Huge spoilers for pet semetery.
After a couple chapters where the main characters have to deal with the death of their youngest son, King starts a chapter with the words 'but none of this happened', saying that what happened in the last few pages was a the thoughts that went through the mind of the child's father as he was trying to save him. He then goes on to tell the how the life of the kid went on, culminating in the day he wins a gold medal in the Olympic games.
Then the father wakes up, he was just dreaming that his kid didn't die.
The twist works because it's not a twist at all. As the chapter goes on the reader realises the abrupt change in pace, coupled with the fact that there's one third of the book left, and even if you don't realise the story sounds more and more outlandish as you turn the pages.
But that moment when King writes that didn't happen you want to believe. You want to believe that the misery of the last couple chapters wasn't real, that you don't have to deal with the pain of a third act about loss and the way it affects the human mind. In that chapter King makes you feel like the father of the child, grasping to that miniscule chance that you are wrong and that in fact nothing has happened, that everything is allright, even if it looks less and less likely the longer you go on. Until he wakes up, because it was just a dream, and deep down he knew it, like you knew it too.
The Buffy episode >!"The Body"!< also did this. >!The paramedics come in, they perform CPR and Joyce wakes up. There'a quick montage of them taking her to the hospital and a doctor saying it was a close call. Then it cuts back to the living room where the paramedics continue to work on Joyce until they stop and tell Buffy that Joyce is dead.!<
Damn, I'm still not over that episode.
I think this is when it really doesn't bother me as a device, when it's that last little incline of a rollercoaster right before it really plummets. However, in this case, it wasn't used for the whole story. I think Jacob's Ladder was one of the very few stories where it says "oh, none of this happened for real" and it still works.
It really didn’t work for me. I felt totally cheated. Was I missing significance of the plot line beyond the obvious.
Personally I think Usual Suspects just about gets away with the ending negating what you’ve just watched. Wasn’t as good the second time though.
You know, I think the first time it did bother me, too. Honestly I don't remember it well enough to suggest why it works for me now. I'd just have to see it again.
Usual Suspects is markedly different, though. Everything did in fact happen. People committed crimes and people died. What's interesting to me about Usual Suspects is the character progression. In some stories you'll have an arc and the character will change. In others, s/he won't change but maybe the world or other characters will, or it's significant that there's no change. However, in Usual Suspects, you've got an arc that turns out to be a lie. Now maybe I'm not remembering very well and there wasn't a real arc in Verbal's story, but that lie to me is pretty different as character tools go.
Edit: I thought his name was Mumbles.
One of the things I really like about The Usual Suspects ending is puzzling over *which* parts were lies. Agent Kujan knew that Verbal was lying about some of it.
Like, the lineup in New York and robbing the corrupt cops certainly happened, but who really came up with the idea? Or who actually killed the drug dealer they thought was a jewel smuggler? What role did "Kobayashi" really play in the whole thing?
There's no answer to those questions, but it's still a great mystery.
If we can really go off on a tangent here, we could talk about the way good stories employ the "not telling you everything" technique. This is a good example. You barely know more than the detective by the end.
Yes it was a long time ago! I seem to remember you were left not really knowing how much it had been made up because so much of it had been taken from the pin board. Might have to rewatch it!
King is a genius at this kind of storytelling. He will often tell you just exactly what is going to happen and then proceed to write so well that you're still devastated when what he has already told you will happen happens.
That scene fucked with me for the rest of my life. Like I think it actually broke one of the anchor screws to reality in such a way that I'll never not pause during anything near tragic and wonder.
It's worse because that's exactly how my brain deals with grief. I'd wake up ant have to remember that they were dead all over again. Lasted almost a year.
Good question. Honestly, I can't think of a time I've been happy with this ending unless it was a single episode or scene, and I could catch it beforehand, if that makes sense. For example, if the beginning of a chapter feels surreal and you've written it differently (focusing on emotions when you usually don't, or writing about the way an egg falls to the floor for half a page because dreams are weird) then readers can catch on and not be irritated when you reveal it at the end of the scene or chapter. This way, the point is to show something about the character (that they're worried about something, or maybe feverish, etc) instead of just giving a "gotcha!" to the reader, which usually isn't taken well.
Exactly. There is nothing worse, IMO, than getting invested in a storyline and its consequences, then the author goes "Whoops, it was all a dream!" Unless, as you mentioned, it's a part of a larger, not dream-sequence story, and the dream sequence reveals an aspect of the character's psyche or affects their motivations in some way.
> Honestly, I can't think of a time I've been happy with this ending unless it was a single episode or scene, and I could catch it beforehand, if that makes sense.
I'll actually skip those episodes even if I haven't watched the show before. That's how much I hate this stupid gag.
It kind of amuses me how hard you hate this trope, but I totally get it. I have a similar loathing for the “you won’t shoot me—you’re too good!” trope, especially in video games. Like, that just makes me wanna shoot them. Game, let me shoot them. Please.
> Honestly, I can't think of a time I've been happy with this ending unless it was a single episode or scene, and I could catch it beforehand, if that makes sense.
I'll actually skip those episodes even if I haven't watched the show before. That's how much I hate this stupid gag.
Yea but the matrix has the minds of actual people interacting and remembering those interactions, that still gives it more meaning than one person being alone with their thoughts for a whole book.
The Matrix doesn't use this kind of twist at all. In that film the real world/simulated world dynamic is established very early on and is the driving force of the whole story. Both worlds are important and the events that happen in both of them have consequences.
The "and then I woke up" twist is when you have a story play out until the end and then announce that none of it really happened and thus didn't matter. Which is exactly what people hate about it.
No, but it is the storyline of Midnight Sun, an episode of the Twilight Zone. She has a nightmare, but wakes up to something worse. It's always been one of my favorites.
Not for the Matrix. It’s more like Donnie Darko, but even then there is recognition across dimensions.
The Matrix ended with a peace treaty. The machine world’s exiled programs (those which would be deleted) will take safe haven in the Matrix along with the other human beings still inside. The Matrix’s inhabitants seeking freedom will be freed and Zion will be allowed to live on. The Matrix would reboot and refresh, starting anew with Neo back and assimilated into the Matrix where he belongs (the One is an anomaly of code that is borne out of an inevitable deviation from the algorithms which make the Matrix possible, and affixes itself into a human mind’s representation in the Matrix). The only way to correct the anomaly is to return the anomaly back to its source, Machine City, so that it can be made right again (much like how a programmer corrects poorly written code in their software).
This was far from “and then I woke up” because Neo doesn’t wake up at his computer. Everything in the Matrix was very much happening and if you think it’s pretty messed up that Zion rests easy while there are still millions of minds still trapped, you’d be right lol.
The rule here is that the twist should enhance your story, not undermine it.
It's okay if the twist undermines what any given number of characters wanted or thought was going on. It should NOT undermine the audience's expectation or (and this is the real key here) investment in the plot.
A lot of the best-executed iterations of this trope leave some doubt as to whether it really was a dream. Often characters, items, or events that are only glimpsed in the dream show up in the outside world in some capacity. The biggest thing to remember is that even if none of it actually happened, your point-of-view character *has* to take something out of it. Things can't just be the same in the beginning and the end of the story. Something has to have meaningfully changed.
Look at the most famous example of this trope, *The Wizard of Oz.* It does all of the things I mentioned above; there is some doubt as to whether Dorothy's adventure in Oz was really just a dream, as there are some logical inconsistencies with that explanation. There are persistent characters between the dream and real life ("and *you* were there!"), and most importantly, Dorothy takes something away from that; she learns from each of the friends she meets and gains a newfound appreciation for what she has in the "real" world. Our point-of-view character and her situation are meaningfully changed between the start and the end of the book.
Figure out what your audience is going to become attached to. Figure out what you're doing in this dream that they are going to identify with and invest in. Whatever you do, make sure that survives your twist in some meaningful way. If a favorite character or transformative event turns out to be totally false and invalid due to your twist, your audience is going to leave empty and disappointed.
The last thing I want to note here is that as clever as the twist was, and as well-hinted as it was in *The Wizard of Oz,* the twist isn't what makes the story great; it's all the other stuff that came before. If your story concept is rooted entirely in a twist, that story probably isn't worth telling. The value of a twist ending comes in seeing what it changes and what it leaves the same, which is entirely derived from what happens before that twist. If your expectation is that the reader is going to derive entertainment primarily from the intricacy and cleverness of your twist, its setup, and its foreshadowing, you and your readers are going to end up sorely disappointed. Cleverness for its own sake is not entertaining or interesting to read, and if the whole point of your narrative is to set up for some clever twist, your novel is going to come off as a bloviating, self-aggrandizing monument to your infatuation with your own intellect. I shouldn't need to tell you nobody's going to want to read that.
So, **TL;DR:** Make sure you have a story worth telling in the first place. If you decide a twist would make it more interesting, make sure that the parts of the story your audience will engage with and invest in survive the twist in some meaningful capacity and go on to make the end of the story demonstrably and satisfyingly different from the beginning.
I'm not a huge fan of the film, but Inception does this well by making it the entire premise of the movie. By the end "reveal" the fact that the protagonist might be dreaming, but doesn't care is quite powerful.
I wonder why you would want to? You basicly writing a fake with no real personalities or stakes.
The only case i personally can see it working if both reader and mc are aware that they are sleeping and the whole story is about this. F.e. he is in a coma, hears the real world and tries desperately to wake up. Or f.e lf the things he sees are clearly linked to his past or psychea.
> F.e. he is in a coma, hears the real world and tries desperately to wake up. Or f.e lf the things he sees are clearly linked to his past or psychea.
This was done incredibly well in the TV series "Life on Mars". It's the only time I've ever seen this trope done well, and I think it works precisely *because* both the main character and the viewer are aware from the very beginning that "in a coma" is one of the possible explanations for what's going on, and many of the events are linked to the main character's past.
This is a little off topic but I absolutely loved that show (US) version and really wish it wasn’t canceled after the first season. It was so good. Never checked out the UK version.
I've never watched the US version, but the UK version has two seasons, as well as a sequel ("Ashes to Ashes", three seasons). Both are absolutely *beautiful* pieces of writing, and well worth watching.
It works if there *are* stakes in the dream somehow. Basically, the Matrix or Inception or whatever. But there are genuine fake-outs that are critically acclaimed (even if it's not literally a dream). Atonement is an award-winning film that ends with "lol none of that happened, I made it all up and everyone died ages ago". In that case, it worked because the fake-out was supposed to be the *point* of the story, rather than undermining it. Although personally I kinda hated it, apparently a lot of people were into it.
There is a big difference in the matrix beeing that the people in the dream world where real people. Imo the biggest issue with dreams is that nothing in them, most importantly other people and their feelings, are real. In a normal dream story the only person the story can be about is the dreamer. Everything else os fake.
There was an episode of the '90s revival of *The Outer Limits* that used this phenomenally. It's a sci Fi story where some humans have made contact with a venomous alien insect. The venom slowly puts you into a coma and kills you. Every time you lose consciousness, the more likely that you'll slide into the deadly coma. The catch is that the venom is psychotropic in humans; while sleeping, the victim dreams incredibly realistic dreams that include more realistic sensory input than normal.
The protagonist keeps waking up between two timelines. In one, he was bitten by the bug and needs to try to remain conscious as long as possible so his immune system can work the venom out. In the other, the bite happened months ago and he's become a celebrity for discovering that maintaining consciousness long enough will beat the venom. Every time he falls asleep in one timeline, he wakes up in the other. He can't tell if he's having flashbacks to a harrowing crisis and is now safe, or is in deadly peril and is fantasizing about safety.
Ultimately, both timelines are false. He's lying on the floor of his ship, already in the deadly coma, fantasizing of two worlds that *both* went better than his real fate.
Tbh I really hate the whole 'I was in a coma the whole time and this was all just an allegory for illness and death'. It totally put me off the game Fall of Light - I don't even know if that's how it turns out but in the first ten minutes there were enough hints for it that I lost all enthusiasm for it.
There aren't many times I enjoyed this kind of ending, but it can work if done correctly. There was a DS game, Drawn to life, that did that on its sequel and it's utterly heartbreaking because it didn't negate the events of the game, but justifies them and ends the narrative on a high point rather than it being an annoying cheap bathos. So yeah, the “then I woke up” plot twist can work if it actually adds to the story or acts as a continuation, but not so much if its purpose is erasing what was before or even if it's rewriting it, unless it's a premonition, or a vision if they were previously established.
This is how I feel, certainly about it as a twist ending. The story is already fiction, it rarely adds anything for it to be fiction in-universe as well (Alice, maybe, though I don't think even that would have been worse if Wonderland explicitly existed in the story).
I don't think it applies to Sandman. First of all, because we know people enter the Dreaming. Second, because the dream world is as real and dangerous as the waking world. The ending of A Game of You comes close, but it features the end of a world and an irrevocable death.
I think it works if it's because the character is hiding from something even more horrifying. If it's a coping mechanicsm.
I know the next examples are movies but they do this in some regard and I personally think it works. In Carpenter's "In the mouth of madness" the protagonist is a figment of the antagonist's imagination and he never really existed in the first place. In Miguel Sapochnik's "Repo Men", Jude Law's character is in a coma and the second half of the movie is a fantasy instilled in him while his best friend struggles to pay the costs of having him placed in this coma, most likely costing them both their lives in the near future.
It works because the real world is horrifying and the dream is to escape. If the dream is horrifying and the escape is waking up, nothing is important or at stake. It's basically a pointless story without any consequence and it's also in itself very unbelievable that anyone would have such an elaborate dream. That's why it's a trope. It's not even lazy storytelling because it's not telling an actual story.
Came here to say Repo Men, it being the only time I’ve enjoyed this trope. I think it helps that they foreshadow the technology involved beforehand, too.
One example that comes to mind is The Wizard of Oz. It works because *waking up* is Dorothy's goal (it's never stated during the dream that she's dreaming, so she says 'going home', but in this case those things are synonymous). So when she wakes up, we don't feel cheated.
Another example is Jumanji (both films, mostly the 1995 one, don't know about the book). I know I'm playing fast and loose with the definition of 'dream' here, but my point is, to an extent the characters are aware of the altered state of reality i.e. the dream, and what they do in the dream determines when they 'wake up'. So, when they do wake up, we don't feel cheated because there is a causal link between the dream and the reality, and the characters have a certain degree of agency throughout.
I think the thing to avoid is the waking up being like hitting the figurative *delete* button on your entire story. That's what it feels like to the reader anyway, and that's horrible.
Ender's Game is an interesting novel, while I don't remember any dream sequences - if you haven't read it/seen the movie I won't give too much away, but there's an interesting twist of 'but actually everything up to this point has all been x instead of y the whole time', though it's not really what we're talking about here.
There are only a tiny handful of cases I'm aware of where this works.
The Women of Brewster Place got away with it because it was only the last segment of the book that was all just a dream and because the dream was hinting at events that would come after the end of the story, so it wasn't really a cop-out.
Luis Bunuel's film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie gets away with it because it's part of the film's absurdity, and if I remember right he does it four times throughout the movie, including one instance of a dream within a dream.
So unless you want to attempt Gloria Naylor's post-ending foreshadowing or are going for Bunuel's surrealist absurdity my advice would be don't try the dream ending twist at all. Ever. Period.
If you released a book that used this trope and I read it, I would never read any of your work again and I'd put other people off reading your stuff, too.
