't write all summer when I had all the time in the world, and now that school started up again and I have about five thousand things to do at once, I suddenly get the muse. Huh.

    Anyway, I love this post about dreams! Dreams are so interesting, and I love getting them. I wish I could remember mine more often because the ones I do remember are thought-provoking and awesome. I actually have a character in my novel whose name I got from a dream. I wrote it down when I woke up in the middle of the night so I would remember it.

    @Lizzy:
    I understand completely where you're coming from in regards to ages and writing. I started writing my present project when I was about thirteen, and by the time I finished writing my rough draft at fifteen, my writing ability had improved drastically. Even parts of the plot were different and needed to be changed or taken out completely. So here I am, two years later, STILL revising. I've completely rewritten more than half of my novel, but I'm happy the way it's turning out. The whole project is a million times better than it was before. I know it's tedious work, but I promise, it's completely worth it.

  15. Jenna Royal says:

    @Gail – thanks! I'll try it – hopefully it'll help. 🙂

    @Gail and Josiphine – I like drawing the maps, but they always seem so similar. I've been making them for my fantasy series. I have one of the entire world and then other smaller ones for each specific area where a story takes place. I'm thinking about trying to work on them as I go along, rather than all at once before I start – I'm hoping it'll help me get a clearer picture of what I need and how things will all lay out.

  16. Lark says:

    Wow, Gail!! You always happen to have the perfect post for me. 🙂 I am doing NaNoWriMo this year too! my username is 'The Writeress' on the younger site. My goal is going to be 20000 words, but if i reach at leat 50,000 I'll get on the normal site as well. 🙂
    I was just having 'story glimpses' and this really helped!! Amazing again!

  17. Lark says:

    @Jenna Royal, Elizabeth, Julia, and welliwalks… If it's okay I'll look for you on ywp.nanowrimo.com!! I can't wait… it's my first year doing it and I think i might already have my idea. (Of course, it will probably change soon.) It's been bubbling around my brain for a while, and I can't wait to condense it onto my computer for NaNoWriMo!! I don't think I can wait 3 more weeks!!! (I can't start it already and still use it in NaNoWriMo…. against the rules.)

  18. Jenna Royal says:

    @Lark – you're welcome to look me up on the ywp site – I don't mind! I know what you mean about being anxious to start. My nano idea has been bouncing around my head for weeks. I keep writing out scenes in my was, but I can't put them down because it's cheating :P. Fortunately I've been working on another project, which has helped some. Last year I was working on something else right up to Nov. 1st – ugh! I didn't write much at all after that until February – I was totally burnt out. 😛

    Good luck with NaNo – it's awesome!

  20. Lark says:

    Thanks! @Jenna Royal… I LOVE Spilling Ink! It is one of my favorite go-to writing books… Gail's Writing Magic book is the other. 🙂 I also printed out NaNo's high school writing workbook, which should help once Nov rolls around. I've been keeping all of my writing 'seeds' all pent up until NaNo, so maybe that will help me make it though!! Good luck to everyone! (I know it's a little too early, but who cares! I'm so excited! Gail, do you do it?)

  21. gailcarsonlevine says:

    From the website:

    (sorry Gail, I can't post directly on the blog, but I try to keep it down to one or two comments a week)
    My username is themagicalquill on the the young writer's site–my word count goal is 50,000, but I'm still not gonna to the adult site. @Lark–of course it's okay if you search for me. I don't accept writing buddy requests unless I know you in person. just to let ya know. And I can't wait for it either!

    So anyways, does anybody know of a magazine of some sort that publishes stories or some king of story contest? I'd love to get my writing out there in some way, but I have no idea where to start :-[]
    Elizabeth

  23. Emma says:

    This is a little off topic, but I've been wondering about something. Disney paid you and other writers to write their Fairies books, right? I'm sure it was special for you, but a lot of the authors are, basically, nobodies (that sounds mean, but you know what I mean, right?). How do they get hired to do that? Could a normal writer with a Fairies story get Disney to publish them?

  27. welliewalks says:

    Hi!
    Okay, so I hope it's ok that I've friended you on NaNoWriMo- if I'm missing anybody, will you let me know? 🙂
    Sparrowhawk/Sparrowhawk96
    TheWriteress
    TotalNerd
    Me too, Im sooo excited! I've had this idea for aaages- since the middle of summer at least. I've been taking so many notes and tossing ideas around… I can't wait to start!!
    @Lark and Jenna Royal- I love Spilling Ink too! I also love Writing Magic and Juicy Writing by Brigid Lowry.
    @Elizabeth- I tried to search for you on NaNo but found nothing. 😛

  28. Lark says:

    @welliewalks– I'll have to check out Juicy Writing, what's it about?
    Also, Gail… have you read The School Story by Andrew Clements? Do you think that it is a legitimate process for a kid to get published? Providing you have the resources, I mean. A few more things on the subject of publishing… best case scenario, say I send out my manuscript to a literary agent and they accept it. Would it be possible to do this/get a great agent without meeting in person? Ever? Or meeting the editor? Would love to see a post on this, thanks!

  29. gailcarsonlevine says:

    From the website:

    @welliewalks-If my name doesn't come up on the search (which it should, it's themagicalquill no spaces, no nothing else, and on the kids site) then you could search for the title of my book, Odette and Odile. Feel free to send me a NaNoMail, if you like, but I'm not allowed to accept friend requests unless I know you in person. Sorry! I'm super excited for it too! I can't believe I'll have A 50,000 WORD NOVEL by December!
    Elizabeth

  30. gailcarsonlevine says:

    Lark–I haven't read THE SCHOOL STORY. You don't have to meet your editor or agent, although if the relationship lasts, all of you will probably want to meet up, and there may be circumstances when you will meet. The publisher may send you to speak at a conference, for example, and the editor may be there.

  31. Melissa says:

    Gail-
    I know it's much easier to post on here but I'm curious about how letters get to you. I sent two letters and I did get postcards back. (Thanks!)What I was wondereing is whether letters go directly to you or if they through someone else first. Why does it take so long for them to get to you?

  32. gailcarsonlevine says:

    Melissa–If the letters are sent to HarperCollins I receive them irregularly, but postcards are sent from there and I read the letters later. If they're sent to other publishers I rarely get them, maybe because few are sent. If they're sent to my home, I respond with a postcard, but I'm not quick about it. Sorry! I don't give out my home address, but there must be a way to get it, because a few letters arrive. It's okay. The letters are always nice.

  33. Lark says:

    Great post on quitting. 🙂 Okay, so I have written a story that everyone that's read it says it's great, but I hate it. Well, maybe not hate, but I just can't make it into a good story (by my standards, which are high). I'm considering just trashing it– and it's an almost 10,000 pg middle grade novel. It has so many Mary Sue/Gary Stu characters, loose threads, and cheesy dialogue. HELP!!! Any ideas on starting a story completely over? I know you've done it a lot with Beloved Elodie (which I CANNOT wait to read) but in a way I DON'T want to trash it, just revise, revise, revise but I'm not sure I can with such a giant amount of work.

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