How long are your standard dream journal entries?

[naturespirit]

I myself used to write terrible, little detail minimalist entries. Until I read an old entry and realised I couldn't remember it. At all. I have now set myself a mandatory minimum of 250 words, and at least 50 words for interpretation or similar. I shall gradually increase this, and try to get to a 500 word entry. What length are yours?l

[Seabatt]

When the dream isn't fragmentary, I usually just go over the main details in the plot and setting and ignore the small details. I wish I didn't do that though, but I usually have a pretty easy time visualizing a dream I had 2-3 years ago and stuff so it isn't really necessary. Still wouldn't kill me to include things like faces and colors and stuff.

[Sensei]

I had to stop dream journaling because typing it would take about 30+ minutes and writing on paper would take an hour. I highly recommend detailed journaling for a while, but it gets too much when you remember a few hours worth of dreams in a night.

[Saizaphod]

Varies. Probably 200-400 usually.

[naturespirit]

Managed to squeeze 330 words plus 100 of interpretation in this morning.

[TravisE]

Mine vary widely. I spend however many words I feel are adequate; I don't really a “standard” length, per se. They've been as short as a sentence or two (where that was all I could remember) to multiple printed pages' worth (especially with LDs, for which I tend to remember the most detail). I have no idea what my average words per entry is. I'd have to write an automated program to calculate it, as my DJ has grown to literally several thousand entries over the years.

[naturespirit]

Mine vary widely. I spend however many words I feel are adequate; I don't really a “standard” length, per se. They've been as short as a sentence or two (where that was all I could remember) to multiple printed pages' worth (especially with LDs, for which I tend to remember the most detail). I have no idea what my average words per entry is. I'd have to write an automated program to calculate it, as my DJ has grown to literally several thousand entries over the years. When did you start recording your dreams? (out of curiosity)

[TravisE]

The bulk of my DJ is from 2005 to the present. I also incorporated into it all the occasional dream accounts I had recorded in my childhood journals going back as far as 1992–3, though this consists of only a small fraction of the total. 2005-2007 was my first major peak in dream journaling, then after many years of lower activity, I got back into it and reached an even higher peak a couple of years back. Surprisingly, over 60% or so of my DJ content is from just these last two or three years!

[naturespirit]

Ugh... Why did I start interpreting my dreams... Now I see dream signs in the floor colour! Okay I managed 400 words today, but still aiming for higher!

[late]

I had to stop dream journaling because typing it would take about 30+ minutes and writing on paper would take an hour. I highly recommend detailed journaling for a while, but it gets too much when you remember a few hours worth of dreams in a night. If I'm busy in the morning, I voice record everything on the go and write it down at night.

[lunagoddess]

Okay I managed 400 words today, but still aiming for higher! But you're already an amazing lucid dreamer! I wish I could lucid dream more often without having to write so much. Writing down 1,000 words every morning can feel like such a burden. Especially because it only seems to increase my LD chances by a very small percentage. Yet it's still a necessary fundamental, and I also value looking back on my dreams and interpreting them.

[naturespirit]

500! : D

[Lang]

Some of my dreams in some of my entries are a little bit more than 5885 words or characters long. I know one entry alone has 21971 words but, I have more than one dream in that entry. Lately, it's been a little less than the usual, though. Plus, it depends on how I feel, or I'm busy then I just post a caption of each of dreams.

[BlairBros]

Recently I have only been writing one sentence on average per dream, unless it is a very detailed or interesting one. This is due to time constraints and laziness, sometimes I can remember 6+ dreams a night and writing out paragraphs for each isn't really feasible for me. I used to write more, in the first half of 2016 mainly, and also for lucids I tend to write much more, pretty self explanatory why. EDIT: Another Australian dreamer haha.

[Azaleaj]

I love writing in my journal and do little cartoon sketches that bring back the memory of the dream quickly when looking through at a later date. If I have the day off I'll spend an hour on this but if I'm working maybe 5-10 minutes.

[Tipharot]

I'm guilty of writing very minimalist short entries now. This is mainly because I switched from using a pen and paper journal to the Lucidity app on my phone. Basically I noticed that two things were happening previously: sometimes getting up to journal would result in me being unable to fall asleep again. On the flip side, if I woke up in the middle of the night I would sometimes avoid getting up to journal because of that (or because I felt too tired to sit up and write) and so I would end up forgetting my dreams. Switching to a phone app fixed that, but 1) because it's kind of annoying to type on my phone since the touch screen is a little buggy and 2) because I don't want to stare at a bright screen too long and wake myself up more than I need to if it's not the end of the night - I try to keep my entries short. For me my dream journal entries serve more to keep me in the habit of remembering my dreams as I wake up and for noting down interesting observations, than for actually being a full record of the contents of all of my dreams. So I'm not too fussed about forgetting the dreams later as long as long as the important details are there. If I have any dreams that I feel are really worth remembering then I will write more fleshed out entries. That said I don't think I've ever had a time where I couldn't remember the dream based off a 3-5 sentence brief entry about what happened. Usually the way I write those brief entries is enough to encapsulate the entirety of what happened in a way that'll jog my memory upon reading it.

