Hello everybody and how are you?

I am an absolute beginner to lucid dreaming. I came on this website for 20 mins last night and had a little read and went to sleep.

Did I lucid dream you all ask? well..yes!

but its not so fantastic, my dream lasted for about 2 seconds before I woke up, It wasn't because I got excited or anything, I just woke up.

I got to the state by having my alarm clock going off in the morning, I pressed the snooze button which goes off every 5 minutes and started thinking about lucid dreaming
and that's how I did it on my first ever attempt!

Also my conscious recognition of trying to remember my dreams worked on the first night too, I remembered my dream the next (this) morning!, we will see how it goes tonight!

Since I'm new I took the time to read the FAQ page but still have a couple more questions so any help would be greatly appreciated.

1) in general are peoples dreams vivid?
2) I had a friend tell me that meditation, specifically clearing the mind would work great and I should learn this before I even attempt to lucid dream.
3) what is a rough time-frame to be in a dream and does it differ from reality?

thank you in advance for your answers and I hope to contribute to the forum in the future!