Luna Corbden

Our brains evolved to comprehend stories. Stories are the natural result of linear time, i.e. this causes that which causes that and so on. A species which evolves to understand this fundamental nature of time will have an extreme advantage over competitors. It gives us the ability to learn from past mistakes and predict future outcomes. Our advanced ability to consciously understand and communicate narrative is ultimately what sets us apart from other animals.

Our ability to understand and create story is so important that our biology forces each of us to practice every single night... when we dream.

Symbols are a basic aspect to stories and the words we tell them with. The word is not the thing. A word is merely a symbol we use to refer to the thing. But words are not the only symbols, and our subconscious thrives on pre-verbal symbolic thinking (though it can understand words, too). And an assembly of these symbols in some kind of cause/effect sequence is what we call a "narrative." Narratives are often told with words, but can take visual and other forms as well. For instance, a game is a narrative. Who will win? How will they win?

As a writer, I study how narratives work. Every movie and TV show I watch, every book I read, a part of my brain is studying the author's narrative style, character development, metaphor and symbolism, theme, foreshadowing, plot and pacing, and all the other tools of the trade.

One "no-no" in the writing world is the dream sequence. Or at least, dream sequences need to be handled with care. A reader/viewer doesn't want to feel they've wasted their time. We don't like our football yanked away. A depiction of something shocking and consequential (like the death of a character), and then ending with, "It was all a dream!" feels cheap and disappointing. It undermines trust in the rest of the narrative. It damages the suspension of disbelief. A writer needs to handle a dream sequence very carefully to avoid a disappointed audience.

But a dream sequence can be beneficial if it conveys new information or has a material effect on the rest of the story. This can either be the character learning something about their waking world because of the dream, or it inspires action, or the dream conveys symbolic information to the viewer that helps us understand the character or story theme.

Bad dream: The protagonist is riding her bike and gets hit by a bus oh no! wait, she wakes up and "it was all a dream."

Good dream: The protagonist is riding her bike and notices a sign she passes every day. But now the sign has a picture of her best friend. A bus crashes through the sign and she awakens with the sense that her friend is in trouble. She calls her friend.

Good dream: The protagonist is riding her bike and a bus nearly hits her. She notices the face of the driver is her co-worker holding a knife. Later in the story's real-world, her co-worker is revealed to be the antagonist who is secretly trying to "kill her ambitions" and "cut off her avenues" to success.

Good Dream: The protagonist is riding her bicycle and is hit by a bus. As she is dying, she sees that the driver is herself. Upon waking, she doesn't understand the dream, but the viewer, putting together other parts of the story, realizes that the character is unknowingly undermining herself.

Stories are like dreams in that they convey information to us about our waking world. The symbols of our collective dreams mirror the symbols of our collective stories. Likewise as a writer, my individual symbols mirror the symbols that appear in my stories. By learning about narrative symbology, we can learn about our own collective and individual subconscious language. This helps us get more in touch with our inner lives and the inner life of our larger culture. Stories and dreams intertwine to give us a richer, more connected, more pro-social and psychologically healthy world. When we can understand symbols and how they reinforce theme in a story, we can better come to appreciate what an author does when they weave a compelling narrative. I have a lot of "I see what you did there" moments now while consuming narratives created by others.

For more information on understanding the symbols in your own dreams, I recommend the book "Radical Dreaming" by John Goldhammer.

For understanding use of theme in narrative, in a how-to sense, I recommend "Story" by Robert McKee.

For understanding myth in narrative, there are the old standbys by Joseph Campbell, especially "The Hero with a Thousand Faces," or just watch his interviews with Bill Moyer, "The Power of Myth": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pE8ciMkayVM

Campbell's work was inspired by Carl Jung, and his book "Man and His Symbols" is an excellent primer on the topic.