[Rebon]

As I wake at night I only write a couple of words or sometimes scentences. Only so I have a few notes to remind myself of the "Dreamfeeling". Usually I can get into the dream with this pretty good, but sometimes I'll be like "Who wrote that?, I don't remember writting this!" Later in the day or before going to bed will journal as much as I can about my dreams. At first I wrote on paper but that startet to take to much time. As I'm faster on a computer I startet writing on the PC, but after some time this took well over an hour sometimes. Now I use the same App as Tipharot (love your Youtube channel btw. ) only I dictate my phone what to write, so its like Audio-Journal only I don't have to listen to my own voice over and over But on the weekends this takes between one and two hours as well, I guess thats the price for vivid dreams.

[naturespirit]

In completing the TOTY, I managed 1300 words! At the moment my average entry is 600 words.

[misotanni]

For me it evolved. My first DJ entries were like ~300 words, now most of them are over 1000. On a side note, the second one of my two dreams from yesterday night took me 4815 words, which is probably my record thus far.

[Sageous]

What a curious subject! I don't think I've ever counted words; never even gave it much thought, as long as I was doing the best job I could recording my dreams. But now that I think about it: These days, because I'm a bit selective about what I record -- and what I record tends to be LD's that are pretty involved -- most of what I record tends to run well over 2,000 words, I would guess. But that's right now. Over my journaling history I've recorded stellar dreams that only needed a few words, and epic adventures that went on for many pages. I guess my goal is to use as many words as I need, even if it means cramped fingers and an extra hour or two... but if I can get all the details I can list in less than 100 words, that's fine too.

[appdirect]

I just write a few sentences, there are times when I write lengthy sentences, but end up not being able to recall it because my handwriting is horrible.

[misotanni]

Quick update: 5966 words yesterday.

[TravisE]

I don't think I've ever counted words; never even gave it much thought, as long as I was doing the best job I could recording my dreams. But now that I think about it: Ditto; I've always just used however many I needed to get the job done. Hence, I don't really know. These days, because I'm a bit selective about what I record -- and what I record tends to be LD's that are pretty involved -- most of what I record tends to run well over 2,000 words, I would guess. But that's right now. Over my journaling history I've recorded stellar dreams that only needed a few words, and epic adventures that went on for many pages. I guess my goal is to use as many words as I need, even if it means cramped fingers and an extra hour or two... but if I can get all the details I can list in less than 100 words, that's fine too. I too have found myself (somewhat reluctantly at first) becoming more selective with what I retain, mainly because my dream recall eventually grew to a level where the time spent documenting every detail I could remember was becoming a bit too costly. So now, for instance, I include anything that I consider worth remembering, but I usually let go of dreams or fragments about which I can't find anything particularly noteworthy to say. That, combined with a nightly intention of remembering “enough, but not too much” instead of simply remembering everything I could as I once did, results in a realistic trade-off for me. Even so, on the occasions where something important but unusually long-winded comes up, I still take the time to record it properly without letting time concerns compromise it. If I really wanted to, I could make my dream entries many words longer by simply cranking my recall back up. But in practice, I have other important waking-life things to share resources with.

[MartinB]

Anywhere between 100 and 2,000 depending on how long the dream is, how much I remember and whether I was lucid. My longest was 2,671 (which involved five false awakenings), but I rarely go above 2,000. I started dream journalling as a means of practising recall, thus my general approach was to describe as much detail as I could remember, so I tend to write a lot about room layouts, colours, brightness, sounds, feelings, and any other things I may have noticed. I see many journals that seem to omit these things, and mostly only focus on actual events. The only descriptions I omit are elements from my real life (places, people, etc.), since I don't really see any need to describe my bedroom or my parents unless they differ some way from the real world. I almost always voice record my dreams first so I don't forget details when I write them up later, since its so much easier and less intrusive than having to open my eyes, switch a light on, get up and write. But even then, a single recording can stretch up to fifteen minutes. But it's surprising how often I listen to a recording later in the evening only to hear things that I've completely forgotten over the day. Such results speak for themselves and demonstrate clearly to me that recording is very much worthwhile. The voice recordings are also good for capturing some of the emotion in my reaction to a dream, but I often find the recordings harder to relate back to the original dreams when listening to them months or years later. It doesn't help that I often describe details out of order as I remember them, so the recordings sometimes aren't a chronologically-ordered record of events. The written versions work much better in that regard, since I can easily edit them to make sure details are accurate and events are in order. A written description is much easier to share too. I sometimes go back to read and/or listen to my old dreams; I've even still got all of my audio recordings - hundreds of them - since I first discovered this site and started lucid dreaming way back in 2005, including my very first lucid dream where my excitement can clearly be heard in my voice.