![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
truepennyIt amuses me that one of my most immediately recognizable dream-genres is the Escape from Dystopia Dream. Sometimes they're nightmarish. Sometimes they aren't. Generally, I find them more interesting than the vast unwashed masses of my dreams (I love enjoy am fascinated by dystopias, so it's really very generous of my subconscious to generate them for me), and sometimes, as a bonus, they give me story ideas.
This one was clearly YA lesbian SF noir.
Behind the cut is, not so much the dream itself, but some maundering about how I'd make that dream into a story.
Here are the things the dream gave me very clearly:
Six young women serving time in a juvenile correctional facility in eastern Michigan are sent out on what they think is a work-trip (road building or something), only to discover that instead they have been deus ex machina'd an escape. They're alone in the middle of nowhere with backpacks containing supplies that indicate their deus ex wants/expects them to make it to Detroit and then across to Windsor and Canada.* They argue. One of them thinks they should stay in the wilderness; two of them want to go to Detroit and stay there; three think Canada is the only place they'll be safe. Two of the young women are African-American; I think both of them were voting for Canada, although the dream was not so much into that whole stable identity thing.
(In the dream there was a lot of stripping out of prison uniforms and swimming across muddy rivers and all that jailbreak stuff. We never did make it to Detroit.)
How to turn it into a story?
Point 1: These young women need names. The dream gave me some of them: Deirdre, Lesley, Marie, Kitty. To which I add Suzanne and Rhoda. Deirdre and Lesley are African-American. Lesley is the one who wants to stay in the wilderness. Rhoda is my protagonist. The correctional facility is called Pridmount.
Point 2: We need to redeem this deus ex machina, which I saw how to do as soon as I started to wake up. One of the young women has to argue for going back to Pridmount. "It's a test," she says. "If we go back, they'll reward us. Maybe reduce our sentences. But if we don't, they'll just capture us again, and everything will be a hundred times worse." The others say, no, that's stupid and crazy. Why would they do that? Deirdre says, "So it's a test. Let's beat their fucking test and go to Canada anyway." But Marie won't be argued around. She's convinced and she says she's starting back for Pridmount as soon as she can. Rhoda and Suzanne persuade her that she'd do better to wait for morning.
That night, Rhoda murders Marie because it's the only way the rest of them can be safe. In the morning, they all bury her along with their prison uniforms and ID tags.
Point 3: I said this was lesbian SF. Rhoda and Deirdre are going to become lovers. Suzanne misses her girlfriend, who wasn't chosen for the escape detail.
So now we have character development, moral ambiguity, and something to keep the tension cranked through to the end (is it a test? are the authorities just waiting to swoop down on them? are they going to be discovered or betrayed in some other way?). There are lots of questions from that initial situation that haven't been answered, but that's why we write drafts.
First line:
Never mind what I got sent to Pridmount for.
Notes for the rest of the story:
Lesley still wants to stay away from civilization:
Kitty has family in Detroit and she wants to stay with them. Suzanne decides to stay in Detroit, too, so maybe her girlfriend can find her when she gets out. Rhoda and Deirdre try to tell them how stupid they're being, but they don't want to listen.
One of Kitty's cousins turns her in. She and Suzanne are caught; Rhoda and Deirdre escape by the skin of their teeth (and probably a white-knuckle chase through the SFnal Detroit cityscape).
Rhoda and Deirdre escape to Canada. No noble sacrifices, no tragic deaths just when they thought they were safe. The story ends on a note of uncertainty about their relationship: is it love? is it going to last?
And there. It needs more Cool Shit, worldbuildling, and general SFnality, but that's the bones of a story.
Not, of course, that I have time to write the flesh.
---
*Notice that while my subconscious--on the basis of a dream earlier this month--cannot tell the difference between Minnesota and Switzerland, it's quite clear on the geography of Detroit, particularly wrt Canada.
This one was clearly YA lesbian SF noir.
Behind the cut is, not so much the dream itself, but some maundering about how I'd make that dream into a story.
Here are the things the dream gave me very clearly:
Six young women serving time in a juvenile correctional facility in eastern Michigan are sent out on what they think is a work-trip (road building or something), only to discover that instead they have been deus ex machina'd an escape. They're alone in the middle of nowhere with backpacks containing supplies that indicate their deus ex wants/expects them to make it to Detroit and then across to Windsor and Canada.* They argue. One of them thinks they should stay in the wilderness; two of them want to go to Detroit and stay there; three think Canada is the only place they'll be safe. Two of the young women are African-American; I think both of them were voting for Canada, although the dream was not so much into that whole stable identity thing.
(In the dream there was a lot of stripping out of prison uniforms and swimming across muddy rivers and all that jailbreak stuff. We never did make it to Detroit.)
How to turn it into a story?
Point 1: These young women need names. The dream gave me some of them: Deirdre, Lesley, Marie, Kitty. To which I add Suzanne and Rhoda. Deirdre and Lesley are African-American. Lesley is the one who wants to stay in the wilderness. Rhoda is my protagonist. The correctional facility is called Pridmount.
Point 2: We need to redeem this deus ex machina, which I saw how to do as soon as I started to wake up. One of the young women has to argue for going back to Pridmount. "It's a test," she says. "If we go back, they'll reward us. Maybe reduce our sentences. But if we don't, they'll just capture us again, and everything will be a hundred times worse." The others say, no, that's stupid and crazy. Why would they do that? Deirdre says, "So it's a test. Let's beat their fucking test and go to Canada anyway." But Marie won't be argued around. She's convinced and she says she's starting back for Pridmount as soon as she can. Rhoda and Suzanne persuade her that she'd do better to wait for morning.
That night, Rhoda murders Marie because it's the only way the rest of them can be safe. In the morning, they all bury her along with their prison uniforms and ID tags.
Point 3: I said this was lesbian SF. Rhoda and Deirdre are going to become lovers. Suzanne misses her girlfriend, who wasn't chosen for the escape detail.
So now we have character development, moral ambiguity, and something to keep the tension cranked through to the end (is it a test? are the authorities just waiting to swoop down on them? are they going to be discovered or betrayed in some other way?). There are lots of questions from that initial situation that haven't been answered, but that's why we write drafts.
First line:
Never mind what I got sent to Pridmount for.
Notes for the rest of the story:
Lesley still wants to stay away from civilization:
"Are you going to murder me, too?"
"Are you going to turn us in?"
She gave me a hard grin. "I don't even know your fucking names."
Kitty has family in Detroit and she wants to stay with them. Suzanne decides to stay in Detroit, too, so maybe her girlfriend can find her when she gets out. Rhoda and Deirdre try to tell them how stupid they're being, but they don't want to listen.
One of Kitty's cousins turns her in. She and Suzanne are caught; Rhoda and Deirdre escape by the skin of their teeth (and probably a white-knuckle chase through the SFnal Detroit cityscape).
Rhoda and Deirdre escape to Canada. No noble sacrifices, no tragic deaths just when they thought they were safe. The story ends on a note of uncertainty about their relationship: is it love? is it going to last?
And there. It needs more Cool Shit, worldbuildling, and general SFnality, but that's the bones of a story.
Not, of course, that I have time to write the flesh.
---
*Notice that while my subconscious--on the basis of a dream earlier this month--cannot tell the difference between Minnesota and Switzerland, it's quite clear on the geography of Detroit, particularly wrt Canada.