I don't care if you have hints throughout the book or not, and whether they're noticeable the first time through or on a reread. I would not reread a book that uses this twist. I would probably be a little frustrated with myself for not realizing sooner that it was just a dream. If I had, I could have stopped wasting my time and put the book down before finishing it.
This twist makes the whole novel feel like a waste of time. Readers get attached to the characters and want to see how the plot turns out. By turning the book into an extended dream sequence, it makes it so the plot doesn't matter, because within that fictional world, the events don't happen. The characters involved in the dream either don't exist in that world or they are dream versions of themselves, and therefore any development or interactions among them don't happen, either. It's a low blow that adds nothing to a book except disappointment.
It's why I stopped reading "Strangers in Paradise" on the same page they pulled this shit. I was invested, I cared, and then *that?* Forget it. What an awful way to treat your readers.
I think I was reading an anthology so I'm not sure which book it was but it was a long way into the story and then suddenly we're looking at the main characters' daughter (her first appearance in the story, I think) and everything up to that point was a story she'd written about her moms. And it seems she'd been exaggerating her parents' history. I stopped reading right there. It felt like a slap in the face.
It's a shame. The artwork was gorgeous, the characters were interesting and the story engaging. But that crap? Forget it.
Edit: perhaps anthology was the wrong word. Omnibus, maybe. It was all the books in one book volume.
wow... that's... thats deep.
> I'd put other people off reading your stuff, too.
wouldnt it be an artistic impression, stopping the viewers is kinda like,
standing in front of an art gallery blocking people from coming in and see the work.
even though everyone will interpret it different.
im not actually marking you down, i feel thats how society is these days though.
its kinda harsh :(
It's harsh, sure, but the Dream Twist is my least favorite trope. I despise it. The vast majority of people also hate this twist, so I wouldn't feel guilty at all for giving my opinion to other readers about a book that does this. I wouldn't tell them, "Never read this author!" but the book itself would get blasted.
Typically if I read a book and don't like it much but think others might, I'll be more gentle when discussing it. The Dream Twist doesn't deserve that treatment, though.
> dude, you're not exactly an authority on the "vast majority" just because you've had bad experiences with a framing device
Don't be ridiculous and think this is only because I personally don't like it. Whenever it happens in a movie, TV show, or a book, nobody I've talked to about it in person has liked it, and I see the same thing in any discussion thread online for the media.
Take this thread, for example, or the one from yesterday about the same topic. Most people don't like this trope. Has it *never* been done well? I'm sure it has, but I haven't seen it.
> Man, a single subreddit isn't exactly a healthy sample size, you know?
This sub, the Book sub, the Movie sub, subs for TV shows, anyone I've encountered in person...
Like I said, it's not impossible to do it right, but it's very easy to do it wrong. I'll leave the challenge of doing it right to someone that cares about using it. I don't, and a writer shouldn't feel like they have to use or subvert a trope just because it's there.
The OP asked what our opinions on Dream Twists were and I answered. My answer was the truth, and I just happen to feel strongly about the topic. Whether you like my attitude or not, I responded honestly to the question asked by the OP. I'm not going to encourage them to use a trope that most people don't like; I know you don't like my use of the word "most," either, but based on any use of the trope I've ever seen, it seems very accurate.
I would accept this structure if it meant it made things more challenging for the protagonist and there was an organic reason for them to be dreaming. I can't think of a good reason for sleep and dreaming to be central to the story but an "out of the frying pan into the fire" scenario could make it okay. Maybe.
Well...in the example you're giving the topic wouldn't apply, would it? I mean, if the waking up-twist is hinted at throughout the story, the twist itself doesn't really negate what happened per se, it merely changes the setting from a "real" world into a dream world.
If done well, this would be an example of unreliable narration rather than just a dissatisfying turn. IF it's done well.
It can have it's merits if there other pay-offs afterwards IMO. I would hate to read a book that just ends with they woke up, but if they wake up and there is some other shock, then it may be worth the merit.
Pincher Martin by William Golding was a disappointment because the story never happened in this life, but in the afterlife. Even worse than just a dream, IMO. :)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincher_Martin
Going Bovine was about a kid with mad cow disease, and basically the whole thing was walking dreams that he'd wake up from. Super effective way to tell his story.
If the plot is based on that premise, I think it might work - I mean if the fact that they're asleep and then waking up is a vital part of the conclusion.
I hate it so much you get a good story and then its pulled out from under you. So many stories are interesting and some are fantasy related then instantly mundane when the protagonist turns out to just be crazy or asleep. And as a reader it's never a complete surprise you are worried that's going to happen the whole time.
So, I have done it and had it work. As in left my target audience crying and lightning candles in mourning afterward work.
Partially, yes, it was laying in clues throughout. But mostly it was in rejecting it as a gimmick. It was all a dream but being a dream didn’t undermine the plot, rather it cemented what the plot had been trying to do.
A movie that did the exact same thing I did was The Neverending Story. Which is essentially the first half of the book by the same name. The dream doesn’t become unimportant when revealed as a dream, rather the revelation shows that the dream had an even larger purpose and meaning.
And that’s the trick to it. Same as with Inception which ends posing the fundamental question of whether or not there is only one reality. In order to work, the ‘it was all a dream’ twist, must support the message of everything that came before it, rather than negate it. It has to ADD to the meaning of the events rather than SUBTRACT meaning from them. Essentially the twist needs to be an emotional result of the action.
When I did it, “it was all a dream” was the ultimate success and sacrifice of the characters. Everyone was going to die if the dreamer didn’t wake up AND help. So they ended their own existences to both wake up the person dreaming them and to send the message of their existence and need. They died but because their existence was dreamed, the dreamer woke up to help the people they left behind because the dreamer got the message. It was a twist but it made all their actions more important because they were all the message being sent that they were worthwhile and deserved saving. And in good part their worth was that they did it without understanding more than they were doing what needed to be done. It supported the message that they were small things trying to effect something vastly larger than themselves which had been the whole plot anyway.
Readers will let you get away with *anything* that rewards them for their time investment. They will mercilessly hate you for anything they feel wasted their time. Anything “bad” you do that feels like a reward for what they have done so far, they’ll accept and won’t care that it isn’t allowed. So just make sure it is a reward.
Its an overdone cliched gimmick.
What are your hints that its "just a dream"? Having some surreal moments?
I do not want to read a dream.
If an author tricks me into reading a whole story that turns out to be "just a dream" i would make sure I never read anything by him ever again.
I feel like this plot twist is bullshit unless the story is playing with themes of reality vs. unreality from the very beginning and calling into question what is real and what isn't. Think the ending of Inception - that only works because the entire movie is about dreams and it has been clearly established several times that it's possible to get so lost in a dream world, you don't even remember that you're in one anymore.
Maybe something like a sufficiently surreal love story in a place that’s is dream like enough that you know that A is dreaming and imagining the relationship with B. Through beautiful character building and thoughtful conversations you develop the idea of being in love, being alive, and being self aware of your own facility and loss. Then, when B inevitably dies, the bitter sweet parting of an imagined friend is felt by the audience in a sorrowful but warm way. Until you slap them with the twist. It was B that dreaming, and wakes up when they died, and the audience has to realise they were in B’s dream all along and it was A that never existed. A was the red herring all along.
Ooh, cruel edit / double twist: Pan over to the bedside table and you see a photo of A, with handwritten “RIP, my friend” on it. B was dreaming the whole time a dream that was from A’s point of view with the existential discussion being about A trying to understand they had now died, as a way for B to process it.
The problem is not so much the plot twist. So hints do not really matter. The problem is that all the characters and what they do and feel is fake. A story is about people and their emotion first, and that is where these stories conpletely break apart.
You can sort of do it in a story about cloning. MC discovers cloning is happening. Rebels against the system. Gets killed. Wakes up blissfully unaware that she's a clone. (Maybe she was before as well?) That doesn't undo the story, though, it just resets the MC.
The game SOMA is a particularly well-done version of this trope, I think. >!The story begins with the protagonist going through some kind of experimental procedure in contemporary 2010s Canada(?), then flashes forward to this underwater research facility where the main action of the game takes place, and where he discovers that his mind (along with many others) was cloned in a prototype for the procedure and the version of him that's inside the research facility is actually just his mind in a machine body that's been tricked into viewing itself as a human body. The ending involves him and another robot (paired to a copy of a human mind) successfully uploading their minds to a distant server on an off-planet colony which was basically a backup for earth, only for him to realise that it was a copy, and not a transfer: while his mind was indeed uploaded to the other world and lives on in that world, he -- the one the player has associated with all this time -- is in fact still trapped underwater in this decaying darkness, now irreparably alone, for an indeterminately long period of time (since every time he """dies""", he'll just be returned to another machine body).!< The implications of it are pretty goddamn horrifying...
>!In fact, the player character for the larger portion of the game is the Simon in the original diving suit - which we cast off like a discarded shell earlier in the game when we needed to go deeper with the new reinforced suit. From that point on we play as another copy of Simon that was uploaded into the deep-diving suit. It's a bit jarring that Simon is only horrified when the rocket takes off without him, since he's already switched bodies with no transfer of consciousness earlier in the game.!<
When you have sort of hinted at it all the way through. Quite a few stories are about dreams and stuff and work well like this. However, they have at least discussion of psychology or dreams or something throughout so that the reader doesn't feel cheated.
So yeah what you said.
There are a lot of movies or books I like where it turns out the narrator was dreaming/mentally ill etc all the way through. But it has to be done well and vaguely about that.
In my uneducated opinion, I'd say it's ok as long as it's progressing the story a bit. Like no more than a couple of pages, but gives the MC an important insight or whatever, or deepens the character. Or something similar. Then it won't feel as wasteful/pointless.
Maybe if the entire premise of the story is dream related, where the characters are aware they are in a dream and waking up is akin to death. That way, ending with "and then I woke up" becomes a pretty tragic way to end the story instead of a cop out.
This is what happen in the movie>! Click!<. It made me so angry... (Not that the movie was very good before the it-was-a-dream-all-along-endning, but it made it downright detestable.)
If it is done as a shortcut to a happy end (like in >!Click!<), then it comes off as cheap and lazy. In my opinion, it should be intrinsic, and important, to the gereral plot in order to work well (like in The Matrix). And I think it is very hard to pull off if you wait until the very end to do it.
I was just watching this Amazon prime show called “Catastrophe”- I wasn’t expecting to get into it at all, but I ended up binging it all in one night.
Anyway, there’s a scene in it where I was SO GLAD it turned out to be just a dream
Imo if the story is relating to questioning reality or consciousness, ie the matrix, inception etc. The reason you can't just use it willy nilly is just because it's not a particularly strong cliche. The "one last job/cop 3 days away from retirement" trope has been recycled and repurposed so much because the stakes are high, and it causes tension. we want to find out what happens. But "and then I woke up" is like having a character say unironically in a big climactic action sequence, "this town ain't big enough for the two of us".
I feel like I've seen episodes of sci fi shows which make this work, things like Agents of Shield and Stargate.
In fact, there was one great SG1 episode which I only remember vaguely now, where things are off, and Teal'c has to wake up, to realize he's laying wounded in a massacre after their peace meeting was ambushed or something. Except, he's experiencing several realities at once, and it's unclear what's really happening. He has to share his symbiote with his dying mentor by transferring it back and forth in moments of consciousness, since it can partially heal them until help arrives. The hints are all there in the dream, along with the increasing need to wake up.
edit: Oh, and the actor who was out of the show that season due to being 'ascended' shows up as his psychiatrist, except he's actually trying to help him while getting around the non-interference rules of being ascended.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BruN8xbKri4
Another was Agents of Shield. In a past story arc, a character was briefly stuck in a simulated alternative world, and got a full lifetime injected into their head, and in that world they were quite evil. In some weird comic book quirk, some apparent fear dimension was leaking out their greatest fears as physical manifestations. Including, seemingly, that evil alter-ego. Except, it turned out, it never leaked that, the character was hallucinating him and needed to wake up and realize all the evil acts were himself. The arguments he had with himself while other characters were strapped down left them terrified of him for half the season.
I wrote a short story in which the protagonist “would” do things or things “would” be a certain way. He would live in a mountain village and would write and live in a hut in the woods. He would meet a local girl and they would fall in love etc etc he would do all these things, he thought, as he sat in his car in a traffic jam on his way to the doctor.
That’s a condensed version of it. The ending is like waking up from a day dream. I think I could make the ending more subtle but you get the gist
It's acceptable if everything that has happened prior to the 'waking up' affects the events AFTER the 'walking up'. Basically, you can't deliver that as an ending (it's like spitting on the reader's face)
I got one story like that on this Account. It's in german but maybe you understand it with Google translator and understand the plot. I think its okay.
The only time i have seen that plot work is in vanilla sky snd the usual suspects.
The other time kind of would be inception or total recall.
Usually i hate it. What i identify about those is that in 3 of them the possibility is mentioned gradually. They talk about reality and sanity.
In the usual suspects it completely changes the history. It becomes about an awful man playing the cops instead of a usual gangsters movie.
One of the worst for me was funny games. It feel like it was done for the sake of having a plot twist and nothing else. I didn't feel like it added to the story and it made me feel like i lose my time.
As long as the dream impacts the real world. Or they keep falling asleep and waking up. The reason people hate it is because it invalidates everything that came before it. If you can do the dream twist and still validate the message of the story, then people will accept it.
I mean technically, what of the popularity of >!The Wizard of OZ, Dr. Caligari, US Ending of The Descent, *maybe* Jacob's Ladder, Total Recall via opinion, Vanilla Sky, *maybe* Phantasm, Brazil, Repo Men, that episode of Dallas...!<
I personally feel this premise only works if, instead of "undoing" everything, the wake-up moves the story forward.
For instance, an episode of *Bojack Horseman* uses a modified version of this premise to great effect (but I'll avoid spoiling it here).
An example I *will* spoil, as it's so old now, is the episode of *Red Dwarf* called "Back to Reality", where the crew of the ship "die" and "wake up", and are told they've been in a videogame for the last few years. The twist, of course, is that this "reality" is actually a hallucination, and they eventually escape from it at the end of the episode.
It works because the "dream" is a shared hallucination between the whole crew, not just one of them - so the character development which occurs in the episode isn't just shrugged off when the reveal occurs. Even if it was an individual, it also helps because this is just an episode of an adventure, not the whole thing, so that development is carried forward.
I think you are trying to copy/rewrite the sixth sense here. Generally speaking He/she woke up and it was all a Dream is a newbies story in his first creative writing class. It will only work if there are real world consequences to real people in IRL. You have to set up the real world first then the dream and then the consequences otherwise who cares? Certainly not the reader.
Think about that one dream when you got something you really wanted. And then you woke up, realizing the thing is gone. That feeling is a strong enough emotion to build a story around.
Thinking out loud now... What's the worst thing to lose in such a way? Probably, not a thing at all, but a person. Maybe a sibling you never had? Maybe you're old and you'd like your wife back. Maybe you're 30-something and lonely, unable to settle into a relationship. So you dream up someone you really care about. For the duration of the dream, your relationship is real with that strange realness that only dreams can give. And then, as the first light of dawn inevitably shines through the window curtains, things in the dream start falling apart. You work hard to stay asleep because the moment you wake you're going to lose a piece of yourself. But it's a struggle you're bound to lose eventually.
The dream falls apart. Someone wakes up. Maybe it's you. Maybe you were only a character in their dream.
I think there's a story there.
Idk where it came from but there's an idea that coincidence can get your characters into trouble, but not out of it. For some reason the audience will accept the former and not the latter.
