A Fine Bogey Tale

Posted by David Duhr in Strategies      8 comments

Dec
15

Another thing I learned in Scotland: When Robert Louis Stevenson is asleep, do not wake him.

In my edition of The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Peter Harness writes in the afterword that the story “came to Stevenson, almost fully-formed, in an opium-induced nightmare.”

Of that night, his wife, Fanny, says, “I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis.” So she woke him… and he was furious. “Why did you wake me?” Stevenson shouted. “I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.”

That fine bogey tale became Jekyll & Hyde. He wrote the first draft in three days. Then he burned it! He wrote the next draft in six days, a rate of over 10,000 words per day. And of course he was sick as hell the whole time.

I wonder how the story might have changed if he’d have slept through to the end of the nightmare? Might it have been even more frightening?

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I’ve been thinking often lately about dreams and how they relate to our creativity. I’m no expert, and my take is unoriginal: I think dreams are simply our subconscious engaging us in conversation.

I rarely remember those conversations, and when I do, I have to immediately write down everything I can recall before it all starts fading away. And then I analyze.

Every so often, a scene from a dream, or inspired by a dream, will show up in my writing.

More often, my dreams simply notify me of the things — especially the fears — that have been on my mind that I’ve not been aware of.

These are the things that show up in my writing, nonfiction especially, again and again.

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So Stevenson wrote Jekyll & Hyde after a dream; Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein after a dream; Poe wrote some of his stories based on dreams. Stephen King says he wrote Dreamcatcher after a dream.

But the ideas that showed up in those scary works of fiction are things those writers had already been thinking about, perhaps with some measure of fear.

Next time I have a nightmare, I’m going to, after processing it, write a short story based on it and see what comes out.

I think you should do the same! And then let’s compare notes.

Your turn: How do your dreams and your writing impact each other? Do you ever write fiction based on dreams/nightmares? Do you ever have dreams/nightmares about your fictional characters? Do the things you dream about find their way into your nonfiction? Let us know in the comments!

WriteByNight co-founder David Duhr is copy editor and fiction editor at the Texas Observer and has written about books for the Dallas Morning News, Electric Literature, Publishing Perspectives, and others.

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