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Can we talk about how many writing prompts rely on the "it was all a dream" twist?
I was scrolling through a prompt list last night and counted 12 out of 50 prompts that ended with some version of "and then they woke up." That stat honestly surprised me, you know? On one hand, dream twists can be a fun way to explore surreal stuff or break a character's reality. But on the other hand, it feels kinda lazy and overused, like a crutch for avoiding a real resolution. What do you all think, are dream endings still worth using or should we retire them?
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colesanchez24m ago
I had a writing group once where we banned "and then they woke up" for three months straight. One guy tried to sneak it into a cyberpunk story about brain implants and we all called him out immediately. The thing that ended up working for us was using dream sequences as a starting point, not an ending. Like my friend Sarah wrote this whole piece about a guy who kept dreaming he was a bird, but instead of waking up and going "oh okay," she had him start to develop weird physical symptoms like his bones getting lighter. The twist was way more satisfying because it pushed the story forward instead of hitting reset.
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