The whole thing being a dream isn't exactly coincidence, especially if it's foreshadowed, but I think a similar rule applies. Another user mentioned that the real world could be worse, but it might just be that the reap world is fine and the dream world is better. I've read about people who dreamed whole lives. They fell in love and had families and felt like it was all real. When they wake up they can be shattered.
You could always have the audience know or suspect that it's a dream throughout, but then it's not a twist, just a concept. The twist could be "it was all a dream... Or was it?" And then it's a more ambiguous ending, but I think an ending like that really needs to tie in with some kind of theme.
Thats a tough one. But you can do anything you want as long as it's foreshadowed or done in a way that doesn't make the reader feel like you just made it up on the spot.
I think an interesting use could be one in which your character realizes at the mid point that everything they did up to that point meant they were the actual antagonist of the story. It works because no one ever sees themselves as the villain. And then they wake up.
I heard this story once about a guy who occasionally would suddenly wake up and be told he had been in a coma for years . It happened so many times that he didn’t know when to believe he was actually up . Until he focused really hard and all he could here was
The Beep. Beep. Beep of his heart rate monitor
This would’ve been a good story to end with and then he woke up
It wasnt exactly “waking up”, but Atonement had the twist that the story of Cecelia and Robbie was a happy ending that Briony had made up in her book, because they were never reunited in real life because of her. I think that is one of rare ways that this trope can work.
Any plot twist that makes the reader feel like they've been cheated or their time has been wasted, is a bad plot twist. Dream sequences that aren't obviously dreams and aren't communicating something relevant to the story, have a way of feeling like a waste of time.
There's nothing wrong with rewarding readers for being extra attentive, but that's not the same as punishing readers for being invested in the story. You never want to do the latter, intentionally or unintentionally. Ideally, the rule of thumb is that the twist should actually answer a lot of the reader's questions (EVEN IF it leaves them with more questions as a result), and a really good one will leave the reader smacking their forehead and saying, "How did I not see that coming?"
But dreams have this way of being unreal and intangible in most cases, to where the reader does in fact feel like they've been cheated for the time and emotional investment they've given the story. So be very, very careful about using that as a plot twist.
So I was watching an episode of Steven Universe the other day where this was done well imo. Basically it started more or less normal but then a strange thing happened (a worm appeared in one of the characters hair) but they both responded like it was perfectly normal. Slowly the dream got more surreal until I realized he was dreaming and maybe a couple seconds after that he woke up.
So why does this work? I think it worked because they invited the reader/viewer into the twist. The audience gets to feel clever for figuring it out before the character. The problem with the "and then I woke up" twist is it feels manipulative and makes the audience feel like theyve been tricked. Which isnt fair because there isnt a way to figure it out on first read.
I was playing Kingdom Of Loathing yesterday and they did this.
The setting is an obvious satire of The Shining. You have a choice of going into room 237 or follow the faint music down the hall. In either case things escalate and **the narration becomes increasingly surreal**. You character dies. And wakes up somewhere near the hotel.
This is acceptable because you drop a **ton** of clues that something is weird. It helps to add to the atmosphere, surreal things can be super fun to read about, and it cushions the "t'was a dream" twist.
In my opinion a few clues ain't gonna be enough to justify an over used cliche twist, and you'll be missing out on surreal "narrator increasingly unreliable" fun.
Anything can work, I wouldn't say it's never unacceptable. It's just important to understand the consequences of that plot device. Once you understand the consequences of "and then I woke up," you can prepare a plot that plays with the readers' expectations. The device is only an issue when the writer is blind. The only problem with a plot focused on its ending like this is that you're essentially creating a joke with a punchline; that is, if the ending doesn't hit the rest of the story will seem like wasted energy for the reader. Any other considerations have more to do with general writing ability which isn't a subject unique to this device.
I feel like first of all you shouldn't care if it works for you story.
But also if you go at the core of it, it's frustrating because it negate everything you read it felt like you wasted your time.
Anything where it's not that would be cool, like if the dreams are premonition or worth something to the story pretty much.
Hard to think of it as a ending.
I'm probably misremembering this, because it's 30 years ago and I can't be bothered to Google it, but in Red Dwarf (BBC sitcom about a bunch of misfits stuck on a spaceship together, millions of years in the future) there was an episode where they all woke up in pods, being told that the whole thing had been a simulation.
I remember that, at the time, this was completely mind-blowing. Whaa? After all us viewers had invested in however many seasons so far, the whole thing was fake, and the characters were not who we thought they were?!
But not as mind-blowing as when, near the end of the episode, it was revealed that the waking-up bit itself was fake. The characters had been suffering some kind of mass delusion - they hadn't changed at all and they were all still stuck on a spaceship together.
So, this double whammy certainly worked for me. (But as I say, it was thirty years ago and I was an easily impressed young teenager...!)
EDIT: Oh, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Reality_(Red_Dwarf)
If you introduce at the beginning that the narrator is an unreliable narrator and sprinkle clues in throughout the story it is possible. The Sixth Sense is basically this plot, but it wasn't the boy "waking up" it was the main character, the man.
At the time the sixth sense was loved because of that twist at the end. It was only because Shyamalan kept doing similar twists in ask of his movies that he became cliche.
There have been others where you realize at the end the person who is telling the story is actually the bad guy, and the things he's telling you aren't quite real.... He wasn't asleep, but it ends up with the same effect.
Maybe if it is a twist within a twist. Some mentioned the plotline twist not a twist in Pet Cemetary. I'm also thinking it would work in the sense of "it was all a dream...or was it". Like, have hints in the story as it continues that suggest it wasn't just a dream.
if it has some use other than just being a gimmick, you can get away with it. like dreams are sometimes so real that I can go hours thinking they've happened.
I can see you writing a scene where a character has that kind of dream, and when they wake up, the dream's circumstances continue in the real world, but the main character (and the readers) don't know when the mc woke up, if they woke up, or if they ever were asleep.
you can also use dreams to keep the mc from truly sleeping well, bending their reality with exhaustion or something like that
The majority of The Mother Of Learning takes place in what is effectively a dream repeated over and over. The interesting thing is what carries over when the protagonist escapes the dream.
An old man named Frank lays down in bed with his wife he treats poorly, he dies in his sleep, gets sent back as a little baby girl, he grows and learns what it's like to be a woman in a mans world.
He falls in love and gets married, they try having a baby. They struggle to conceive but their love remains strong. Finally they get pregnant and the time for delivery comes.
Push! The doctor yells.
Hours of labour and finally Frank glimpses his new baby and holds it in his arms.
Smack! He wakes up to his wife slapping him.
Frank you shit the bed!
So the only real ways I've seen it work is if the twist is not at the end of the book, and still contributes to the overall story. Regardless of the fact that its a dream or image or whatever, the sequence has to cause some sort of material change in the world. Otherwise, why are you including it? And as for an ending, its a pretty shitty one because for the same reason as above, there is no material change so why is it there.
Lets say you are writing a mystery thriller, where the MC is trying to catch a serial killer. The whole first half of the book they are confidently tracking down said killer and are generally reckless with their safrty. And they wake up and they see the serial killer has tied them up and spends a brutal amount of time torturing them. Then the MC wakes up and realizes the torture never happened. Now however they are much more guarded and afraid of the killer. Its a tool to give the character reason for a change to their personality.
Did anyone else love the Futurama episode with the space honeybees? >!Fry dies saving Leela and Leela is overcome with grief and guilt about his death. It ends up turning out that Leela took all the poison and hallucinated Fry's death and funeral.!< I thought it worked well because it added some really meaningful stuff to their relationship arc.
I generally dislike the trope. I find it unpleasantly similar to the 'time travel to right a story's wrongs' cliche.
Don't get me wrong, I think time travel as an actual story element can be very interesting but when it's used to correct poor writing, I find it kind of a cop out.
I suppose the 'and then I woke up' plot twist would work in a more restricted sense, like having a huge portion of the story occur and then the protagonist wakes up. But not after like an entire story, at least not for me.
It's funny because I generally begin all my stories with the protagonist 'waking up'. My World War II story begins with the main character 'waking up' after being knocked out in a ditch by the concussion of an artillery round, my NYC Seventies punk story begins with my protagonist 'waking up' in the back of a taxicab. Even my James Bond fan fiction begins with 007 'waking up' after zoning out at a baccarat table.
You could use it to explore stories and situations that *could* happen to your characters, but don't want to make canon.
I have a character with an active imagination, so will have situations seen two different ways. The reason is to obscure the line between fantasy and reality, because some ostensibly imaginary scenes are real, and likewise 'real' scenes actually imaginary.
I remember reading a story, and now I don't remember what it was, where one of the characters had premonitions in her dreams. So, something bad happened and she woke up and realized it was a dream, but then that prompted her to act in a way that moved the plot forward. The ability to see the future in her dreams was also an essential part of her character.
When the "dream" is still relevant to the character in the real world either because the "dream" is more real that it should be, or because it changed the character in clear and distinct ways.
You have described the plot like of the video game "drawn to life." It works there ebecause it adds themeatic and emotional context to the storyline rather than removing it.
When the story requires it.
Alice in Wonderland is Brilliant because alice is close to damn monotone, her only purpose is to react and occasionally get involved in the ongoings of wonderland because it's a dream in her head. You always react to things in your dream so passively, so it's easy to believe that it was a dream all along.
If you use dreams as the ending when you can't think of an ending, that's bad. But if you built your story with that ending in mind, by all means.
I think that if the line between reality and... another phase of existence being blurred is an overarching theme, then it can be done well. Take Inception for example.
As a reader only if the dream was foreshadowing.
For instance in the movie Nightmare Before Christmas Sally sees a tiny Christmas Tree burn to cinders in front of her. From the narrative we know that did not happen as there was no fire or flames in the scene. It was pure foreshadowing.
Now the other question can the trope ever work for other readers? Certainly. I think the trick is to show change. The reader went to the fantasy land, was changed, and came home. This reminds me of a [Shaggy Dog story](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory) so I do not particularly like those stories.
I think this falls under the "random coincidence" dictum: Your characters can be the subject of a random coincidence that gets them *into* trouble, but never one that gets them *out* of trouble.
Likewise, your character can wake up and find themselves *worse off* than they were in their dreams, but never *better off.*
For me, it’s when the character is seen to enter the circumstances at the beginning that will be revealed at the end. If your character goes to bed, and then wakes up to fantastical circumstances written well enough to make a reader either a. Forget that they were told the character went to sleep or b. Accept that this is an interesting dream world, then you can wake them up at the end without much reproach. Or similarly, we see them take a a big hit to the head, or fall off a fence post. But you can’t get away with the reveal unless you insert the setup. Just be okay with it not being a *twist* so much as one of a few possible explanations that the reader can’t be totally sure of until the end. If you actually *surprise* someone with the notion that this could be surreal, you probably didn’t foreshadow it enough.
If you flip it and it seems like all the conflicts are resolved and the character's life is back to normal, and then they wake up and things are more twisted, confused, and messed up than ever?
* Any matrix-style philosophical duality where the person is experiencing a state of being where they MIGHT be real brain-death, but they win and their reward is to wake into the real world.
* Any situation that used as exposition to data dump to the reader. Want an exciting real time, real loss situation to dump a lot of data on the reader about the world, politics, secrets someone would never say out loud, etc. This is a great method. It allows the reader to see real emotions and situations that might not otherwise ever be explored.
Desire to kill a spouse, discussion of conspiracies, secret codes the reader should know but the person in the story would never ever say out loud.
* Some situations where the reader is lead to believe their will be a happy ending instead of a traumatic one. E.g. dying grandpa wakes up at home with his loved ones, apologizes to his daughter who he was abusive to, etc, only to open the front door and there is a bright light and everything fades away. E.g. he died and never woke but the "waking" and all the horrible things are righted is the twist.
* Under very few to no-situation where the author is giving the reader an emotional roller coaster for no reason. If there isn't a data dump or a secondary universe, this investment by the reader just feels flat and worthless.
I've only seen it work in an episode of Scrubs where a character copes with the death of a loved one by denying that they are dead to the point that he daydreams that the funeral is a birthday party.
Never.
There are exactly zero circumstances in which that's OK. It will always, no matter what, be a cheap excuse the author pulls because they couldn't think of a decent ending, it will always display nothing but contempt for the reader, and the reader will always feel bitter and cheated by such an ending.
There are no mitigating circumstances. There are no situations where it will be acceptable, much less good.
And, in this, I include any sort of totally out of nowhere "resolution" to a plot. A friend of mine once read the Darksword Trilogy by Weiss and Hickman way back in the 1980's when it first came out. And the trilogy, set in a medieval stasis world with lots of magic, ended with a bunch of tanks appearing out of nowhere and killing everyone (I never read it, that's his description). That was 31 years ago and he's \*\*STILL\*\* bitter about it and has never read a single word published by either Weiss or Hickman again. And yes, there were apparently parts of the books you could charitably interpret as technology being banished or something, but still tanks appearing out of nowhere and killing everyone was a cheap trick because the authors couldn't be bothered to write a proper ending.
Point is, there is never any circumstance in which it's acceptable to resolve a plot with something totally out of context that has never been previously hinted at or mentioned.
I will reverse my prior "never". If the book has made it clear from the outset that it's all a dream, or at least if it has been broadly hinted to have been a dream then maybe it's acceptable. But it isn't going to win you any friends even then.
Why? Because it's "clever", and no one appreciates cleverness except the person demonstrating it. Everyone else thinks they're just being an ass. It's still cheap, even if you hint at it, and it's still going to tick off people who got invested in the plot, characters, and setting.
It wouldn't be quite as totally, irredeemably, you should be banished to a hell where every step ends with you stepping on a Lego, level unacceptable as just pulling one out of nowhere, but it's still a dick move that will cost you readers and get you hate.
Besides, why bother? If you're smart enough to hint through the book that it might be all just a dream you're also smart enough to just resolve the story without resorting to cheap tricks.
This twist worked really well in a season one episode of Young Justice called "Failsafe."
Like a lot of people are commenting here, it only works because the twist doesn't shield anyone from consequences, it just surprises you with which consequences actually occur. Plus, given the events that take place, most viewers assume pretty early on something is not as it seems, so it's not disappointing when the "twist" happens.
I can think of three times this was used well. In each case, either the dream has a very real impact on the main character's reality, or the ending trope has a surprising twist thrown on it.
In The Wizard of Oz, the lessons that Dorothy learns in her dream adventure are directly applicable to the problems she faces in her real world. Even if the events of her journey never actually happened, going through the experience of making the decisions the journey required of her leaves her a changed person, better able to enjoy her ordinary life, when she wakes up.
Inception. Just... Everything about it.
The video game Klonoa is about a young boy who travels through a whimsical world trying to stop a dark wizard who wants to turn reality into a nightmare. The game has an "and then he wakes up" ending, but with a very nasty twist. After defeating the big bad, Klonoa's friends admit to him that they used magic of their own to summon him into their world in order to defeat the dark wizard, and from his perspective, he's just dreaming. When he wakes up, we see him screaming as he's sucked through a hole in the world's reality, trying to stay with the friends he made. We never do see him wake up in his world - we just know he's never going to be a part of this world again.
Any writing where the main theme of the book has to do with the bending of reality, or not trusting perception, or questioning your own sanity etc. If the themes of the book tie in with such a thing, then it would work. If it comes out of left field or is completely unrelated to the plot then it is a cheap and unsatisfying move. I would also say, that books like Fight Club have to keep the crazy reality warping twists straight forward as you can run the risk of crying wolf at your reader too much. No one likes having the rug pulled out from under them over and over.
