Text remained STablE wIThIn a DReAm?

first of all, sorry about what i did to the title. i couldnt help it. it made it look more dramatic :cheeky:

anyway. just a short, strange little thing that happened to me in my dream last night. everybody says text isnt stable in dreams, even to the point of relying on it to test reality. but in my dream last night, (which i should probably clarify was a non-lucid) i was reading this book (it might have been about writing, or something. i dont really know), and my eyes just sort of skipped back to the beginning of the paragraph. dont ask me why, i just decided to read it again, so i read it again, and again, and several more times.
what most people say about text in dreams, (or a least, what i think they're saying) is that each time you read it, it would change, kind of like the Telephone game. but when i read this, it didnt change! if it did, it was so minute that i didnt even notice. :shock:
has this ever happened before? does it have to do with the fact that ive been reading all day prior? does it have to do with the fact i want to be a writer? or does it have to do with the fact that the dream was about my parents putting me in an insane asylum?
either way, this could be something incredible if applied to an LD. like i said earlier, i write, but i'm flat-out of ideas. what if, in a lucid dream, i go to a library, pick up an interesting book that i've never heard of, read it, then write it all down in the morning!
could it work? can i work? could somebody try?

Ah the whole writting changing is just a myth, I can read no problem in dreams too. Only way for it to change, is if I am focusing on it to change and re-read like 9 or so times, otherwise it will remain the same.

Personally, I have read a lot of dream books and they always give pretty coherent and interesting stories to read, though never writte them out in the morning, since that would take too much time and I am way too lazy <.<

Text CAN change, or not. Just like everything in dreams, nothing is written in stone.

There is no "it'll happen this way everytime"... it's always different.

I wouldn't listen to what anyone says about what can't happen in a dream or is "supposed to happen". Text used to change for me, but it remained stable once, and is pretty much stable all the time now.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hwen

either way, this could be something incredible if applied to an LD. like i said earlier, i write, but i'm flat-out of ideas. what if, in a lucid dream, i go to a library, pick up an interesting book that i've never heard of, read it, then write it all down in the morning!
could it work? can i work? could somebody try?

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You should do this. Many famous artists, writers, and scientists (Salvador Dali, Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and Stephen King to name a few) have used lucid dreaming for inspiration. If you want to be a writer and looking for material, using your dreams as a source of creativity is an excellent idea.

If you do attempt this, I would love to hear the results :)

Wrong, wrong, all wrong.

The text changes because people expect it to change when they look away, and then look at it again.
Period.

Why they expect it to change ? Because at first, it was a part of reality check to expect it to happen, and then as people told people the same story, it got a new meaning ! "that it HAS to change"..

nope it doesn't.. The text in a dream can be absolutely stable !

Vortaix missed an important point, Text does change sometimes and sometimes it doesn't and it is not JUST because of expectation that this happens.

Text for me is also usually stable, I believe that people who experience it like us are in the minority, which makes it a possible (though not the most useful) RC.

Despite it being stable, text is still rather more difficult to recall compared to events. (At least for me) even in-dream the memory of it slips away, which might explain why you had to re-read that paragraph over and over. If you are interested in using dreams as writing inspiration (which is a fantastic idea) you should try to memorize the IDEAS in the writing instead of the word for word vernacular (again, this is just an opinion of course)

Last time I tried (serious effort) to memorize a poem I found in a dream this is the best I could remember of it when I woke up:

'Dawn is the (something) of life
Golden air and silver dew
(something about riches being impermanent)'

hope the example helps, best of luck!

P.S. :cackle: I love what you did with the title

What about the time? I've been having a ton of FA's where the time changes but so little that I don't notice.

I remember one memorable lucid. I was sat in a small room with lots of lovely antique wooden furniture. It had bookcases completely covering all of the walls. I sat in an armchair next to the window. Outside was a lovely view of a slow moving river and a bank strewn with granite rocks and trees. It was a real 'pipe and slippers' setting that I decided to sit in the armchair with a large hard back graphic novel. I spent what seemed like five minutes turning the book over and over again to see what the front cover would say as everytime I turned it over the text would change.

I've noticed that text in my dreams is often(Not always) illegible or incoherent looking. However - I find that it is NOT unreadable. On the contrary, I read and comprehend the text with no issues. Whether or not the text actually said what I thought it did... That's a different story.

I've never done the test of "re-reading" text in a dream - but I've noticed before that I've been suspicious of text before, especially when working with computers. For instance, I dreamt that I was on a website, whos URL was something along the lines of "Miaxte.xe.yo.or2". Also, when using an IRC in another dream, the code looked out of place - raising suspicion as well. The problem is that my brain assigns meaning to the text and I go on without noticing that the text is incomprehensible, because not only iss the look of the text assigned by your brain, so is the meaning of the text. Because of this we sometimes don't have issues reading the text.

My problem is translating that suspicion into "THIS IS A DREAM". :\. I've found that many things are unstable within a dream in the same manner as text. Recently in a dream, a stone bench turned into a couch - and I NOTICED it... No reality check >.<.

I digress...
I'm guessing that unstable text is a guideline, and not a rule.