Dream Quest, or The Great Ideas I Come Up With in My Sleep

"Once there was a screenwriter who used to have great ideas during the night, but by the time morning came, he would forget them. So he placed a pencil and paper beside his bed. One morning as he was shaving, he thought, oh I had the best idea during the night, but now I forgot it. Oh wait! I've got my pencil and paper. So he ran to look what he had written down. The paper said, 'Boy falls in love with girl.' " ~Alfred Hitchcock

Sometimes when I'm sleeping and I'm uncomfortable, I have very elaborate "quest dreams"--which is way less cool than it sounds. These are dreams in which I have some often intangible mission I must accomplish by extreme mental exertion, but I'm always just one step away from reaching the goal.

As the mists of sleep begin to rise and I find myself in that twilight zone between the dream world and the real one, I start to realize that I'm in a dream and that I should just give up the quest because it isn't real and it's just making me sleep badly.

But the part of me that's still dreaming is like, no, if you do it now, you won't have to do it later, like when you wake up. So I keep on questing this meaningless quest.

Last night, or I should say this morning, I had such a dream. First some background from the real world:

I have been playing around with the idea of making a mini crime comedy short film this summer. I've already discussed some ideas with my DP and have come up with the basic characters, locations, and a few scenarios.

Now, back to my dream. In the dream, I was trying to remember who I had thought of to play the character of "The Kid." I was sure that I had an actor in mind (by actor I mean some kid I might happen to know who lives in the vicinity and who wouldn't mind acting in a film for a day or two) but I couldn't for the life of me remember who it was.

I painstakingly went through a mental list of every kid I know in this town, until I finally settled on one I thought would be great--though I was sure it wasn't the one I'd had in mind previously.

By this time I was starting to cross into wakefulness and a reasonable thought invaded my busy questing: is there actually a kid in the story? Of course there is! I retorted. The major point of conflict in the story involves a child!

But then I was like, wait--does it? And as I woke up more I realized I didn't even have a major point of conflict yet because I hadn't locked the story.

And there actually was no kid in the story.

But there could be! said my dream mind. See?! You can come up with great ideas while you sleep! You found your plot! I did it! Hooray!

By the time I was fully awake I thought I may have actually come up with a good movie idea in my sleep! I weighed it carefully.

And I decided that no, there is no kid in the story.

The End.