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I'm pretty good at getting lucids, and I'm quite happy at the amount I'm having. Unfortunately, my main downfall is the qaulity and length of my lucids, they're generally short, and not FULL lucid dreams. (Those of you who have experienced a few lucid dreams know that the amount of lucidity varies.)
Whenever you first realize you are in a dream you are going to want to anchor yourself to the dream. Mainly, it's stabalizing but you just go a little bit further with it. Spend a few extra seconds and rub your hands, focusing on how it feels, not just doing it just to do it. Then, you want to really immerse yourself in the dream by focusing on all the senses. Focus on how it feels (warm, cold), what does it look like? how does it smell etc. You want to try and become a part of the dream, but without losing that individuality you naturally have during an LD and losing awareness.
When you do feel the dream start to fade the most common (and only way I know of) to try and lengthen it is to spin around right when you feel it fading. It normally takes anywhere from 10-30 seconds but you can sometimes save the dream and continue on. However, this technique isn't very reliably but it's the only one I'm aware of to increase the length directly. Personally, I normally have about a 40% success rate with this, and last time I tried it this did save an LD, but it often does not work. It doesn't hurt to try though, as you've got nothing else to lose :)
Also, even if all else fails and you end up waking up, I would suggest trying to get good at the DEILD technique. This bypasses the need to increase dream length by simply thrusting yourself into another dream, already lucid. It's easier than WILD and quite reliable from my experience. It rarely causes you to go through SP or very many hallucinations, and you just slide right into another dream. Then, once you do preform a successful DEILD, you can continue to chain them together and get large amounts of LDs in one night. My record is 5, but others have gotten close to 10 before, I believe. If you can get good at this technique then you can even start to preform DEILDs from normaly dreams too, just by recognizing how the dream starts to fade, and then preparing yourself not to move or open your eyes when you do wake up.
If you combine these three techniques then I'm sure you can get much longer LDs and have them be a better quality. Good luck! :)
To make dreams last longer I just concentrate on what I see. I don't look at something, I inspect it carefully. This helps from fading, but not from dropping out.
To be more lucid, I make a detailed plan of what I will do in a LD. In LDs memory works much better than thinking.
Engage with the dream. Touch things, move your body, converse with anyone who is around. Keep the curious and expectant attitude that something fun is going to happen at any moment.
GReat advice guys! I never really anchored myself, and became completely "with" the dream. Thanks alot!
Sit, feel the ground, feel yourself taking up space, pat your body up and down. All just variations on what has already been said.
On top of what everyone said, experience is also something that factors in. My first 10-20 lucids were what I would call really short lucids lasting at most 10 minutes, and usually less than 5 after I had become lucid. I think one of the reasons for this was the fact that I was making dream stabilization a stressfull chore rather than something I should have been doing more casually. I was always expecting the dream to get very unstable after becoming lucid and would struggle to try and stabilize the dream only to lose it within seconds.
Months later, I learned more and more, and became more confident in my ability to stay within the dream and what happened? My LD's got longer, I would stay in the dream for seemingly 15-30 minutes at a time and had much better dream control. Hope this helps.