the playground in my head

I’ve know that for a long time, I’ve always considered “strange” ways of getting plots as questionable. Like the story about how J. K. Rowlings saw Harry Potter while on the train and heard that if she wrote about him, she would be rich. Even Twilight I might have questioned in the beginning.

The fact is, however, that dreams play an important role for us writers of non-everyday fiction books. Look at it this way.

Our brain/subconscious/whatever you want to call it gets thousands and millions of signals a day. Each one of the signals the brain has to interpret. Some of these signals get picked up by our “plotting” section of our brain (Yes, I am really a nursing student) and gets flagged as a possible plot. We then, in our immense logic and foresight, either store the plot idea/detail or discard it as garbage. It all is based on the logic of the moment and must behave very grown-upish.

However, when our brain/subconscious is asleep, it suddenly gets to go to the playground and play. For once, our plotting section is allowed free reign over the whole brain and can do whatever it wishes. This, obviously, results in some  very strange dreams but it also allows for thoughts, memories and the like to be connected in such a way that our adult subconscious never would bother to connect it.

Dreams, in essence, literally can be created into plots because of the randomness and chaos associated with dreams. So let the randomness win.