danielhansen

Lately I have been applying to many colleges and applying as a screenwriting major adds extra stress into the freshman hopefuls work load. Most places I have applied to for screenwriting have asked for additional essays to evaluate my creative abilities. Chapman University asked for a supplemental essay (required for all applicants), a two page short story, an essay on ones passion for storytelling, and a creative resume. Thankfully I have finally finished applying to college, but while I was preoccupied with endless prompts I found myself waking up every so often to remember vivid dreams that are so structured and detailed that I can't help to not write them down. Essay after essay I found myself in panic when I had to create situations to keep my evaluators interested and engaged. What I found was if I went to bed with awful writer's block I would wake up with an idea to cure my lack of a more interesting storyline, character, device etc. One of my stories was about an elderly woman with Alzheimer's who lives in a nursing home. She had found a way into her previous home and I was having trouble deciding how I would make the reader believe it was 1968 before it was revealed that it was 1993. What I dreamed about was a middle aged man driving home in the rain and a young man of about 19 who was fighting in Vietnam. This information would be crucial to the story for an explanation as to why the woman was in the house alone and why she believed it to be 1968. She was waiting for her husband to come home from work, and was worrying about her son in Vietnam. I also wrote the narrative parts of the story to be a medium with what the woman was thinking and let the present day information be based on dialogue of the other characters who did not have Alzheimer's. This is only a small example of how dreaming can help the creative process. In fact I have been accessing this tool so often lately that I am starting to have dreams with very clear meanings and story lines. In the case between dreamers and doers there is an argument that both can create a very special bond.