In my experience... if you don't know if you were lucid or not you probably weren't. When i become lucid from a DILD its like a thought pops up in my head that I'm dreaming and eventually i think about enough that i just stop and look around the dream world. You know you are lucid when you can break free from the normal dream scenario thats going on. Although it is still possible to be semi lucid and have very vivid dreams where u just go along with what is happening. The best lucids for me are the ones where i am just walking around exploring the dream world.

I have been writing my dreams down for 3 years and i have about a page long list of dreamsigns that i read every night. This way if a recurring dream happens i know its a dream. Doing this and combining reality checks with your dream signs when they happen during the day will most certainly produce LDs. For instance one of my dreamsigns is tornadoes and storms. If i read about it in the news or see pictures online i always do a reality check. If you get atleast 15 to 20 dreams written down that is good start for creating a list of dreamsigns (ie things that should tell you are dreaming) then you can base your reality checks off of that.

I also find that also if you set a watch or something to tell you to reality check in intervals say like every 2 hours this can work too because it puts your brain on a schedule to do a reality check instead of just doing checks whenever u think of it.