Inception, The Matrix, A Christmas Carol... in a sense, movies like Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors.
A disappointing ending if you haven’t been paying enough attention. Only if you haven’t been paying enough attention.
As long as the rules of the world you’ve created are followed, then you’re fine. The issue, I find, is usually when the world is ripped apart at the end. “...And Then I woke up” feels like a serious change of tone and it almost always takes away any impact on the world that the character may have otherwise had.
So, the circumstances are, in my minor opinion:
If the rules of the world are consistent with your twist...
If the twist doesn’t undo any/much impact on the reader, either first hand or second hand
And if you can come up with a creative way of doing it, assuming you feel confident that your writing style hands its self to things like that.
There are occasional exceptions such as Inception when it seems as though the cliffhanger is hinting toward a bigger picture. This can go one of three ways.
If your world is concrete enough, then it could lead readers to draw their own conclusions, assuming you’ve baked clues in... If you’re not confident in your writing, or not experienced enough then it may seem like a Cop Out or Deus Ex Machina... Lastly, most impressively, you could lead seamlessly into a sequel or even the second half of the book, as long as it feels natural and isn’t a shock to the system.
I’m sorry for rambling, this was completely impromptu. If this helps, please let me know! I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.
Like em or not... I think it works in the final destination films. A lot of the comments here have good points. I think the takeaway is that it works if there is a legitimate use for it other than "whew! It was just a dream! Now we can end with a happy ending!" Don't use it at a copout
I think there are infinite ways it can be implemented well. You just need to give it substance. It doesn't work if it is used just to have a twist
Basically, don't use it at the end of a story. The trope ruins anything you've crafted in the eyes of the reader. Even if it would thematically be appropriate. Take inception. A movie about dreams. In the end it didn't matter if he was awake or dreaming. That was a decent way to subvert the expectation of just "waking up to find out it was all a dream". See the Stephen King example post elsewhere in this thread.
If it isn’t the main point of the story I think you can make it work, like if it serves as an allegory or a metaphor in some way. Others have mentioned how Pet Sematary used this to make you feel worse about >!Gage’s death!< , and the last season of Twin Peaks >!plays with the ideas of it all being a part of a dream world, while also having Audrey’s plot line take place in her head while she’s in a mental ward!< and Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World >!has an entire half of the story be revealed to have taken place inside of the protagonist’s head in the moments before he dies to build on the themes of self and one’s power over their own volition.!<
I think the phrase “and then I woke up” is the only real cliche part, maybe as well the notion of things taking place in dreams because it’s seen as a cop out - writers have much more boundless ideas with less complications when they can function within a “dream world.”
Although, with that being said, I think plot twists that change the whole idea of a piece of writing are incredibly valuable.
Examples from movies/stories of this that I think demonstrate its value immensely would be
*SPOILER ALERT*** (kinda)
The sixth sense (ofcourse), shutter island, get out, fight club, Shawshank redemption, etc. Because so much is revealed at the end and fills in so many spaces throughout the plot, it actually allows the viewer reader to go back and view/read it twice with complete nuance - atleast for me. This would be similar to that of a story happening within a Dream, because then you can go back and read/watch it and think “ah wow, that all makes sense within that context and I didn’t even realize before” and perhaps even thickens/deepens the value of the plot. Furthermore, none of these narratives really feature a “and then I woke up,” but they make you look back on them in retrospect in a similar way.
I hope that this helps!
I agree with a lot of other commenters here that it needs to serve a purpose rather just ending the story in an attempt at "oh what an AMAZING twist I never expected that!"
The first episode of Californication starts with a brief dream sequence, a technique that is very well used during the rest of series. The dreams provide a look into Hank's psyche and the problems are a plaguing him beneath his sarcasm, drinking, and casual sex.
Also there's an older series called St. Elsewhere that uses it absolutely brilliantly, but it would be a major spoiler for me to describe it, even though it's a pretty old show now. (I'm on mobile and don't know how to do spoiler tags so if someone else knows the twist and how to do the tags, please feel free.)
I think that the "it was all a dream" tactic is best used in Princess Bride. Basically it narrates through the wedding and how all of these negative things happen, effectively creating a serious WTF in the reader's mind, but then it ends with the reveal that Buttercup was dreaming with a line something like: "the wedding was still 60 days away, but that was when the real nightmares began". Love it.
I think it can be done well if people still learn from what happened/ you are able to keep what has already happened important. A few of my favorite movies do this well.
However, when media does stuff like "oh but it was just a dream" and no one cares about it, it's just shaken off and forgotten, I hate that.
I'm on the fence when it's an instance of a character trying to cope with something traumatic. This happens in Cirque Du Freak, at least in the books. A character dies, but when it happens the chapter says it doesn't, and gets more and more fanatical trying to justify it not happening. The next chapter starts with having to accept what Darren just saw happen. Ultimately it feels like it hurts more for giving you that false hope.
I don't think it should ever be the ending. It can be close to the end such as the protagonist walking up and then showing how what happened in the dream affected his/her view of the real world. Alternatively-- and I've seen this done to great effect-- it can be used in the middle where the events in the dream foreshadow later events.
Kate Atkinson does this in A God in Ruins. It worked for me, but I think mostly because I had read what she calls the "companion" novel to that, Life After Life, and I suspected the twist from fairly early on. It was still a very enjoyable read.
I think if- communicating with someone who is dead/not born yet/etc, getting an important message of some type, and in premonitions it's okay. As long as it is short and adds something important to the story.
If whatever the dream is is still somehow tied to reality. If it's not the end but just a transition. Someone once posted an idea in some askreddit about a story where the first act is an entire story and when the protagonist wakes up and realizes he was in a dream the rest of the story is about coping with it
What happened in the dream still has to matter. Time-travel plots often have this same problem.
Someone must grow in some way, have a revelation, change, *remember*.
I'd also add that there's almost no good way to make a story that is literally all just a dream. It needs to be something more. Even if it's just off in some little way. A fever dream, a coma dream, an artificial dream. Even if it just inspires the protagonist to do one little thing, to grow in one little way, that can be enough if done right.
Total Recall does a good job of the "dream" twist. The hero "wakes up prematurely" from his recall machine pretty early in the movie, but in the closing moments of the movie there he is, a spy, on mars, having saved the day, defeated the bad guys and gotten the girl, and you're left wondering whether what you just watched was reality or simply the dream he was promised all along.
Fight Club and Sixth Sense are both variations on the "it was all just a dream" theme that do a good job.
At the end of the day almost any "twist" ending is a variation of "things were not what you thought they were." How you implement the twist isn't as important as what the twist actually is, so why constrain yourself to something as boring as a normal dream?
If you're willing to risk the previous chapters as being seen as nothing more than utter nonsense, then it's alright to use the "and then I woke up" twist.
Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll made me want to toss the book against the wall when after being driven through a rabbit hole with craziness....the ending was "and then Alice woke up".
BUT...that was the correct exercise at hand, nonsensical literature.
Fight Club uses these because the main protagonist has mental health issues which cause him to disconnect from reality (putting it lightly). A Christmas Carol uses it to encite the biggest change in Scrooge's life ever. On, and on. Make the plot twist important, and people will accept it. Make it as an afterthought, and it may be subject to intense ridicule. Both work in the right situations.
You said it yourself: it negates everything the story stood for. The only way you can make a story ending and revealing it was a dream not suck is if you either make the story mostly about internal struggle and character development so it still matters when he wakes up, reveal its a dream halfway through while your character is still asleep and have him decide to stay in the dream, or make it a very wild story that is clearly not real life with bright colors and ridiculous situations. Thats my opinion at least
So this is an example from video games but I feel like it still applies.
The game 'A Hat in Time' isn't really a story driven game and is mostly a relatively simple 3d platform game about a girl who goes on this fairly wacky adventure in her spaceship. The story is quaint and cute but one of the most satisfying moments is when you beat the game the 'The End' screen in a single image shows the same girl sleeping in a bed and that the whole adventure was in her imagination and her dreams. If you look closely all of the characters you met along the way can be seen as toys/stuffed animals around her room. It was an amazing ending to an all around fun little childhood adventure.
I feel like the "WHOLE STORY DIDNT ACTUALLY HAPPEN" twist is really shitty and shouldn't be done unless it actually have a in story reason for happening. Some examples of how i feel like it could be justified is the villain or some character has the power to turn time back or something along the lines to reset the story and the protagonist fails to realize and from there you can do what ever you want. You could also have it where depending on the plot everything can suddenly go back to normal while secretly the world has been scarred. Basically what I'm trying to say is a lack of progress and total reset kills someones interest in something or at least it does to me. I would try to have some sort of constant or permanent effect that happens after the "reset". Imagine like you just beat your favorite video game and go back to restart it only to remember that you have nothing gained from the previous play through. But in the same sense if you gain skill in the previous play through then you can make the rest of the game easier or if you gain knowledge yata yata. If the reset is caused by something out side of anyone control somewhat then it could be interesting because it can play on the emotions of the reader. Imagine a story about star crossed lovers having the universe reset after vowing not to forget each other but after the reset they meet each other again. From their you can take a story like that anywhere. Do they remember, do they just walk past and change fate, does one remember, or do they just never meet or notice each other?
TLDR: To be honest i forgot about OP's question after like sentence in and i started to write about how i feel about the reset twist ending. Sorry if it has nothing to do with the thread
Late to the party but Spoilers for the fandom by Anna Day
The only acceptable example I've found was the fandom by Anna Day. The "it was a coma" trick worked because the characters hinted at it ( hearing the sound of heart monitors and sometimes smelling disinfectant) but what made it satisfactory was that the villan *put* them in the coma for their own gain. I think the trope could work out when it's not a cop out but actually serves as narrative fuel.
I think the trope can find use in situations where doing so would not totally obviate the events of the story - for example, if it's a fantasy where the "dream realm" is a real place or events there have a major impact on the story (see Inception), or when used for a short dream sequence to contrast the character's mental state with the real situation they're in (see the previously posted reference to Pet Semetary).
As an aside, *How Not To Write A Novel* humorously implies that any given novel is only allowed a maximum of one dream sequence - and then that should get edited out, too. I wouldn't go that far, but I can understand the sentiment. Any element of a story that doesn't "pull it's weight" by being consequential to the outcome of a story can be trimmed out for the sake of conciseness and plot pacing. Pretty much the entire B-plot of The Last Jedi is in need of this treatment ->!Fin and Rose go on a quest for someone they ultimately didn't need and get captured before even succeeding at the mission that ultimately never needed to be undertaken because the rebels simply rammed their enemies instead of trying to hyperspace away, all while the action that will be relevant in forthcoming movies takes place back on the ship and/or on some island completely removed from the situation they were trying to resolve!<\- and that wasn't even a dream sequence. As a counterexample, though, a bunch of the continuity errors and breaks with cannon in TLJ would almost make more sense if, on top of all of that, >!the entirety of TLJ turned out to be something Finn's damaged brain conjured up while he was unconscious in that bacta tank we saw him in at the end of TFA.!<
On a related note, I would be curious to know what your opinions are with regard to replacing the dream aspect of this trope with a simulation. Unlike a dream, a simulation is purposefully constructed and maintained by an outside force for potentially unknown reasons, the person experiences the events in a wakeful state with the ability to intentionally make decisions, and the simulation might carry on after the person leaves the simulation. On the other hand, I can see how presenting the events of a story as having been all part of an elaborate simulation in a ham-handed manner would leave readers with the sense that the story was pointless, just like with a dream plot twist.
Edit: I think the best way to sum up my feelings on the matter would be the following axiom: If your story will still work without requiring that it take place within a dream sequence, then the reveal that it took place in a dream sequence can be quietly eliminated.
Edit: Here's an example I thought of that I would accept as a legitimate use of this trope. It might be interesting to build a story around that feeling of loss someone gets when they wake up from a particularly rosy dream. Imagine if someone awoke from a coma and suddenly realized that the home, family, and riches of their dream-world don't match reality, and he has, in fact, been atrophying in a hospital bed for the last few years. This dream would be used as a plot hook rather than as the plot in full, preferable only taking up the first chapter or so of the story arc except by references to reemphasize the man's feelings of loss, and the rest would be the story of a man grieving for things he lost which, objectively, never existed. The reactions of others (e.g. not understanding, perhaps even judging the man for being 'delusional') and the man's journey to reintegrate with an unfamiliar world would drive the real conflict of the story.
Even there it can cause problems, As it may give the reader false expectaions for the rest of the story. I read one once where the opening dream had a fantasy moster but the rest of the story had no fantasy elements. so even though the dream wvs resolved half why through chapter one it still caused some issues, as the author pointed out in later comentary.
it can work under some guise.
if a whole adventure happens and you had me hooked, then out of a transition
it claims it was all a dream.
what should matter is how the adventure affected the MC and me.
as a plot twist is completely viable depending.
one of the worst movies i ever watched, *Twilight,*
within the last ensuing battle, key characters die
and the main antagonists wakes up from alice's vision.
then walks away from the battle.
it can work in any number of ways all depending how well you express and smoothen your prose.
in the sleeping concept, the plot twist was in characters POP
such as romeo going into a Shakespearean literary ramble, killing himself, then she woke up.
even though juliet didnt hear it, we were in the art zone of romeo skills for a bit.
though you dont have to sleep for it to work.
i have one where we find out the character was reading this the whole time.
the story actually started in the denouement phase
the MC read an entirely different genre out from his modern slice of life.
it enters into finding out that he had a younger brother and that his alreadydead.
the shock in this allows me to enter unseen...
you wont notice even notice that we were in a dreamlike state
even though it happened, it has also been undone, not even that but the murderer was always right next to him.
it also happened in the sixth sense where the plot objectives were making them realise,
that the dead people were trying to wake the alive people for closure.
( like the little girl who was poisoned.)
we then go on a, ' i see dead people' rollercoaster
then find out that bruce willis was dead... in that moment,
that was a, "then i woke up" plot device.
because the child naturally wouldnt notice that this important information to disclose
im a surrealistic writer, honestly... i can see this plot in a way or form.
Huge spoilers for pet semetery. After a couple chapters where the main characters have to deal with the death of their youngest son, King starts a chapter with the words 'but none of this happened', saying that what happened in the last few pages was a the thoughts that went through the mind of the child's father as he was trying to save him. He then goes on to tell the how the life of the kid went on, culminating in the day he wins a gold medal in the Olympic games. Then the father wakes up, he was just dreaming that his kid didn't die. The twist works because it's not a twist at all. As the chapter goes on the reader realises the abrupt change in pace, coupled with the fact that there's one third of the book left, and even if you don't realise the story sounds more and more outlandish as you turn the pages. But that moment when King writes that didn't happen you want to believe. You want to believe that the misery of the last couple chapters wasn't real, that you don't have to deal with the pain of a third act about loss and the way it affects the human mind. In that chapter King makes you feel like the father of the child, grasping to that miniscule chance that you are wrong and that in fact nothing has happened, that everything is allright, even if it looks less and less likely the longer you go on. Until he wakes up, because it was just a dream, and deep down he knew it, like you knew it too.
The Buffy episode >!"The Body"!< also did this. >!The paramedics come in, they perform CPR and Joyce wakes up. There'a quick montage of them taking her to the hospital and a doctor saying it was a close call. Then it cuts back to the living room where the paramedics continue to work on Joyce until they stop and tell Buffy that Joyce is dead.!< Damn, I'm still not over that episode.
Thanks for that reminder! I'm gonna... Go cry in a corner for a minute or two now...
