Tips for a dream journal?

I’m gonna keep a dream journal for awhile and see if it works, but I’m not good at writing and I don’t like it. Also, it’s really uncomfortable for me to get up after a dream and write it down. So does anyone have any tips for making it a little easier to keep a dream journal?

I’ve seen people suggest writing keywords for the dream but how does that work? Are you able to put enough keywords to get a good idea of what the dream is? Can you give me an example? I’m not sure how keywords would work because I have a lot of dreams that couldn’t really be described in just a few keywords. For example a few nights ago I had a dream where I was at Chick-Fil-A (fast food restaurant) cleaning some tray sorta thing that doesn’t actually exist and somehow I was attracting girls by doing this(?). There was more to the dream but I don’t totally remember it.

The more details the better.Dreams will slowly fade in your memeory…by putting details down youll be able to go back to them and remember them for long long time,which is good if you value them.
It also helps to broaden imagination,the skill very usefull in lding.
And as you might have heard allready,good thing is having litle recorder so u can record your dreams even when u awake at night.And then when u have more time you can write it down like it should.
Good luck

Well first of all I would like to say hi to everyone cause it’s my first post.

I do it like this. I keep a small notebook under pillow, and when I wake I write keywords (I know sometimes it’s hard to write whole dream only in few keywords, but often it’s enough to remember). Since I don’t have much time in the morning. When I come back I take my notebook, try to remember everything and write it in computer (I don’t like handwriting).

Write bullet points of what happened and what you remember about it. Then add meat to the bones (bullet points) when you have time.

I have theories on dreaming in the back of my journal, as well as frequent dream locations, lucid experiences, reoccurring dreams, and Old dreams (ones i had ages ago and remember cleary still)

another alternative would be to use symbols to sketch out the basic scenes of your dreams, for example: I use a stick person w/o a solid head to mean me, with line wings for flying, box houses for buildings, etc. then just arange them to show what was going on - if you were running to your grandma’s house just draw an arrow to a house with Grandma on it.

this way you can get the main points down and add more detail once you have the line of events. as long as you know what you meant, it works. though you will want to write it out somewhere, as I find looking back at old sketches you don’t always remember what things meant.

anyway, use whatever works best for you :wink:

what i do is write down what happened at the end of the dream first, and write down keywords to remind me what happened. then i think to what happened previous to that and write down a keyword for that. i do this till i have written down all i can remember about the dream in keywords.

sometimes i can’t tell what the keywords mean when i wake up though, so maybe i should write more. the more time you spend writing stuff down about the dream the better you’ll remember it later. this doesn’t take too much time so it’s not annoying.

then, later that day when i have time i write a full description of the dreams i had on www.dreamjournal.net (great journal site) and if i had lucids i write them in my dream journal on this site.

hope this helps… :smile:

This doesn’t really work for me.

I have, a couple of times, woken up from a really vivid, exciting dream, and I would lie in bed for a very long time going over the whole thing, and I could remember almost every single detail.

But as soon as I got a pen, and began writing it down, it seemed as though the dream just slipped away. One reason may be that as I write down one thing, I begin to question it, if it was really true, and then it slips away altogether.

Does anyone else find that this happens? If not, what do you suggest that I should do?

Yeah, that seems to b a common occurence for me too. Going over the dream in your head is a good start but also writing as much down as u can remember, helps to imprint it in your brain. Keep on trying.

As someone said “practice makes perfect” hehe

Hi! I have heard a lot about Nova dreaming devices and was wondering if anyone has ever tried using a simple light timer connected to a small lamp over or near your bedside, set to go off at a time when one is most likely to be rem sleeping. According to the Lucidity Institute, rem sleep mostly occurs after 4, 5, or 6 hours of sleep. Also, the small lamp may help to write better at night :smile: because you can see. I am guessing that if this works, after a while your system may become accustomed to the light at night and one may simply continue to sleep through it, so maybe increasing the intensity of the light bulb after a while may solve this problem. Have any of you tried this already? :smile:

This is exactly how I do it. Upon waking up each time (I always wake up at least twice each night) I just write down a few words or short sentances that will cause me to remember the rest of it later. Just something like “Airport, Canada, Fight with Hulk” or whatever.

Then later I can use that to write a more detailed account if I choose to.

I remember on average 3 dreams a night, so do I still need a dream journal?