I’ve found that dream control requires far less effort than I thought, at first, it did.
For instance, I had a lucid dream earlier this week in which I was flying with my wife. She zipped past me, a blur. I tried to catch up, but couldn’t speed myself up. But then, instead of trying to fly faster, I simply focused on my wife’s image and visualized myself right behind her. In a flash, my body sped forward and I caught up to her.
The level of concentration that it took to do that was like…the level of concentration it takes to imagine what a room would look like from a different position.
Non-effort is the name of the game.
Also, dreamincolor, every one has different strengths and weaknesses. I personally think it’s fascinating that your dreams are so stable. Embrace the stability! Actually, I think you should investigate it. Ask the dream directly why so-and-so didn’t come. By “ask directly” I mean speak right to the air and wait for answer.
And if you talk to advanced LDers, you’ll find out that summoning specific people is always problematic. I haven’t met any lucid dreamer who says she can at-will make anyone appear at any time.
Possibly, there’s a reason for this. In the last year, I’ve been experimenting with meeting up with a specific person and the results have been baffling. I cannot fully say why I’m sometimes successful and sometimes not. The general wisdom is that you must expect, “truly” expect, the person to be there; but I’ve summoned people enough to say that expectation isn’t everything. There’s an X factor. Earlier this year, I had a long series of LDs. I went lucid in every morning dream and every time I spent the whole dream calling, or looking for, a specific person. I tried everything: I called out; I called out mentally; I opened doors hoping to find her; I created doors; I created glowing portals in the air; I searched; I asked other characters where she was; I changed dreams; I meditated and tried again; I tried with skepticism and I tried with excited conviction—with true expectation.
It’d be easy to write off the whole experience by saying I was “trying too hard,” but I know that I wasn’t trying any harder or less hard, or with any more or less emotion, than in my other LDs.
So what gives?
I don’t know. Sometimes summoning works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it works I don’t really believe that I do anything different than when it doesn’t work. I do the same thing: I call or search for the person, hoping for them to be there.
Sometimes, when I’ve sought people out, they’ve been lucid too, or have seemed lucid, and sometimes they haven’t. What decides the difference? I don’t know. Why would I expect anyone to be non-lucid when what I want is to have a dream adventure with them?
(Actually, the question of why some DCs are lucid and some aren’t is, in itself, a mystery—let alone why sought-out or summoned people are lucid or non-lucid.)
So, yeah, I don’t have good answers.
I do know that my biggest success last year happened on a night when she and I both were lucid in our dreams and called each other. We both had been having nightmares in which we were being abused. I became lucid and called out for her. She became lucid and called out for me. In her dream, I showed up and she woke up. In my dream, she showed up and we had a little adventure.
My second biggest success happened on a night when I found her waiting in line, about to go into a strange big building. She was dressed differently and had curly hair (which she doesn’t IRL). In her dreams, that night, she went to a dance club with curly hair.
). Well I actually remembered that in my dream and tried to do it, only to find out that my dream character companion was ferociously trying to prevent me from doing it. i succeeded to create a small red orb, about a 1cm in diameter, with kind of fractals inside, that was changing the longer I sustained it. I have no idea what it was about.
::). This took me a while to integrate in for when I have trouble believing something. 
but then I realised maybe I need to be clearer so I said it out loud “I am dreaming,” I’m really quiet and shy normally but in a dream you loose all your inhibitions. As soon a s I said it my hands started throbbing and twisting and they became perfectly real, it had my freckles and everything, every line: it was the BEST feeling I have had in a dream ever! Anyway, what I’m getting at it maybe you need to be clearer because mentally willing for me didn’t work, you need to say it. Hope this helps and happy lucid dreaming Xx