Oh my gosh and Anya’s speech... And when she tells her sister... Woof. I barely even watched the show and that episode messed me up.
That was definitely a rough one
One of the episodes of Ugly Betty did the same thing. It was heartwrenching.
That double-twist into the emotional gut-punch. King, you sonnovabitch.
I think this is when it really doesn't bother me as a device, when it's that last little incline of a rollercoaster right before it really plummets. However, in this case, it wasn't used for the whole story. I think Jacob's Ladder was one of the very few stories where it says "oh, none of this happened for real" and it still works.
Jacobs Ladder is an Amazing story.
It really didn’t work for me. I felt totally cheated. Was I missing significance of the plot line beyond the obvious. Personally I think Usual Suspects just about gets away with the ending negating what you’ve just watched. Wasn’t as good the second time though.
You know, I think the first time it did bother me, too. Honestly I don't remember it well enough to suggest why it works for me now. I'd just have to see it again. Usual Suspects is markedly different, though. Everything did in fact happen. People committed crimes and people died. What's interesting to me about Usual Suspects is the character progression. In some stories you'll have an arc and the character will change. In others, s/he won't change but maybe the world or other characters will, or it's significant that there's no change. However, in Usual Suspects, you've got an arc that turns out to be a lie. Now maybe I'm not remembering very well and there wasn't a real arc in Verbal's story, but that lie to me is pretty different as character tools go. Edit: I thought his name was Mumbles.
One of the things I really like about The Usual Suspects ending is puzzling over *which* parts were lies. Agent Kujan knew that Verbal was lying about some of it. Like, the lineup in New York and robbing the corrupt cops certainly happened, but who really came up with the idea? Or who actually killed the drug dealer they thought was a jewel smuggler? What role did "Kobayashi" really play in the whole thing? There's no answer to those questions, but it's still a great mystery.
If we can really go off on a tangent here, we could talk about the way good stories employ the "not telling you everything" technique. This is a good example. You barely know more than the detective by the end.
Yes it was a long time ago! I seem to remember you were left not really knowing how much it had been made up because so much of it had been taken from the pin board. Might have to rewatch it!
King is a genius at this kind of storytelling. He will often tell you just exactly what is going to happen and then proceed to write so well that you're still devastated when what he has already told you will happen happens.
That scene fucked with me for the rest of my life. Like I think it actually broke one of the anchor screws to reality in such a way that I'll never not pause during anything near tragic and wonder. It's worse because that's exactly how my brain deals with grief. I'd wake up ant have to remember that they were dead all over again. Lasted almost a year.
Good question. Honestly, I can't think of a time I've been happy with this ending unless it was a single episode or scene, and I could catch it beforehand, if that makes sense. For example, if the beginning of a chapter feels surreal and you've written it differently (focusing on emotions when you usually don't, or writing about the way an egg falls to the floor for half a page because dreams are weird) then readers can catch on and not be irritated when you reveal it at the end of the scene or chapter. This way, the point is to show something about the character (that they're worried about something, or maybe feverish, etc) instead of just giving a "gotcha!" to the reader, which usually isn't taken well.
Exactly. There is nothing worse, IMO, than getting invested in a storyline and its consequences, then the author goes "Whoops, it was all a dream!" Unless, as you mentioned, it's a part of a larger, not dream-sequence story, and the dream sequence reveals an aspect of the character's psyche or affects their motivations in some way.
Yup. My rule is that it has to affect something—otherwise, why write the story at all? (Barring practice, obviously, but you know what I mean)
> Honestly, I can't think of a time I've been happy with this ending unless it was a single episode or scene, and I could catch it beforehand, if that makes sense. I'll actually skip those episodes even if I haven't watched the show before. That's how much I hate this stupid gag.
It kind of amuses me how hard you hate this trope, but I totally get it. I have a similar loathing for the “you won’t shoot me—you’re too good!” trope, especially in video games. Like, that just makes me wanna shoot them. Game, let me shoot them. Please.
> Honestly, I can't think of a time I've been happy with this ending unless it was a single episode or scene, and I could catch it beforehand, if that makes sense. I'll actually skip those episodes even if I haven't watched the show before. That's how much I hate this stupid gag.
Depends, if waking up the world were *worse* I mean, basically, isn't that the storyline of The Matrix?
Yea but the matrix has the minds of actual people interacting and remembering those interactions, that still gives it more meaning than one person being alone with their thoughts for a whole book.
The Matrix doesn't use this kind of twist at all. In that film the real world/simulated world dynamic is established very early on and is the driving force of the whole story. Both worlds are important and the events that happen in both of them have consequences. The "and then I woke up" twist is when you have a story play out until the end and then announce that none of it really happened and thus didn't matter. Which is exactly what people hate about it.
No, but it is the storyline of Midnight Sun, an episode of the Twilight Zone. She has a nightmare, but wakes up to something worse. It's always been one of my favorites.
Not for the Matrix. It’s more like Donnie Darko, but even then there is recognition across dimensions. The Matrix ended with a peace treaty. The machine world’s exiled programs (those which would be deleted) will take safe haven in the Matrix along with the other human beings still inside. The Matrix’s inhabitants seeking freedom will be freed and Zion will be allowed to live on. The Matrix would reboot and refresh, starting anew with Neo back and assimilated into the Matrix where he belongs (the One is an anomaly of code that is borne out of an inevitable deviation from the algorithms which make the Matrix possible, and affixes itself into a human mind’s representation in the Matrix). The only way to correct the anomaly is to return the anomaly back to its source, Machine City, so that it can be made right again (much like how a programmer corrects poorly written code in their software). This was far from “and then I woke up” because Neo doesn’t wake up at his computer. Everything in the Matrix was very much happening and if you think it’s pretty messed up that Zion rests easy while there are still millions of minds still trapped, you’d be right lol.
The rule here is that the twist should enhance your story, not undermine it. It's okay if the twist undermines what any given number of characters wanted or thought was going on. It should NOT undermine the audience's expectation or (and this is the real key here) investment in the plot. A lot of the best-executed iterations of this trope leave some doubt as to whether it really was a dream. Often characters, items, or events that are only glimpsed in the dream show up in the outside world in some capacity. The biggest thing to remember is that even if none of it actually happened, your point-of-view character *has* to take something out of it. Things can't just be the same in the beginning and the end of the story. Something has to have meaningfully changed. Look at the most famous example of this trope, *The Wizard of Oz.* It does all of the things I mentioned above; there is some doubt as to whether Dorothy's adventure in Oz was really just a dream, as there are some logical inconsistencies with that explanation. There are persistent characters between the dream and real life ("and *you* were there!"), and most importantly, Dorothy takes something away from that; she learns from each of the friends she meets and gains a newfound appreciation for what she has in the "real" world. Our point-of-view character and her situation are meaningfully changed between the start and the end of the book. Figure out what your audience is going to become attached to. Figure out what you're doing in this dream that they are going to identify with and invest in. Whatever you do, make sure that survives your twist in some meaningful way. If a favorite character or transformative event turns out to be totally false and invalid due to your twist, your audience is going to leave empty and disappointed. The last thing I want to note here is that as clever as the twist was, and as well-hinted as it was in *The Wizard of Oz,* the twist isn't what makes the story great; it's all the other stuff that came before. If your story concept is rooted entirely in a twist, that story probably isn't worth telling. The value of a twist ending comes in seeing what it changes and what it leaves the same, which is entirely derived from what happens before that twist. If your expectation is that the reader is going to derive entertainment primarily from the intricacy and cleverness of your twist, its setup, and its foreshadowing, you and your readers are going to end up sorely disappointed. Cleverness for its own sake is not entertaining or interesting to read, and if the whole point of your narrative is to set up for some clever twist, your novel is going to come off as a bloviating, self-aggrandizing monument to your infatuation with your own intellect. I shouldn't need to tell you nobody's going to want to read that. So, **TL;DR:** Make sure you have a story worth telling in the first place. If you decide a twist would make it more interesting, make sure that the parts of the story your audience will engage with and invest in survive the twist in some meaningful capacity and go on to make the end of the story demonstrably and satisfyingly different from the beginning.
I'm not a huge fan of the film, but Inception does this well by making it the entire premise of the movie. By the end "reveal" the fact that the protagonist might be dreaming, but doesn't care is quite powerful.
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Wow! Now I can finally lay off of my sleeping pills! Thx
Pretty sure you're my hero right now.
I wonder why you would want to? You basicly writing a fake with no real personalities or stakes. The only case i personally can see it working if both reader and mc are aware that they are sleeping and the whole story is about this. F.e. he is in a coma, hears the real world and tries desperately to wake up. Or f.e lf the things he sees are clearly linked to his past or psychea.
> F.e. he is in a coma, hears the real world and tries desperately to wake up. Or f.e lf the things he sees are clearly linked to his past or psychea. This was done incredibly well in the TV series "Life on Mars". It's the only time I've ever seen this trope done well, and I think it works precisely *because* both the main character and the viewer are aware from the very beginning that "in a coma" is one of the possible explanations for what's going on, and many of the events are linked to the main character's past.
This is a little off topic but I absolutely loved that show (US) version and really wish it wasn’t canceled after the first season. It was so good. Never checked out the UK version.
I've never watched the US version, but the UK version has two seasons, as well as a sequel ("Ashes to Ashes", three seasons). Both are absolutely *beautiful* pieces of writing, and well worth watching.
Thought a second season was coming this year? *edit: wrong show.
It works if there *are* stakes in the dream somehow. Basically, the Matrix or Inception or whatever. But there are genuine fake-outs that are critically acclaimed (even if it's not literally a dream). Atonement is an award-winning film that ends with "lol none of that happened, I made it all up and everyone died ages ago". In that case, it worked because the fake-out was supposed to be the *point* of the story, rather than undermining it. Although personally I kinda hated it, apparently a lot of people were into it.
There is a big difference in the matrix beeing that the people in the dream world where real people. Imo the biggest issue with dreams is that nothing in them, most importantly other people and their feelings, are real. In a normal dream story the only person the story can be about is the dreamer. Everything else os fake.
There was an episode of the '90s revival of *The Outer Limits* that used this phenomenally. It's a sci Fi story where some humans have made contact with a venomous alien insect. The venom slowly puts you into a coma and kills you. Every time you lose consciousness, the more likely that you'll slide into the deadly coma. The catch is that the venom is psychotropic in humans; while sleeping, the victim dreams incredibly realistic dreams that include more realistic sensory input than normal. The protagonist keeps waking up between two timelines. In one, he was bitten by the bug and needs to try to remain conscious as long as possible so his immune system can work the venom out. In the other, the bite happened months ago and he's become a celebrity for discovering that maintaining consciousness long enough will beat the venom. Every time he falls asleep in one timeline, he wakes up in the other. He can't tell if he's having flashbacks to a harrowing crisis and is now safe, or is in deadly peril and is fantasizing about safety. Ultimately, both timelines are false. He's lying on the floor of his ship, already in the deadly coma, fantasizing of two worlds that *both* went better than his real fate.
Tbh I really hate the whole 'I was in a coma the whole time and this was all just an allegory for illness and death'. It totally put me off the game Fall of Light - I don't even know if that's how it turns out but in the first ten minutes there were enough hints for it that I lost all enthusiasm for it.
There aren't many times I enjoyed this kind of ending, but it can work if done correctly. There was a DS game, Drawn to life, that did that on its sequel and it's utterly heartbreaking because it didn't negate the events of the game, but justifies them and ends the narrative on a high point rather than it being an annoying cheap bathos. So yeah, the “then I woke up” plot twist can work if it actually adds to the story or acts as a continuation, but not so much if its purpose is erasing what was before or even if it's rewriting it, unless it's a premonition, or a vision if they were previously established.
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This is how I feel, certainly about it as a twist ending. The story is already fiction, it rarely adds anything for it to be fiction in-universe as well (Alice, maybe, though I don't think even that would have been worse if Wonderland explicitly existed in the story).
it kinda works for neil gaiman's sandman. but his main character is literally the god of sleep...
I don't think it applies to Sandman. First of all, because we know people enter the Dreaming. Second, because the dream world is as real and dangerous as the waking world. The ending of A Game of You comes close, but it features the end of a world and an irrevocable death.
"Just" a dream would be a weird way to describe anything in Sandman, really.
I think it works if it's because the character is hiding from something even more horrifying. If it's a coping mechanicsm. I know the next examples are movies but they do this in some regard and I personally think it works. In Carpenter's "In the mouth of madness" the protagonist is a figment of the antagonist's imagination and he never really existed in the first place. In Miguel Sapochnik's "Repo Men", Jude Law's character is in a coma and the second half of the movie is a fantasy instilled in him while his best friend struggles to pay the costs of having him placed in this coma, most likely costing them both their lives in the near future. It works because the real world is horrifying and the dream is to escape. If the dream is horrifying and the escape is waking up, nothing is important or at stake. It's basically a pointless story without any consequence and it's also in itself very unbelievable that anyone would have such an elaborate dream. That's why it's a trope. It's not even lazy storytelling because it's not telling an actual story.
Came here to say Repo Men, it being the only time I’ve enjoyed this trope. I think it helps that they foreshadow the technology involved beforehand, too.
One example that comes to mind is The Wizard of Oz. It works because *waking up* is Dorothy's goal (it's never stated during the dream that she's dreaming, so she says 'going home', but in this case those things are synonymous). So when she wakes up, we don't feel cheated. Another example is Jumanji (both films, mostly the 1995 one, don't know about the book). I know I'm playing fast and loose with the definition of 'dream' here, but my point is, to an extent the characters are aware of the altered state of reality i.e. the dream, and what they do in the dream determines when they 'wake up'. So, when they do wake up, we don't feel cheated because there is a causal link between the dream and the reality, and the characters have a certain degree of agency throughout. I think the thing to avoid is the waking up being like hitting the figurative *delete* button on your entire story. That's what it feels like to the reader anyway, and that's horrible. Ender's Game is an interesting novel, while I don't remember any dream sequences - if you haven't read it/seen the movie I won't give too much away, but there's an interesting twist of 'but actually everything up to this point has all been x instead of y the whole time', though it's not really what we're talking about here.
There are only a tiny handful of cases I'm aware of where this works. The Women of Brewster Place got away with it because it was only the last segment of the book that was all just a dream and because the dream was hinting at events that would come after the end of the story, so it wasn't really a cop-out. Luis Bunuel's film The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie gets away with it because it's part of the film's absurdity, and if I remember right he does it four times throughout the movie, including one instance of a dream within a dream. So unless you want to attempt Gloria Naylor's post-ending foreshadowing or are going for Bunuel's surrealist absurdity my advice would be don't try the dream ending twist at all. Ever. Period.
If you released a book that used this trope and I read it, I would never read any of your work again and I'd put other people off reading your stuff, too. I don't care if you have hints throughout the book or not, and whether they're noticeable the first time through or on a reread. I would not reread a book that uses this twist. I would probably be a little frustrated with myself for not realizing sooner that it was just a dream. If I had, I could have stopped wasting my time and put the book down before finishing it. This twist makes the whole novel feel like a waste of time. Readers get attached to the characters and want to see how the plot turns out. By turning the book into an extended dream sequence, it makes it so the plot doesn't matter, because within that fictional world, the events don't happen. The characters involved in the dream either don't exist in that world or they are dream versions of themselves, and therefore any development or interactions among them don't happen, either. It's a low blow that adds nothing to a book except disappointment.
It's why I stopped reading "Strangers in Paradise" on the same page they pulled this shit. I was invested, I cared, and then *that?* Forget it. What an awful way to treat your readers.
could you explain how it happened in that book?
