Thread: Need to Improve Control - any tips?

had the most amazing lucid last night, or perhaps "semi-lucid" would be the better term. i've been lucid in the past, but the dreams lasted seconds, it seems as soon as i realised i was lucid the dream would end a few moments later. last night, the dream went on ages, and pretty much followed the script i'd wanted to dream about. the thing is though, it seemed that i wasn't 100% in control, and seemed to keep slipping back into non-lucidity. i guess a lot of this will be down to practice, but is there anything else that can help control? eg, i was planning that when i went around a corner and into a room, someone would be there, but when i got there, she wasn't - there was a lot of other DCs instead. i asked them where she was and they told me so i went, and actually found her, which was very cool i thought, but again, at that point the dream lost lucidity a bit and i was back to watching. i did remember to do stuff to try and ground me, like touching stuff (not her, lol) and that worked, but i'm curious as to why lucidity kept slipping away then returning, is this usual, or was i doing something wrong, or missing out something? another example i forgot to mention, was that i seemed able to conjure up a pump-action shotgun, it seemed to work partly - the pump worked etc - but it didn't fire.

TIA