I almost never remember my dreams, but when I do they are generally long and relatively linear, extremely cinematic, and often make a great basis for stories or screenplays.
Here's one I had last night, in rough, semi-stream-of-consciousness outline form. It's narrated by a girl (for some reason). Reminds me of a teen fantasy novel...
Setting: It takes place at a small (high)school of magic, the southernmost of many set up along several hundred miles of rocky beach. As part of their training, the students have to go down to the water in shifts every day to fight off monsters who come from the water, so the schools are combination training grounds and defense system. This particular school rarely sees much action; there are other schools further north which are fighting a constant battle, and which are quite prestigious and expensive to get into. The monsters only appear here sporadically, and many shifts see no fighting at all.
Main Characters: Narrator (female, "me"), love interest (male, "him"), rival (female, "her"), the headmaster of the school (male)
- I go sideways, always sneaking around in the forbidden places of the school, finding and befriending members of the staff. They like me in the kitchens. My magic is subtle -- I collect rocks and shells and make them beautiful, my "secret things". In my wanderings there is a room near the Headmaster's office which is always locked, I've never been able to get in.
- She goes forward, taking extra shifts especially at night when the monsters are more active, always working to get better. She is better. She's motivated and ambitious.
- He stays where he is. He never does much magic, we don't know why -- he has the talent, but he doesn't use it. He's good with weapons, though, and everyone knows that he's her boyfriend. She's possessive of him.
- There's an incident, a prank where another student pretends to be a monster. I get very scared, he tries to protect me, then she intervenes and the prankster is hurt. Afterward, I overhear him talking to the Headmaster. He says that she is very good, but too ruthless, that I'm distant and don't have much talent, and that he only knows one spell, and can't cast it.
- After he leaves the Headmaster's office, I confront him about what he said. "Why do you only know one spell? Why can't you cast your spell?" He reminds me that the only way to get better at magic is to cast spells, to make room in your mind for more, and his spell is too destructive to be risked, so even though he has the talent, he can't use it.
- "Why do you think I'm not talented? How could you say that?" He points out that i'm always sneaking around, keeping to myself, and I never do any of the magic in class or on the beach... like him. I realize that no one knows about my secret things, so I take him sideways and show him my secret things, and make one for him right there. He's very impressed.
- We kiss, and I ask him about her, I thought she was his girlfriend. "She thinks so, she acts like it too, but she never asked me."
- The moment is interrupted by her, she's horrified and angry that I'm stealing her boyfriend. She storms off, swearing to make our us miserable for betraying her.
- He and I are now dating, but she's trying to make our lives a living hell. I don't sneak away as much, and I'm not as happy because I miss my friends in the kitchens, and I don't get to make secret things as much, but at least more people talk to me. I don't go sideways as often.
- Then one day the monsters come, lots of them. At first it's just the normal kind, big scaly jointed things surging up from under the waves, and then they send a swarm of black crabs, bigger than dinner plates, with razor claws, and fast. There are explosions all up and down the beach for miles, from the other schools under attack. It's an all-out assault. Our school is overrun and we start to flee, several classmates getting cut down by the crabs.
- I'm terrified of the monsters and crabs, panic, and run to one of my hideouts, a forbidden place which is shielded to protect the staff. I'm safer there, but everyone else is fighting, falling back to the school.
- I can hear people running around the building, and then suddenly she appears, followed by a pair of crabs, and she grins maliciously and disappears, leaving me to kill them on my own. Which I do -- I turn them into giant secret things, petrifying them. They're beautiful and frightening and dangerous.
- I look out the window and see the Headmaster leading an assault against the crabs and monsters, with her right behind, and him in the middle of the group, wielding weapons and destroying crabs. At first it looks like they are going to win, but then a monster appears from a hidden dip in the sand, and kills the Headmaster. She is injured, and he stands over her as they are swarmed and casts his one spell, and the whole beach explodes… I'm thrown backward and knocked out against the wall, but the door collapses so I'm protected.
- When I wake up hours later, I hide out in the kitchens, scared to leave. There's food there, it's a couple days before I work up the courage. Finally I clear away the rubble and go out into the world.
- Things have changed. The monsters were destroyed, but most of the magic users, the students, died in the assault. Everyone is frightened and hurt, they worry about another attack while everyone is weakened, there are no defenses.
- She is a hero for rescuing everyone on the beach from the school, everybody but the Headmaster, and him. He died in the explosion, which wiped out a huge portion of the monster army. He's also a hero, but it doesn't matter because he's dead.
- When I find her, she denounces me as a coward, everyone shuns me as they try to pick up the pieces of their lives. I live in the abandoned school, in the forbidden places which are still standing. I walk a lot on the beach, picking through the wreckage and monster carcasses. I explore more of the school, but I still can't get into the locked room. I start to turn all of the refuse on the beach into beautiful secret things, as a memorial to him.
- In my wanderings, I find a monster that isn't fully dead; there's a mostly human creature inside, the big thing was an exoskeleton, and maybe a vehicle. I pull the creature out and bring it back to the school, nurse it to health, though it doesn't wake up for days. I don't know why I'm caring for it, except that it's the only living thing here, and everyone else hates me.
- Suddenly she shows up. She was trying to get into the locked room, and finds me with the creature. She says that she will expose me to the world as a traitor, helping the monsters, and she leaves. I panic; they're going to come and kill me.
- Then the monster speaks, it had been awake for a while. It says that in the locked room is the source of the school's magic, and if I let it in there, it can use the magic to change the past and the future. It shows me visions, rewinding to show a different path.
- When she bursts in on me and him, we fight and I defeat her, everyone loves me, when the battle comes I'm the hero. I find the creature afterwards and it teaches me strange magic, and I become the ruler of everywhere, my armies destroy the monsters once and for all.
- Then there are visions of her humiliation. She is disgraced and expelled from school for starting the fight, she's very poor and during the battle most of her family is killed. She's homeless on the street, and finally sneaks into the hospital, into a room where he is in a coma, and she kills herself.
- The creature tells me that all that and more can come to pass, if I open the locked room and let it inside, but I ask it how it can bring back the dead. The creature says that it can't, their end times are dictated by the Universe. No one can bring back the dead.
- I realize that this means he must be alive somewhere. I grab the creature, asking it to help me find him, and run out to the beach, searching frantically through the wreckage. I find him unconscious, trapped under an exoskeleton -- it's partially bonded to him, keeping him alive. The creature releases him from the exoskeleton, and I fish him out, carry him to the locked room, and finally break it open.
- Inside is a shimmering pool of light, and I lower him in. The pool darkens and vanishes, healing him, and he wakes up.
- At that moment the creature bursts in, bearing the exoskeleton, a true monster once again, huge and powerful. I freeze, but he casts a new spell, destroying the monster.
I can't remember the aftermath, the denouement after that point. What do you think, anyway?