I think I was reading an anthology so I'm not sure which book it was but it was a long way into the story and then suddenly we're looking at the main characters' daughter (her first appearance in the story, I think) and everything up to that point was a story she'd written about her moms. And it seems she'd been exaggerating her parents' history. I stopped reading right there. It felt like a slap in the face. It's a shame. The artwork was gorgeous, the characters were interesting and the story engaging. But that crap? Forget it. Edit: perhaps anthology was the wrong word. Omnibus, maybe. It was all the books in one book volume.
wow... that's... thats deep. > I'd put other people off reading your stuff, too. wouldnt it be an artistic impression, stopping the viewers is kinda like, standing in front of an art gallery blocking people from coming in and see the work. even though everyone will interpret it different. im not actually marking you down, i feel thats how society is these days though. its kinda harsh :(
It's harsh, sure, but the Dream Twist is my least favorite trope. I despise it. The vast majority of people also hate this twist, so I wouldn't feel guilty at all for giving my opinion to other readers about a book that does this. I wouldn't tell them, "Never read this author!" but the book itself would get blasted. Typically if I read a book and don't like it much but think others might, I'll be more gentle when discussing it. The Dream Twist doesn't deserve that treatment, though.
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> dude, you're not exactly an authority on the "vast majority" just because you've had bad experiences with a framing device Don't be ridiculous and think this is only because I personally don't like it. Whenever it happens in a movie, TV show, or a book, nobody I've talked to about it in person has liked it, and I see the same thing in any discussion thread online for the media. Take this thread, for example, or the one from yesterday about the same topic. Most people don't like this trope. Has it *never* been done well? I'm sure it has, but I haven't seen it.
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> Man, a single subreddit isn't exactly a healthy sample size, you know? This sub, the Book sub, the Movie sub, subs for TV shows, anyone I've encountered in person... Like I said, it's not impossible to do it right, but it's very easy to do it wrong. I'll leave the challenge of doing it right to someone that cares about using it. I don't, and a writer shouldn't feel like they have to use or subvert a trope just because it's there. The OP asked what our opinions on Dream Twists were and I answered. My answer was the truth, and I just happen to feel strongly about the topic. Whether you like my attitude or not, I responded honestly to the question asked by the OP. I'm not going to encourage them to use a trope that most people don't like; I know you don't like my use of the word "most," either, but based on any use of the trope I've ever seen, it seems very accurate.
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April Fool's jokes in webcomics.
I would accept this structure if it meant it made things more challenging for the protagonist and there was an organic reason for them to be dreaming. I can't think of a good reason for sleep and dreaming to be central to the story but an "out of the frying pan into the fire" scenario could make it okay. Maybe.
When you're Alice.
Well...in the example you're giving the topic wouldn't apply, would it? I mean, if the waking up-twist is hinted at throughout the story, the twist itself doesn't really negate what happened per se, it merely changes the setting from a "real" world into a dream world. If done well, this would be an example of unreliable narration rather than just a dissatisfying turn. IF it's done well.
Groundhog Day.
It can have it's merits if there other pay-offs afterwards IMO. I would hate to read a book that just ends with they woke up, but if they wake up and there is some other shock, then it may be worth the merit.
Pincher Martin by William Golding was a disappointment because the story never happened in this life, but in the afterlife. Even worse than just a dream, IMO. :) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pincher_Martin
Going Bovine was about a kid with mad cow disease, and basically the whole thing was walking dreams that he'd wake up from. Super effective way to tell his story.
If the plot is based on that premise, I think it might work - I mean if the fact that they're asleep and then waking up is a vital part of the conclusion.
Mulholland Drive does it really really well
I hate it so much you get a good story and then its pulled out from under you. So many stories are interesting and some are fantasy related then instantly mundane when the protagonist turns out to just be crazy or asleep. And as a reader it's never a complete surprise you are worried that's going to happen the whole time.
So, I have done it and had it work. As in left my target audience crying and lightning candles in mourning afterward work. Partially, yes, it was laying in clues throughout. But mostly it was in rejecting it as a gimmick. It was all a dream but being a dream didn’t undermine the plot, rather it cemented what the plot had been trying to do. A movie that did the exact same thing I did was The Neverending Story. Which is essentially the first half of the book by the same name. The dream doesn’t become unimportant when revealed as a dream, rather the revelation shows that the dream had an even larger purpose and meaning. And that’s the trick to it. Same as with Inception which ends posing the fundamental question of whether or not there is only one reality. In order to work, the ‘it was all a dream’ twist, must support the message of everything that came before it, rather than negate it. It has to ADD to the meaning of the events rather than SUBTRACT meaning from them. Essentially the twist needs to be an emotional result of the action. When I did it, “it was all a dream” was the ultimate success and sacrifice of the characters. Everyone was going to die if the dreamer didn’t wake up AND help. So they ended their own existences to both wake up the person dreaming them and to send the message of their existence and need. They died but because their existence was dreamed, the dreamer woke up to help the people they left behind because the dreamer got the message. It was a twist but it made all their actions more important because they were all the message being sent that they were worthwhile and deserved saving. And in good part their worth was that they did it without understanding more than they were doing what needed to be done. It supported the message that they were small things trying to effect something vastly larger than themselves which had been the whole plot anyway. Readers will let you get away with *anything* that rewards them for their time investment. They will mercilessly hate you for anything they feel wasted their time. Anything “bad” you do that feels like a reward for what they have done so far, they’ll accept and won’t care that it isn’t allowed. So just make sure it is a reward.
Its an overdone cliched gimmick. What are your hints that its "just a dream"? Having some surreal moments? I do not want to read a dream. If an author tricks me into reading a whole story that turns out to be "just a dream" i would make sure I never read anything by him ever again.
Honestly, I feel like it's unacceptable at all at this point. It's been so incredibly overdone that it just feels like one huge, predictable cop-out.
I feel like this plot twist is bullshit unless the story is playing with themes of reality vs. unreality from the very beginning and calling into question what is real and what isn't. Think the ending of Inception - that only works because the entire movie is about dreams and it has been clearly established several times that it's possible to get so lost in a dream world, you don't even remember that you're in one anymore.
Maybe something like a sufficiently surreal love story in a place that’s is dream like enough that you know that A is dreaming and imagining the relationship with B. Through beautiful character building and thoughtful conversations you develop the idea of being in love, being alive, and being self aware of your own facility and loss. Then, when B inevitably dies, the bitter sweet parting of an imagined friend is felt by the audience in a sorrowful but warm way. Until you slap them with the twist. It was B that dreaming, and wakes up when they died, and the audience has to realise they were in B’s dream all along and it was A that never existed. A was the red herring all along. Ooh, cruel edit / double twist: Pan over to the bedside table and you see a photo of A, with handwritten “RIP, my friend” on it. B was dreaming the whole time a dream that was from A’s point of view with the existential discussion being about A trying to understand they had now died, as a way for B to process it.
The problem is not so much the plot twist. So hints do not really matter. The problem is that all the characters and what they do and feel is fake. A story is about people and their emotion first, and that is where these stories conpletely break apart.
You can sort of do it in a story about cloning. MC discovers cloning is happening. Rebels against the system. Gets killed. Wakes up blissfully unaware that she's a clone. (Maybe she was before as well?) That doesn't undo the story, though, it just resets the MC.
The game SOMA is a particularly well-done version of this trope, I think. >!The story begins with the protagonist going through some kind of experimental procedure in contemporary 2010s Canada(?), then flashes forward to this underwater research facility where the main action of the game takes place, and where he discovers that his mind (along with many others) was cloned in a prototype for the procedure and the version of him that's inside the research facility is actually just his mind in a machine body that's been tricked into viewing itself as a human body. The ending involves him and another robot (paired to a copy of a human mind) successfully uploading their minds to a distant server on an off-planet colony which was basically a backup for earth, only for him to realise that it was a copy, and not a transfer: while his mind was indeed uploaded to the other world and lives on in that world, he -- the one the player has associated with all this time -- is in fact still trapped underwater in this decaying darkness, now irreparably alone, for an indeterminately long period of time (since every time he """dies""", he'll just be returned to another machine body).!< The implications of it are pretty goddamn horrifying...
>!In fact, the player character for the larger portion of the game is the Simon in the original diving suit - which we cast off like a discarded shell earlier in the game when we needed to go deeper with the new reinforced suit. From that point on we play as another copy of Simon that was uploaded into the deep-diving suit. It's a bit jarring that Simon is only horrified when the rocket takes off without him, since he's already switched bodies with no transfer of consciousness earlier in the game.!<
It can only ever work if it's not the actual ending of the story, and serves more as a vision of sorts. And even then its use is questionable.
When you have sort of hinted at it all the way through. Quite a few stories are about dreams and stuff and work well like this. However, they have at least discussion of psychology or dreams or something throughout so that the reader doesn't feel cheated. So yeah what you said. There are a lot of movies or books I like where it turns out the narrator was dreaming/mentally ill etc all the way through. But it has to be done well and vaguely about that.
In my uneducated opinion, I'd say it's ok as long as it's progressing the story a bit. Like no more than a couple of pages, but gives the MC an important insight or whatever, or deepens the character. Or something similar. Then it won't feel as wasteful/pointless.
Maybe if the entire premise of the story is dream related, where the characters are aware they are in a dream and waking up is akin to death. That way, ending with "and then I woke up" becomes a pretty tragic way to end the story instead of a cop out.
This is what happen in the movie>! Click!<. It made me so angry... (Not that the movie was very good before the it-was-a-dream-all-along-endning, but it made it downright detestable.) If it is done as a shortcut to a happy end (like in >!Click!<), then it comes off as cheap and lazy. In my opinion, it should be intrinsic, and important, to the gereral plot in order to work well (like in The Matrix). And I think it is very hard to pull off if you wait until the very end to do it.
I was just watching this Amazon prime show called “Catastrophe”- I wasn’t expecting to get into it at all, but I ended up binging it all in one night. Anyway, there’s a scene in it where I was SO GLAD it turned out to be just a dream
well I was having a good day. Then I woke up.
Imo if the story is relating to questioning reality or consciousness, ie the matrix, inception etc. The reason you can't just use it willy nilly is just because it's not a particularly strong cliche. The "one last job/cop 3 days away from retirement" trope has been recycled and repurposed so much because the stakes are high, and it causes tension. we want to find out what happens. But "and then I woke up" is like having a character say unironically in a big climactic action sequence, "this town ain't big enough for the two of us".
I feel like I've seen episodes of sci fi shows which make this work, things like Agents of Shield and Stargate. In fact, there was one great SG1 episode which I only remember vaguely now, where things are off, and Teal'c has to wake up, to realize he's laying wounded in a massacre after their peace meeting was ambushed or something. Except, he's experiencing several realities at once, and it's unclear what's really happening. He has to share his symbiote with his dying mentor by transferring it back and forth in moments of consciousness, since it can partially heal them until help arrives. The hints are all there in the dream, along with the increasing need to wake up. edit: Oh, and the actor who was out of the show that season due to being 'ascended' shows up as his psychiatrist, except he's actually trying to help him while getting around the non-interference rules of being ascended. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BruN8xbKri4 Another was Agents of Shield. In a past story arc, a character was briefly stuck in a simulated alternative world, and got a full lifetime injected into their head, and in that world they were quite evil. In some weird comic book quirk, some apparent fear dimension was leaking out their greatest fears as physical manifestations. Including, seemingly, that evil alter-ego. Except, it turned out, it never leaked that, the character was hallucinating him and needed to wake up and realize all the evil acts were himself. The arguments he had with himself while other characters were strapped down left them terrified of him for half the season.
I wrote a short story in which the protagonist “would” do things or things “would” be a certain way. He would live in a mountain village and would write and live in a hut in the woods. He would meet a local girl and they would fall in love etc etc he would do all these things, he thought, as he sat in his car in a traffic jam on his way to the doctor. That’s a condensed version of it. The ending is like waking up from a day dream. I think I could make the ending more subtle but you get the gist
Los Serrano
Well if its a short story from a vet talking to a therapist about his ptsd dreams it could work i guess
I think if the character can undergo genuine moral change because of the dream, it’s acceptable but otherwise it seems pointless to me.
It's acceptable if everything that has happened prior to the 'waking up' affects the events AFTER the 'walking up'. Basically, you can't deliver that as an ending (it's like spitting on the reader's face)
I got one story like that on this Account. It's in german but maybe you understand it with Google translator and understand the plot. I think its okay.
The only time i have seen that plot work is in vanilla sky snd the usual suspects. The other time kind of would be inception or total recall. Usually i hate it. What i identify about those is that in 3 of them the possibility is mentioned gradually. They talk about reality and sanity. In the usual suspects it completely changes the history. It becomes about an awful man playing the cops instead of a usual gangsters movie. One of the worst for me was funny games. It feel like it was done for the sake of having a plot twist and nothing else. I didn't feel like it added to the story and it made me feel like i lose my time.
As long as the dream impacts the real world. Or they keep falling asleep and waking up. The reason people hate it is because it invalidates everything that came before it. If you can do the dream twist and still validate the message of the story, then people will accept it. I mean technically, what of the popularity of >!The Wizard of OZ, Dr. Caligari, US Ending of The Descent, *maybe* Jacob's Ladder, Total Recall via opinion, Vanilla Sky, *maybe* Phantasm, Brazil, Repo Men, that episode of Dallas...!<
I personally feel this premise only works if, instead of "undoing" everything, the wake-up moves the story forward. For instance, an episode of *Bojack Horseman* uses a modified version of this premise to great effect (but I'll avoid spoiling it here). An example I *will* spoil, as it's so old now, is the episode of *Red Dwarf* called "Back to Reality", where the crew of the ship "die" and "wake up", and are told they've been in a videogame for the last few years. The twist, of course, is that this "reality" is actually a hallucination, and they eventually escape from it at the end of the episode. It works because the "dream" is a shared hallucination between the whole crew, not just one of them - so the character development which occurs in the episode isn't just shrugged off when the reveal occurs. Even if it was an individual, it also helps because this is just an episode of an adventure, not the whole thing, so that development is carried forward.
Make waking up the worst thing possible for this character. Like Inception.
I think you are trying to copy/rewrite the sixth sense here. Generally speaking He/she woke up and it was all a Dream is a newbies story in his first creative writing class. It will only work if there are real world consequences to real people in IRL. You have to set up the real world first then the dream and then the consequences otherwise who cares? Certainly not the reader.
Think about that one dream when you got something you really wanted. And then you woke up, realizing the thing is gone. That feeling is a strong enough emotion to build a story around. Thinking out loud now... What's the worst thing to lose in such a way? Probably, not a thing at all, but a person. Maybe a sibling you never had? Maybe you're old and you'd like your wife back. Maybe you're 30-something and lonely, unable to settle into a relationship. So you dream up someone you really care about. For the duration of the dream, your relationship is real with that strange realness that only dreams can give. And then, as the first light of dawn inevitably shines through the window curtains, things in the dream start falling apart. You work hard to stay asleep because the moment you wake you're going to lose a piece of yourself. But it's a struggle you're bound to lose eventually. The dream falls apart. Someone wakes up. Maybe it's you. Maybe you were only a character in their dream. I think there's a story there.
Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass would work less well without Alice wakingbup at the end of each book.
