On the day after Christmas in 2003, I woke from a strange dream. The bit I remembered, ran like a thirty second trailer for a movie. A man walked alone beside the freeway. Then we are introduced to two witches, Cerise and the Abbess. In the dream, a key scene actually took place in a downtown Phoenix alley, instead of the Great Hall in the Citadel. The central conundrum, the question of sacrifice, presented itself in a beautiful 70mm anamorphic ELS (Extreme Long Shot) with Evan at one end and Abbess at the other and a maelstrom of scintillant magic and ghostly, dark, writhing tentacles between them.* “Faith” from Luscious Jackson played through the dream “commercial”.
When I woke up that morning, I sat down at my computer and immediately began writing, not sure the direction it would take nor how it would end. After about a month, I had decided on the finale. On Labor Day 2004, I had finished a 209 page whopper of a screenplay. In May 2013, I published the story as my first novel, Rider.
This moment of kismet was not a bolt out of the blue. Not coincidence. I had prepared for moments like this. I had trained for it, in fact.
While attending college, I began a series of writing exercises to hone my creativity. On a night that I did not have to be anywhere the next day, I would start my experiment. As I fell asleep, just as I began to drift off, I would give myself the suggestion that I would remember my dreams the next morning.
Most of the time I used this hypnotic directive, I would awake with my mind brimming full of… well, the weirdest stuff I could possibly dream up. Literally.
Once up, I would sit down, boot up my computer**, and pound out as many of the details as I could remember. On a bountiful day, this step could take several hours.
In the final step of my writing exercise, I would go back through all the details of the dream and come up with a reasonable explanation for every element in the dream. Here’s one of my favorites from my college years:
- Why the clothes of a clique of boys in the lunch room would constantly shift in shape and color, flexing in a synchronized way.
- Why the cute girl being harassed by the clique could turn all Mr. Fantastic rubbery and stringy.
- Why I (or my character in the dream) was the only one that could contain the young woman, even though I couldn’t do anything to my own body.
- Why the girl and I were outcasts in the school hierarchy.
- Actually, everyone in the lunch room could do odd things with their bodies, clothes, or things near them.
- Why the windows of the flying saucer shaped school faced an empty slab of concrete miles in length and width.
- Why two magic wielding witches with a grudge wanted to blow me up…
- with a peanut butter bomb, no less.
- The slab of concrete was for landing and training BattleMechs.***
- The school was for training ‘Mech pilots and was shaped like a flying saucer because it was a flying saucer, and could actually fly. A mobile school/battle platform, if you will.
- The ability to “bend” gave ‘Mech pilots an advantage in getting the giant machines to perform in extraordinary ways.
- The top dog boys displayed an ability to synchronize their changes and show off their skills.
- The cute girl had an “off the charts” ability to manipulate her body.
- I had an “off the charts” telekinetic abilities, hence able to keep her from moving.
- The rest of the school disliked us because our powers gave us a monumental advantage in competing for the top spots in the school. We were the badasses and the rest of the school knew it.
- As for the witches, they were being persecuted. While telekinetics and morphics where praised by society, other powers were shunned. Those with telepathy, clairvoyance, spell-casting and etcetera were imprisoned.
- The two particular witches were the older sisters of the cute girl. They hated her and the attention she received and I (as the girl’s friend) was a convenient target.
- The only thing I could come up with about the peanut butter bomb was that peanut shells were once used in making TNT. And possibly one form of spell-casting was molecular manipulation.
Even if I had to bend the laws of physics, if I could create an internally consistent world, I counted it as a win. What do you think?
And, this brings us to the second part. Where did all the dream stuff come from?
Well. from books, comic books, anime, video games, tv shows, and movies: Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse: Dune, The Lensman Series, The Foundation Series, Rite of Passage, Starship Troopers, Friday, Fantastic Four, The New Mutants, X-Factor, X-Men, Gundam, Voltron, Appleseed, MechWarrior, Star Trek, ST:TNG, Battlestar Galactica, Godzilla, The Terminator, and Star Wars (movies, books and comics). Just a few influences to be sure…
At the time I had this dream, I was reading about a book a week, had a 15-20 comic habit a month, saw every movie I could afford, watched anime with my friends, attended local sci-fi conventions and parked my rear in front of the tv when I didn’t have anything better to do. Oh yeah, I was working part time and attending college too.
So, I was busy, soaking up everything I possibly could. I fed my well of inspiration. And that well helped me grow my garden. I have no dearth of story ideas.
When the teacher says, “Write what you know,” well, the more you know, the larger the universe you have to write about.
The final aspect of consuming and creating art of any kind, is that the more you are familiar with what has been done, the more you can evaluate your own ideas.
Got an idea about a colony ship traveling to a distant star? It’s been done: The Starlost, Cities in Flight, Rite of Passage, the Doctor Who episode “The Beast Below“, and etc. It certainly does not mean that you should stop writing, but knowing the similar stories will ensure that you can push your work into a different direction.
Feed the well and you will be rewarded.
* One day that shot will grace the silver screen. I promise. back
** At the time, my computer was an old Compaq Portable I, that I had picked up at a pawn shop for $350. back
*** For those not familiar with anime, think the big robots in Pacific Rim. back
