From Dreams to Paper · 12:00am Sep 7th, 2016
Has anyone out there gotten any ideas for stories from their own dreams? I have had a few stories inspired by my own dreams, although none of them panned out. Most recently, however, one of my dreams helped me make a final decision on an important issue for my future work.
If you recall, I asked in an earlier blog post if I should make Principal Cinch a "pure" villain, or follow the show's trend and redeem her somehow. Well, in my dream, the main cast discovers a diary Cinch wrote when she was a teenager. In it, she describes how she became attracted to (read: obsessed with) a much older man and began stalking him. As you can imagine, it didn't end well, and she may or may not have murdered him after he ultimately rejected her. After I woke up and reflected on it, I decided that I liked a sociopathic Cinch for my own stories much more. I even reasoned that after her experience with the man, Cinch ultimately decided to direct her single-minded focus towards ideals rather than people, hence her obsession with Crystal Prep's reputation and her own legacy. And what she did to SciTwi in the movie is nothing compared to what she's going to put the next couple of students she believes could be useful to her through.
I actually think I was inspired by a few dreams I had as a kid once or twice. They were mainly used for a few writing assignments I did in elementary and I never did much else with them but they were still fun.
Good to know you are settled on what to do with Cinch in your stories. That background story does sound interesting. Can't wait to see what you have in-store for Cinch in the future.