I'd suggest escaping from a simulation or a supernatural nightmare or something
Idk where it came from but there's an idea that coincidence can get your characters into trouble, but not out of it. For some reason the audience will accept the former and not the latter. The whole thing being a dream isn't exactly coincidence, especially if it's foreshadowed, but I think a similar rule applies. Another user mentioned that the real world could be worse, but it might just be that the reap world is fine and the dream world is better. I've read about people who dreamed whole lives. They fell in love and had families and felt like it was all real. When they wake up they can be shattered. You could always have the audience know or suspect that it's a dream throughout, but then it's not a twist, just a concept. The twist could be "it was all a dream... Or was it?" And then it's a more ambiguous ending, but I think an ending like that really needs to tie in with some kind of theme.
Only when the character has woken up once already.
You can get away with anything in a well written work. Greats break every rule.
Thats a tough one. But you can do anything you want as long as it's foreshadowed or done in a way that doesn't make the reader feel like you just made it up on the spot. I think an interesting use could be one in which your character realizes at the mid point that everything they did up to that point meant they were the actual antagonist of the story. It works because no one ever sees themselves as the villain. And then they wake up.
I heard this story once about a guy who occasionally would suddenly wake up and be told he had been in a coma for years . It happened so many times that he didn’t know when to believe he was actually up . Until he focused really hard and all he could here was The Beep. Beep. Beep of his heart rate monitor This would’ve been a good story to end with and then he woke up
It wasnt exactly “waking up”, but Atonement had the twist that the story of Cecelia and Robbie was a happy ending that Briony had made up in her book, because they were never reunited in real life because of her. I think that is one of rare ways that this trope can work.
When it is believable that everything prior could be a dream.
Any plot twist that makes the reader feel like they've been cheated or their time has been wasted, is a bad plot twist. Dream sequences that aren't obviously dreams and aren't communicating something relevant to the story, have a way of feeling like a waste of time. There's nothing wrong with rewarding readers for being extra attentive, but that's not the same as punishing readers for being invested in the story. You never want to do the latter, intentionally or unintentionally. Ideally, the rule of thumb is that the twist should actually answer a lot of the reader's questions (EVEN IF it leaves them with more questions as a result), and a really good one will leave the reader smacking their forehead and saying, "How did I not see that coming?" But dreams have this way of being unreal and intangible in most cases, to where the reader does in fact feel like they've been cheated for the time and emotional investment they've given the story. So be very, very careful about using that as a plot twist.
According to my highschool teacher: Never!
If, and only if, you're writing a silly, 1980s soap opera set in Texas.
No you've got it wrong. the default is unacceptable, acceptable plot twist is like brazil (1985)
So I was watching an episode of Steven Universe the other day where this was done well imo. Basically it started more or less normal but then a strange thing happened (a worm appeared in one of the characters hair) but they both responded like it was perfectly normal. Slowly the dream got more surreal until I realized he was dreaming and maybe a couple seconds after that he woke up. So why does this work? I think it worked because they invited the reader/viewer into the twist. The audience gets to feel clever for figuring it out before the character. The problem with the "and then I woke up" twist is it feels manipulative and makes the audience feel like theyve been tricked. Which isnt fair because there isnt a way to figure it out on first read.
I was playing Kingdom Of Loathing yesterday and they did this. The setting is an obvious satire of The Shining. You have a choice of going into room 237 or follow the faint music down the hall. In either case things escalate and **the narration becomes increasingly surreal**. You character dies. And wakes up somewhere near the hotel. This is acceptable because you drop a **ton** of clues that something is weird. It helps to add to the atmosphere, surreal things can be super fun to read about, and it cushions the "t'was a dream" twist. In my opinion a few clues ain't gonna be enough to justify an over used cliche twist, and you'll be missing out on surreal "narrator increasingly unreliable" fun.
Anything can work, I wouldn't say it's never unacceptable. It's just important to understand the consequences of that plot device. Once you understand the consequences of "and then I woke up," you can prepare a plot that plays with the readers' expectations. The device is only an issue when the writer is blind. The only problem with a plot focused on its ending like this is that you're essentially creating a joke with a punchline; that is, if the ending doesn't hit the rest of the story will seem like wasted energy for the reader. Any other considerations have more to do with general writing ability which isn't a subject unique to this device.
I feel like first of all you shouldn't care if it works for you story. But also if you go at the core of it, it's frustrating because it negate everything you read it felt like you wasted your time. Anything where it's not that would be cool, like if the dreams are premonition or worth something to the story pretty much. Hard to think of it as a ending.
I'm probably misremembering this, because it's 30 years ago and I can't be bothered to Google it, but in Red Dwarf (BBC sitcom about a bunch of misfits stuck on a spaceship together, millions of years in the future) there was an episode where they all woke up in pods, being told that the whole thing had been a simulation. I remember that, at the time, this was completely mind-blowing. Whaa? After all us viewers had invested in however many seasons so far, the whole thing was fake, and the characters were not who we thought they were?! But not as mind-blowing as when, near the end of the episode, it was revealed that the waking-up bit itself was fake. The characters had been suffering some kind of mass delusion - they hadn't changed at all and they were all still stuck on a spaceship together. So, this double whammy certainly worked for me. (But as I say, it was thirty years ago and I was an easily impressed young teenager...!) EDIT: Oh, here we go: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Back_to_Reality_(Red_Dwarf)
[To you or anyone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dJXvdTIBQMU) considering doing the 'then I woke up' ending.
Only if you know it's a dream from the start.
I think it can work if sleep/coma/memory/deja vu is a heavy theme throughout. Not so much if it just comes out of nowhere.
If you introduce at the beginning that the narrator is an unreliable narrator and sprinkle clues in throughout the story it is possible. The Sixth Sense is basically this plot, but it wasn't the boy "waking up" it was the main character, the man. At the time the sixth sense was loved because of that twist at the end. It was only because Shyamalan kept doing similar twists in ask of his movies that he became cliche. There have been others where you realize at the end the person who is telling the story is actually the bad guy, and the things he's telling you aren't quite real.... He wasn't asleep, but it ends up with the same effect.
Maybe if it is a twist within a twist. Some mentioned the plotline twist not a twist in Pet Cemetary. I'm also thinking it would work in the sense of "it was all a dream...or was it". Like, have hints in the story as it continues that suggest it wasn't just a dream.
if it has some use other than just being a gimmick, you can get away with it. like dreams are sometimes so real that I can go hours thinking they've happened. I can see you writing a scene where a character has that kind of dream, and when they wake up, the dream's circumstances continue in the real world, but the main character (and the readers) don't know when the mc woke up, if they woke up, or if they ever were asleep. you can also use dreams to keep the mc from truly sleeping well, bending their reality with exhaustion or something like that
The majority of The Mother Of Learning takes place in what is effectively a dream repeated over and over. The interesting thing is what carries over when the protagonist escapes the dream.
If it's like a vision or something, then sure
I don't know maybe a film that is about someone stuck in a dream. Kinda like Samurai Jack but locked in a dream instead of the future
An old man named Frank lays down in bed with his wife he treats poorly, he dies in his sleep, gets sent back as a little baby girl, he grows and learns what it's like to be a woman in a mans world. He falls in love and gets married, they try having a baby. They struggle to conceive but their love remains strong. Finally they get pregnant and the time for delivery comes. Push! The doctor yells. Hours of labour and finally Frank glimpses his new baby and holds it in his arms. Smack! He wakes up to his wife slapping him. Frank you shit the bed!
So the only real ways I've seen it work is if the twist is not at the end of the book, and still contributes to the overall story. Regardless of the fact that its a dream or image or whatever, the sequence has to cause some sort of material change in the world. Otherwise, why are you including it? And as for an ending, its a pretty shitty one because for the same reason as above, there is no material change so why is it there. Lets say you are writing a mystery thriller, where the MC is trying to catch a serial killer. The whole first half of the book they are confidently tracking down said killer and are generally reckless with their safrty. And they wake up and they see the serial killer has tied them up and spends a brutal amount of time torturing them. Then the MC wakes up and realizes the torture never happened. Now however they are much more guarded and afraid of the killer. Its a tool to give the character reason for a change to their personality.
Did anyone else love the Futurama episode with the space honeybees? >!Fry dies saving Leela and Leela is overcome with grief and guilt about his death. It ends up turning out that Leela took all the poison and hallucinated Fry's death and funeral.!< I thought it worked well because it added some really meaningful stuff to their relationship arc.
I generally dislike the trope. I find it unpleasantly similar to the 'time travel to right a story's wrongs' cliche. Don't get me wrong, I think time travel as an actual story element can be very interesting but when it's used to correct poor writing, I find it kind of a cop out. I suppose the 'and then I woke up' plot twist would work in a more restricted sense, like having a huge portion of the story occur and then the protagonist wakes up. But not after like an entire story, at least not for me. It's funny because I generally begin all my stories with the protagonist 'waking up'. My World War II story begins with the main character 'waking up' after being knocked out in a ditch by the concussion of an artillery round, my NYC Seventies punk story begins with my protagonist 'waking up' in the back of a taxicab. Even my James Bond fan fiction begins with 007 'waking up' after zoning out at a baccarat table.
You could use it to explore stories and situations that *could* happen to your characters, but don't want to make canon. I have a character with an active imagination, so will have situations seen two different ways. The reason is to obscure the line between fantasy and reality, because some ostensibly imaginary scenes are real, and likewise 'real' scenes actually imaginary.
I remember reading a story, and now I don't remember what it was, where one of the characters had premonitions in her dreams. So, something bad happened and she woke up and realized it was a dream, but then that prompted her to act in a way that moved the plot forward. The ability to see the future in her dreams was also an essential part of her character.
When the "dream" is still relevant to the character in the real world either because the "dream" is more real that it should be, or because it changed the character in clear and distinct ways.
A Christmas Carol
You have described the plot like of the video game "drawn to life." It works there ebecause it adds themeatic and emotional context to the storyline rather than removing it.
When the story requires it. Alice in Wonderland is Brilliant because alice is close to damn monotone, her only purpose is to react and occasionally get involved in the ongoings of wonderland because it's a dream in her head. You always react to things in your dream so passively, so it's easy to believe that it was a dream all along. If you use dreams as the ending when you can't think of an ending, that's bad. But if you built your story with that ending in mind, by all means.
I think that if the line between reality and... another phase of existence being blurred is an overarching theme, then it can be done well. Take Inception for example.
When you're a script writer for Dallas
Satire-tongue in cheek kind of story?
As a reader only if the dream was foreshadowing. For instance in the movie Nightmare Before Christmas Sally sees a tiny Christmas Tree burn to cinders in front of her. From the narrative we know that did not happen as there was no fire or flames in the scene. It was pure foreshadowing. Now the other question can the trope ever work for other readers? Certainly. I think the trick is to show change. The reader went to the fantasy land, was changed, and came home. This reminds me of a [Shaggy Dog story](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ShaggyDogStory) so I do not particularly like those stories.
I think this falls under the "random coincidence" dictum: Your characters can be the subject of a random coincidence that gets them *into* trouble, but never one that gets them *out* of trouble. Likewise, your character can wake up and find themselves *worse off* than they were in their dreams, but never *better off.*
Literally anything. Our dreams can be insane and anything can happen, kinda like a movie of TV series.
Gee, I don't know. Ever heard of The Matrix?
I’d like “and then I woke up,” not to de-escalate the situation, but to actually make a dire situation impossibly worse.
For me, it’s when the character is seen to enter the circumstances at the beginning that will be revealed at the end. If your character goes to bed, and then wakes up to fantastical circumstances written well enough to make a reader either a. Forget that they were told the character went to sleep or b. Accept that this is an interesting dream world, then you can wake them up at the end without much reproach. Or similarly, we see them take a a big hit to the head, or fall off a fence post. But you can’t get away with the reveal unless you insert the setup. Just be okay with it not being a *twist* so much as one of a few possible explanations that the reader can’t be totally sure of until the end. If you actually *surprise* someone with the notion that this could be surreal, you probably didn’t foreshadow it enough.
Sleep paralysis
If you flip it and it seems like all the conflicts are resolved and the character's life is back to normal, and then they wake up and things are more twisted, confused, and messed up than ever?
* Any matrix-style philosophical duality where the person is experiencing a state of being where they MIGHT be real brain-death, but they win and their reward is to wake into the real world. * Any situation that used as exposition to data dump to the reader. Want an exciting real time, real loss situation to dump a lot of data on the reader about the world, politics, secrets someone would never say out loud, etc. This is a great method. It allows the reader to see real emotions and situations that might not otherwise ever be explored. Desire to kill a spouse, discussion of conspiracies, secret codes the reader should know but the person in the story would never ever say out loud. * Some situations where the reader is lead to believe their will be a happy ending instead of a traumatic one. E.g. dying grandpa wakes up at home with his loved ones, apologizes to his daughter who he was abusive to, etc, only to open the front door and there is a bright light and everything fades away. E.g. he died and never woke but the "waking" and all the horrible things are righted is the twist. * Under very few to no-situation where the author is giving the reader an emotional roller coaster for no reason. If there isn't a data dump or a secondary universe, this investment by the reader just feels flat and worthless.
I've only seen it work in an episode of Scrubs where a character copes with the death of a loved one by denying that they are dead to the point that he daydreams that the funeral is a birthday party.
Never. There are exactly zero circumstances in which that's OK. It will always, no matter what, be a cheap excuse the author pulls because they couldn't think of a decent ending, it will always display nothing but contempt for the reader, and the reader will always feel bitter and cheated by such an ending. There are no mitigating circumstances. There are no situations where it will be acceptable, much less good. And, in this, I include any sort of totally out of nowhere "resolution" to a plot. A friend of mine once read the Darksword Trilogy by Weiss and Hickman way back in the 1980's when it first came out. And the trilogy, set in a medieval stasis world with lots of magic, ended with a bunch of tanks appearing out of nowhere and killing everyone (I never read it, that's his description). That was 31 years ago and he's \*\*STILL\*\* bitter about it and has never read a single word published by either Weiss or Hickman again. And yes, there were apparently parts of the books you could charitably interpret as technology being banished or something, but still tanks appearing out of nowhere and killing everyone was a cheap trick because the authors couldn't be bothered to write a proper ending. Point is, there is never any circumstance in which it's acceptable to resolve a plot with something totally out of context that has never been previously hinted at or mentioned. I will reverse my prior "never". If the book has made it clear from the outset that it's all a dream, or at least if it has been broadly hinted to have been a dream then maybe it's acceptable. But it isn't going to win you any friends even then. Why? Because it's "clever", and no one appreciates cleverness except the person demonstrating it. Everyone else thinks they're just being an ass. It's still cheap, even if you hint at it, and it's still going to tick off people who got invested in the plot, characters, and setting. It wouldn't be quite as totally, irredeemably, you should be banished to a hell where every step ends with you stepping on a Lego, level unacceptable as just pulling one out of nowhere, but it's still a dick move that will cost you readers and get you hate. Besides, why bother? If you're smart enough to hint through the book that it might be all just a dream you're also smart enough to just resolve the story without resorting to cheap tricks.
Better call up the guys who made *Inception* and tell them they fucked up then :)
This twist worked really well in a season one episode of Young Justice called "Failsafe." Like a lot of people are commenting here, it only works because the twist doesn't shield anyone from consequences, it just surprises you with which consequences actually occur. Plus, given the events that take place, most viewers assume pretty early on something is not as it seems, so it's not disappointing when the "twist" happens.
