Thread: Help on improving my dream journal

I'm terrible at consistently dream journalling so I'm probably not the best advice giver lol.

Maybe you can re-frame how you think of a dream journal?

You can try making a dot point list that covers the main points and fill the blanks with your memory.
You can not write at all and draw stick figure cartoons instead.
You could try having a group of questions that you answer about a dream.
Or maybe you have a favourite author you can try imitating their style.

I think the most important thing is to write them down right after waking, and plan on waking several times a night. Then, when you wake up in the morning, as soon as you have time, flesh out your journal by re-writing them in your online journal. You don't want to spend too much time writing details in the night, because the memories fade so quickly. It's more important that you get the gist down as fast as possible. So I always write key points in singular words. Example:

Warehouse, junk, trapped, chased, car going to explode, 2 women, ran out the door, beach, green parrot.

That's it. That's all I will write, then next day? I go back over it, and more details may surface as I try to write it in a narrative format.

Also - a tip for making them pleasant to read? Write them in the present tense, as if it's happening right now, rather than past tense.

Lastly, don't forget to look for dream signs. When you're re-writing your dreams, try to spot them. Also, look for spots in your story where you could have become lucid. Practice imagining yourself becoming lucid in those spots - optionally writing it in as if lucidity happened.

From my understanding of your introduction post, you're still relatively young, so my advice would be to not worry about writing style/pleasantness too much yet, because it's something that will certainly develop and improve on its own as you keep doing it. Ametam's advice on trying different approaches to DJ'ing sounds like a good idea too and it really just depends on how involved you want to get with your own DJ.

Just like with painting or drawing and going back to old or sometimes even recent works, re-reading our own recent or older DJ entries a while later can feel the same way. I would say that you don't have to like your own DJ entries for them to be useful or for them to provide a relevant access point to the related memories.

Either way, detail on your entries can depend on so many things, including when you first write notes down as MoonageDaydream suggests but also other less controllable factors. For me, between ages roughly around 8-12, I had very, very few dreams that I could recall at all, which also made me incredibly jealous of my siblings at the time.

It's normal if your dream recall fluctuates, I think, so this is something else that you needn't stress yourself out about either. For my personal example, I often write pretty detailed dreams but my recall can sometimes still amount to nothing more than a sentence and many times I can recall nothing at all, usually because of routine changes or something of that sort.

Writing in a creative and interesting way can take time and practice to perfect. Read some good books or Try some creative writing tasks and naturally your descriptive writing will improve over time. As mentioned above, write in the present tense and try describe what the dream felt like and really emphasise the emotions you felt and the more interesting details.

Sometimes dreams can be bland and that’s ok, not every entry is going to be an exciting, coherent story. In the end the dream journal is a tool and for me one I use to bring back those vivid memories in my head that I can reflect on. I don’t intend to publish the dreams and expect others to read them and be interested.