• Welcome to the Fantasy Writing Forums. Register Now to join us!

Anyone else using dreams for wolrdbuilding?

LostName

Dreamer
Might be all the fantasy and sci fi media I consume but occasionally I have dreams with that kinda stuff and when they are interesting I try to write down what I remember, not as some kind of dream diary which I'm not interested in but purely because it gives me ideas for worldbuilding.

E.g. a while ago I had a dream about being in some kind of sci fi underground complex and choosing some kind of location for a adventurer or hunter or whatever exam and which gate to go to get there after reading too many manhwa where gates to dungeons open on earth and monsters some out if you don't beat the dungeon boss while some humans have gotten rpg abilities (it's all with lots of video game mechanics). They can be fun but like with all media there is a lot of garbage and they are mostly inane power fantasies where mc becomes super strong super fast.

On like Friday I started getting tons of an ideas related to this and created a new world, though it has nothing to do with earth and is about that underground facility and the gates like in my dream.

I also once had an incredible dream about some sort of ancient Egypt like place with a king / emperor / pharaoh / whatever siting on a massive throne and being entertained by magic creating and controlling birds made of gold and gems but then the entertainers turn the birds into a weapon and later into some kind of giant demon to try to assassinate the emperor and I've written down several hundred thousand words of ideas about that setting since.
 

pmmg

Myth Weaver
Sadly, I almost never remember my dreams, so they do not inspire much of my fiction writing. I have come to discover thought that the likelihood of having strong dreams I will remember has a lot to do with the amount of caffeine I have in a day. When I am off caffeine, I dream more. I'll call it one of the benefits.
 

Rexenm

Maester
I have dreams of driving home, and back home, repetitively, and then I run to a third home. Car, bus, plane, train it doesn’t matter, it’s like things are more interesting at home, but boy I can run fast. I think my brain is teaching me independence, they are not uncomfortable dreams, there are a lot of familiar characters.
 

NoahGrey

Acolyte
My wife has been journaling her dreams since she was a teenager and has it laid out to create an entire story based around dreams and the dreaming world.
 

CupofJoe

Myth Weaver
Like Finchbearer my dreams sometime lead to ideas or feeling that I want to explore in a story. But the dreams are usually too surreal to be useful as the basis of world building.
 

Aldarion

Archmage
When I was a kid, I had a dream where talking dinosaurs were besieging last remnants of humanity in the Pula Amphitheatre.

And so I remembered that dream, and decided to write a (short) story based on it... whenever I catch time.
 

Chicken317

Acolyte
Oh, yes so much. Mostly I just catalogue interesting creatures I find and I add them to my fictional universe. Just last night I found one that is obviously based upon a unicorn, but it was more arboreal predator shaped. It can use magic to cloak itself to ambush prey. But it was in a shed full of junk where it wasn't used to hiding, so I was able to spot it and it was shooed away because I felt uncomfortable with it stalking there so close.
 

JBCrowson

Inkling
Sadly, I almost never remember my dreams, so they do not inspire much of my fiction writing. I have come to discover thought that the likelihood of having strong dreams I will remember has a lot to do with the amount of caffeine I have in a day. When I am off caffeine, I dream more. I'll call it one of the benefits.
Try cranking up the blue cheese at bedtime. It's not entirely an urban myth.
 

JBCrowson

Inkling
I recall dreams quite a bit, and they have inspired scenes or moments in stuff I've written. I also tend to become conscious during dreaming, and then shape the dream. That started when I was a kid and had a recurring dream about nuclear armageddon, until I altered the outcome.
 
Top