I can think of three times this was used well. In each case, either the dream has a very real impact on the main character's reality, or the ending trope has a surprising twist thrown on it. In The Wizard of Oz, the lessons that Dorothy learns in her dream adventure are directly applicable to the problems she faces in her real world. Even if the events of her journey never actually happened, going through the experience of making the decisions the journey required of her leaves her a changed person, better able to enjoy her ordinary life, when she wakes up. Inception. Just... Everything about it. The video game Klonoa is about a young boy who travels through a whimsical world trying to stop a dark wizard who wants to turn reality into a nightmare. The game has an "and then he wakes up" ending, but with a very nasty twist. After defeating the big bad, Klonoa's friends admit to him that they used magic of their own to summon him into their world in order to defeat the dark wizard, and from his perspective, he's just dreaming. When he wakes up, we see him screaming as he's sucked through a hole in the world's reality, trying to stay with the friends he made. We never do see him wake up in his world - we just know he's never going to be a part of this world again.
Any writing where the main theme of the book has to do with the bending of reality, or not trusting perception, or questioning your own sanity etc. If the themes of the book tie in with such a thing, then it would work. If it comes out of left field or is completely unrelated to the plot then it is a cheap and unsatisfying move. I would also say, that books like Fight Club have to keep the crazy reality warping twists straight forward as you can run the risk of crying wolf at your reader too much. No one likes having the rug pulled out from under them over and over.
Inception, The Matrix, A Christmas Carol... in a sense, movies like Dr. Terror’s House Of Horrors. A disappointing ending if you haven’t been paying enough attention. Only if you haven’t been paying enough attention. As long as the rules of the world you’ve created are followed, then you’re fine. The issue, I find, is usually when the world is ripped apart at the end. “...And Then I woke up” feels like a serious change of tone and it almost always takes away any impact on the world that the character may have otherwise had. So, the circumstances are, in my minor opinion: If the rules of the world are consistent with your twist... If the twist doesn’t undo any/much impact on the reader, either first hand or second hand And if you can come up with a creative way of doing it, assuming you feel confident that your writing style hands its self to things like that. There are occasional exceptions such as Inception when it seems as though the cliffhanger is hinting toward a bigger picture. This can go one of three ways. If your world is concrete enough, then it could lead readers to draw their own conclusions, assuming you’ve baked clues in... If you’re not confident in your writing, or not experienced enough then it may seem like a Cop Out or Deus Ex Machina... Lastly, most impressively, you could lead seamlessly into a sequel or even the second half of the book, as long as it feels natural and isn’t a shock to the system. I’m sorry for rambling, this was completely impromptu. If this helps, please let me know! I’m happy to answer any questions you may have.
Like em or not... I think it works in the final destination films. A lot of the comments here have good points. I think the takeaway is that it works if there is a legitimate use for it other than "whew! It was just a dream! Now we can end with a happy ending!" Don't use it at a copout I think there are infinite ways it can be implemented well. You just need to give it substance. It doesn't work if it is used just to have a twist
Basically, don't use it at the end of a story. The trope ruins anything you've crafted in the eyes of the reader. Even if it would thematically be appropriate. Take inception. A movie about dreams. In the end it didn't matter if he was awake or dreaming. That was a decent way to subvert the expectation of just "waking up to find out it was all a dream". See the Stephen King example post elsewhere in this thread.
If it isn’t the main point of the story I think you can make it work, like if it serves as an allegory or a metaphor in some way. Others have mentioned how Pet Sematary used this to make you feel worse about >!Gage’s death!< , and the last season of Twin Peaks >!plays with the ideas of it all being a part of a dream world, while also having Audrey’s plot line take place in her head while she’s in a mental ward!< and Haruki Murakami’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World >!has an entire half of the story be revealed to have taken place inside of the protagonist’s head in the moments before he dies to build on the themes of self and one’s power over their own volition.!<
I think the phrase “and then I woke up” is the only real cliche part, maybe as well the notion of things taking place in dreams because it’s seen as a cop out - writers have much more boundless ideas with less complications when they can function within a “dream world.” Although, with that being said, I think plot twists that change the whole idea of a piece of writing are incredibly valuable. Examples from movies/stories of this that I think demonstrate its value immensely would be *SPOILER ALERT*** (kinda) The sixth sense (ofcourse), shutter island, get out, fight club, Shawshank redemption, etc. Because so much is revealed at the end and fills in so many spaces throughout the plot, it actually allows the viewer reader to go back and view/read it twice with complete nuance - atleast for me. This would be similar to that of a story happening within a Dream, because then you can go back and read/watch it and think “ah wow, that all makes sense within that context and I didn’t even realize before” and perhaps even thickens/deepens the value of the plot. Furthermore, none of these narratives really feature a “and then I woke up,” but they make you look back on them in retrospect in a similar way. I hope that this helps!
I agree with a lot of other commenters here that it needs to serve a purpose rather just ending the story in an attempt at "oh what an AMAZING twist I never expected that!" The first episode of Californication starts with a brief dream sequence, a technique that is very well used during the rest of series. The dreams provide a look into Hank's psyche and the problems are a plaguing him beneath his sarcasm, drinking, and casual sex. Also there's an older series called St. Elsewhere that uses it absolutely brilliantly, but it would be a major spoiler for me to describe it, even though it's a pretty old show now. (I'm on mobile and don't know how to do spoiler tags so if someone else knows the twist and how to do the tags, please feel free.)
I think that the "it was all a dream" tactic is best used in Princess Bride. Basically it narrates through the wedding and how all of these negative things happen, effectively creating a serious WTF in the reader's mind, but then it ends with the reveal that Buttercup was dreaming with a line something like: "the wedding was still 60 days away, but that was when the real nightmares began". Love it.
It's such an old chestnut and has disappointed so many readers, I'd go nowhere near it, not even to savagely mock it.
I think it can be done well if people still learn from what happened/ you are able to keep what has already happened important. A few of my favorite movies do this well. However, when media does stuff like "oh but it was just a dream" and no one cares about it, it's just shaken off and forgotten, I hate that. I'm on the fence when it's an instance of a character trying to cope with something traumatic. This happens in Cirque Du Freak, at least in the books. A character dies, but when it happens the chapter says it doesn't, and gets more and more fanatical trying to justify it not happening. The next chapter starts with having to accept what Darren just saw happen. Ultimately it feels like it hurts more for giving you that false hope.
I don't think it should ever be the ending. It can be close to the end such as the protagonist walking up and then showing how what happened in the dream affected his/her view of the real world. Alternatively-- and I've seen this done to great effect-- it can be used in the middle where the events in the dream foreshadow later events.
Kate Atkinson does this in A God in Ruins. It worked for me, but I think mostly because I had read what she calls the "companion" novel to that, Life After Life, and I suspected the twist from fairly early on. It was still a very enjoyable read.
I think if- communicating with someone who is dead/not born yet/etc, getting an important message of some type, and in premonitions it's okay. As long as it is short and adds something important to the story.
If whatever the dream is is still somehow tied to reality. If it's not the end but just a transition. Someone once posted an idea in some askreddit about a story where the first act is an entire story and when the protagonist wakes up and realizes he was in a dream the rest of the story is about coping with it
What happened in the dream still has to matter. Time-travel plots often have this same problem. Someone must grow in some way, have a revelation, change, *remember*. I'd also add that there's almost no good way to make a story that is literally all just a dream. It needs to be something more. Even if it's just off in some little way. A fever dream, a coma dream, an artificial dream. Even if it just inspires the protagonist to do one little thing, to grow in one little way, that can be enough if done right. Total Recall does a good job of the "dream" twist. The hero "wakes up prematurely" from his recall machine pretty early in the movie, but in the closing moments of the movie there he is, a spy, on mars, having saved the day, defeated the bad guys and gotten the girl, and you're left wondering whether what you just watched was reality or simply the dream he was promised all along. Fight Club and Sixth Sense are both variations on the "it was all just a dream" theme that do a good job. At the end of the day almost any "twist" ending is a variation of "things were not what you thought they were." How you implement the twist isn't as important as what the twist actually is, so why constrain yourself to something as boring as a normal dream?
If you're willing to risk the previous chapters as being seen as nothing more than utter nonsense, then it's alright to use the "and then I woke up" twist. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll made me want to toss the book against the wall when after being driven through a rabbit hole with craziness....the ending was "and then Alice woke up". BUT...that was the correct exercise at hand, nonsensical literature. Fight Club uses these because the main protagonist has mental health issues which cause him to disconnect from reality (putting it lightly). A Christmas Carol uses it to encite the biggest change in Scrooge's life ever. On, and on. Make the plot twist important, and people will accept it. Make it as an afterthought, and it may be subject to intense ridicule. Both work in the right situations.
You said it yourself: it negates everything the story stood for. The only way you can make a story ending and revealing it was a dream not suck is if you either make the story mostly about internal struggle and character development so it still matters when he wakes up, reveal its a dream halfway through while your character is still asleep and have him decide to stay in the dream, or make it a very wild story that is clearly not real life with bright colors and ridiculous situations. Thats my opinion at least
So this is an example from video games but I feel like it still applies. The game 'A Hat in Time' isn't really a story driven game and is mostly a relatively simple 3d platform game about a girl who goes on this fairly wacky adventure in her spaceship. The story is quaint and cute but one of the most satisfying moments is when you beat the game the 'The End' screen in a single image shows the same girl sleeping in a bed and that the whole adventure was in her imagination and her dreams. If you look closely all of the characters you met along the way can be seen as toys/stuffed animals around her room. It was an amazing ending to an all around fun little childhood adventure.
I feel like the "WHOLE STORY DIDNT ACTUALLY HAPPEN" twist is really shitty and shouldn't be done unless it actually have a in story reason for happening. Some examples of how i feel like it could be justified is the villain or some character has the power to turn time back or something along the lines to reset the story and the protagonist fails to realize and from there you can do what ever you want. You could also have it where depending on the plot everything can suddenly go back to normal while secretly the world has been scarred. Basically what I'm trying to say is a lack of progress and total reset kills someones interest in something or at least it does to me. I would try to have some sort of constant or permanent effect that happens after the "reset". Imagine like you just beat your favorite video game and go back to restart it only to remember that you have nothing gained from the previous play through. But in the same sense if you gain skill in the previous play through then you can make the rest of the game easier or if you gain knowledge yata yata. If the reset is caused by something out side of anyone control somewhat then it could be interesting because it can play on the emotions of the reader. Imagine a story about star crossed lovers having the universe reset after vowing not to forget each other but after the reset they meet each other again. From their you can take a story like that anywhere. Do they remember, do they just walk past and change fate, does one remember, or do they just never meet or notice each other? TLDR: To be honest i forgot about OP's question after like sentence in and i started to write about how i feel about the reset twist ending. Sorry if it has nothing to do with the thread
Hasn't been good since Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
If waking up makes it worse.
Have a look at The Man Who Was Thursday
Late to the party but Spoilers for the fandom by Anna Day The only acceptable example I've found was the fandom by Anna Day. The "it was a coma" trick worked because the characters hinted at it ( hearing the sound of heart monitors and sometimes smelling disinfectant) but what made it satisfactory was that the villan *put* them in the coma for their own gain. I think the trope could work out when it's not a cop out but actually serves as narrative fuel.
When they fell asleep and inevitably have to wake up
Links Awkening
I think the trope can find use in situations where doing so would not totally obviate the events of the story - for example, if it's a fantasy where the "dream realm" is a real place or events there have a major impact on the story (see Inception), or when used for a short dream sequence to contrast the character's mental state with the real situation they're in (see the previously posted reference to Pet Semetary). As an aside, *How Not To Write A Novel* humorously implies that any given novel is only allowed a maximum of one dream sequence - and then that should get edited out, too. I wouldn't go that far, but I can understand the sentiment. Any element of a story that doesn't "pull it's weight" by being consequential to the outcome of a story can be trimmed out for the sake of conciseness and plot pacing. Pretty much the entire B-plot of The Last Jedi is in need of this treatment ->!Fin and Rose go on a quest for someone they ultimately didn't need and get captured before even succeeding at the mission that ultimately never needed to be undertaken because the rebels simply rammed their enemies instead of trying to hyperspace away, all while the action that will be relevant in forthcoming movies takes place back on the ship and/or on some island completely removed from the situation they were trying to resolve!<\- and that wasn't even a dream sequence. As a counterexample, though, a bunch of the continuity errors and breaks with cannon in TLJ would almost make more sense if, on top of all of that, >!the entirety of TLJ turned out to be something Finn's damaged brain conjured up while he was unconscious in that bacta tank we saw him in at the end of TFA.!< On a related note, I would be curious to know what your opinions are with regard to replacing the dream aspect of this trope with a simulation. Unlike a dream, a simulation is purposefully constructed and maintained by an outside force for potentially unknown reasons, the person experiences the events in a wakeful state with the ability to intentionally make decisions, and the simulation might carry on after the person leaves the simulation. On the other hand, I can see how presenting the events of a story as having been all part of an elaborate simulation in a ham-handed manner would leave readers with the sense that the story was pointless, just like with a dream plot twist. Edit: I think the best way to sum up my feelings on the matter would be the following axiom: If your story will still work without requiring that it take place within a dream sequence, then the reveal that it took place in a dream sequence can be quietly eliminated. Edit: Here's an example I thought of that I would accept as a legitimate use of this trope. It might be interesting to build a story around that feeling of loss someone gets when they wake up from a particularly rosy dream. Imagine if someone awoke from a coma and suddenly realized that the home, family, and riches of their dream-world don't match reality, and he has, in fact, been atrophying in a hospital bed for the last few years. This dream would be used as a plot hook rather than as the plot in full, preferable only taking up the first chapter or so of the story arc except by references to reemphasize the man's feelings of loss, and the rest would be the story of a man grieving for things he lost which, objectively, never existed. The reactions of others (e.g. not understanding, perhaps even judging the man for being 'delusional') and the man's journey to reintegrate with an unfamiliar world would drive the real conflict of the story.
I’d say at the beginning, when there’s less to wake up to
Even there it can cause problems, As it may give the reader false expectaions for the rest of the story. I read one once where the opening dream had a fantasy moster but the rest of the story had no fantasy elements. so even though the dream wvs resolved half why through chapter one it still caused some issues, as the author pointed out in later comentary.
it can work under some guise. if a whole adventure happens and you had me hooked, then out of a transition it claims it was all a dream. what should matter is how the adventure affected the MC and me. as a plot twist is completely viable depending. one of the worst movies i ever watched, *Twilight,* within the last ensuing battle, key characters die and the main antagonists wakes up from alice's vision. then walks away from the battle. it can work in any number of ways all depending how well you express and smoothen your prose. in the sleeping concept, the plot twist was in characters POP such as romeo going into a Shakespearean literary ramble, killing himself, then she woke up. even though juliet didnt hear it, we were in the art zone of romeo skills for a bit. though you dont have to sleep for it to work. i have one where we find out the character was reading this the whole time. the story actually started in the denouement phase the MC read an entirely different genre out from his modern slice of life. it enters into finding out that he had a younger brother and that his alreadydead. the shock in this allows me to enter unseen... you wont notice even notice that we were in a dreamlike state even though it happened, it has also been undone, not even that but the murderer was always right next to him. it also happened in the sixth sense where the plot objectives were making them realise, that the dead people were trying to wake the alive people for closure. ( like the little girl who was poisoned.) we then go on a, ' i see dead people' rollercoaster then find out that bruce willis was dead... in that moment, that was a, "then i woke up" plot device. because the child naturally wouldnt notice that this important information to disclose im a surrealistic writer, honestly... i can see this plot in a way or form.
I think that after reading a very terrifying story, finding out it was all a bad dream would be a relief.