Starting a scene with nightmares

[Michael J. Tobias]

Personally, this would bug the hell out of me (her dying in the dream and then waking). But that's just me. I like the idea of a nightmare, as others point out, because being in prison under a death penalty would almost certainly lead to it (at least for relatively "normal" people). I also like the idea of something falling in the nightmare relating to the guard falling...or something similar used to stir her to consciousness. I prefer the original to the second version, though I'd still probably change the original where something falls...maybe the executioner drops his axe? Both that and the falling of the guard would be related in that they are unlikely and she would not imagine either of them happening.

 

[Ireth]

I did have that dream once. In my dream, I was hugging my dead cousin and my mother was pulling me away by the arm. I woke up to find myself in the conscious world where my brother was sleepwalking, pulling my arm. I see no problem with your falling guard.

Well as long as your dream ain't the pretext for deus ex machina I have no qualms.

I certainly hope the escape isn't seen as a DEM. I'm doing my best to set things up so I can't pull one of those just to get the heroine out of danger.

I think putting in a dream in regular text is fine. After all is the reality currently being experienced by the character and, thus, the reader.

One way to start a book with a nightmare, perhaps, is not to have it from the POV of the dreamer but from the POV of the person causing the dream, such as the main faerie in Jonathan Strange or Dream in Sandman. It'd be interesting to get into the mechanics of creating nightmares.

That would be cool, but in this case the dream is purely psychological, not magical in nature. My Fae can't cause nightmares like that, though if they could I'm certain they would.

To me, it's not the dream in itself but the connection to the MC that matters. The scene reads well; if anything, I'd make it more nightmarish. That is, the connection must surely be to illustrate the MC's fears, to emphasize how trapped she is, how doomed. She perhaps could struggle more. That could either by physically (in the dream) or psychologically -- the dream-state where one moves through it powerless to resist, but one is screaming in terror inside one's head. That way, when she is jolted out of sleep, she can have that moment of disorientation and panic that comes with waking from a nightmare.

Good point! ^^

I think the quick move from a dream of dying into a sudden hope for life works quite nicely.

Well, the real hope for life doesn't come until later. First she mistakes her rescuer for a real guard, then she's confused as he takes her out of her cell ("it can't be morning already! Also why do you sound so urgent?"), and finally the realization sets in ("holy crap, it's a jailbreak! But who ARE you?") The full scene would make this clearer.

Personally, this would bug the hell out of me (her dying in the dream and then waking). But that's just me. I like the idea of a nightmare, as others point out, because being in prison under a death penalty would almost certainly lead to it (at least for relatively "normal" people). I also like the idea of something falling in the nightmare relating to the guard falling...or something similar used to stir her to consciousness. I prefer the original to the second version, though I'd still probably change the original where something falls...maybe the executioner drops his axe? Both that and the falling of the guard would be related in that they are unlikely and she would not imagine either of them happening.

That's a good point as well, and very possible.