Stop Boring Your Friends and Storytell Your Dreams Right
Have you ever been told a story of a dream and thought to yourself, “I love you, but please don’t tell me about your dream unless you’ve thought it through”? Well I have, and so I thought I’d remedy this with three quick little tips.
Jonathan Gotschall, the author of the storytelling animal, writes that we tend to dream all night long and not only in the REM stages of sleep, so the ability for our minds to create stories is endless and non-stop and therefore we should have umpteen amounts of stories running through our minds when we wake up. We only remember a select few however and the dreams that are remembered often are complex and disjointed.
“you were there, but it wasn’t you, because you looked like a bald French man, and you were carrying a snake, but it wasn’t a snake, and we were in my old high school but actually it was in time square and then, oh yeah the snake was maybe actually a rope…”
– Every friend in the world
I’m sure we have all been dragged into a conversation where a sentence like this pops up and you think to yourself … “oh no just smile and nod Daniela” and then when they’re done you can say an emphatic “so weird” and hopefully by then, you can move on to the next conversation.
Throughout this lockdown I have heard so many people say “my goodness, I’m having the most vivid dreams” and proceed to tell me the extent of the dreams. I will say, I generally don’t mind hearing about my fellow friend’s dreams because I’m quite nosey and I believe that dreams are a window to the subconscious. However, I understand not everyone feels the same, so I’m here to give some tips on dream storytelling.
The difficulty with dream telling is that it is essentially non-linear. Dreams do not follow the same patterns that your daily life would, one moment your talking to your sister and then she morphs into your second-grade teacher who you haven’t spoken to in a while, therefore telling a dream to someone can often be confusing, longwinded and let’s be honest boring because of that unusual structure and the hyper-reality aspect of them.
1. Digest the Dream
You’ve woken up in a bit of a frenzy, your dream is still incredibly vivid in your mind, you grab your phone open WhatsApp messenger and send a six minute audio to your friend describing your dream. It seems likely that these voice messages will be confusing for the recipient.
Instead, I suggest taking a moment and telling yourself your dream first, often new information comes to people when they recount their dreams the first time around, and it is this element of constantly remembering new elements that famous “oh I just remembered!” which seems to throw people and confuses.
By taking some time to digest the dream yourself you will already have a clearer idea of the design and theme throughout your wild night’s adventure.
If it helps, keep a notebook and pen by your bed and write down some keywords of what took place in the dream (we tend to remember them when we have some prompt) and having that time will help you come to terms with the events in the dream, its structure and therefore will make for a clearer story when you decide to tell it.
2. Keep It Simple
Keep it simple is a rule that should be applied to most storytelling and in particular with dream telling. Not overwhelming your audience with unnecessary facts and information will help people follow your story with ease.
Pick the key and essential elements that happened in your dream and which you know must be stated. From there try to make the dream as simple and comprehensible to the recipient as possible.
Remember, you can see the dream, as you are recounting it with the help of the visual stimulus that you have created in the confines of your psyche but your listener doesn’t have that. When necessary you can add in a brief description, and help paint that picture but remember, be brief.
3. Tell The Right Person At The Right Time
Catching someone who’s busy or a tad grumpy and launching in to tell them your dream while they are making their morning coffee is definitely not a good idea (spoken from personal experience here). It’s difficult to sometimes think about others when we are so wrapped up in the oddness of our own subconscious. However, before launching yourself into a morning dream monologue, take a moment and think, is this the right time for this person to hear the story I dreamt up last night? If not, give it a second (which will help you do some more dream digesting) and find a moment at a later point when they may be more receptive.
Next time you tell your dream to someone, also think about whether they are the right person to tell or if they are simply the first person you see and as you need an outlet to help you understand you think to yourself, “they’ll do.”
So, if the dream is about the person you’ve decided to tell, that should normally keep them slightly more interested. If it is a friend who enjoys analysing dreams and they are quite open, then you’re quite lucky. I have also found that my mother is a wonderful listener so you may reach out to her, or maybe your mother, like mine, is too caring and will also listen to you regurgitate a digested, simple, and entertaining dream.
In A Nutshell
Hopefully, next time you have a wild and raucous dream you’ll keep these points in mind to ensure you tell as thrilling, compact and entertaining story as possible.
Or, if you find that your dream is too good and dramatic to follow these three rules, you can take a page out of Mary Shelley’s book and turn it into a successful novel, she wrote Frankenstein based on a nightmare she had.
If you do, reach out to me, I’m always looking for a good book and I’m super nosey, remember!
If you want to learn more about our workshops, we work at improving your storytelling skills and each are tailored and adjusted to your needs and industry.