As everyone knows – or ought to know – there is nothing as boring as listening to someone tell you about a dream they have had. This is a shame, as there is some good, out‑there content going begging. There could be gold in there, if only the dreamer knew how to deliver it. This is the problem: not the dreams themselves, but how bad we are at sharing them.
Keenly aware of the wondrous magic in some of my own dreams, and anxious for no one to miss out on hearing about them, I have been working on my dream-telling technique. And I’ve come up with some guidelines.
Or, rather, one guideline. There is only the one: you have to keep it brief.
Don’t get me wrong: the dream itself has to have something about it, but however good it is, you have only one short shot at relating it before you lose your audience completely. The top line, the headline, is as much as most people want to hear. I’m told this is often the case with my column, which is disappointing, because the headline is the one bit I don’t write. Setting my dismay aside, I urge you to embrace this unfortunate reality in your dream-telling. If you do so, you won’t fritter away your one opportunity to get the magic across.
Allow yourself – and your listener – a maximum of one sentence. Don’t forget, you have all but lost your audience anyway the moment they realise what you are talking about. So make it snappy or you are doomed. Let’s say you have dreamed that your legs were carrots. In this case, you just say: “I dreamed my legs were carrots.” That one sentence is plenty. Leave them wanting more, which they almost certainly won’t, but they will certainly be waiting – with some dread – for the “and”. It’s even possible that they will say: “And …?” if only in a go-on-get-it-over-with way. Even then, say nothing, unless pressed, which you won’t be.
If you don’t have something truly excellent with which to elongate the original sentence, don’t bother. In this case, something like “… and one of them turned into a cricket bat” might just pass muster. But that really has to be the end of it. If you ever hear yourself saying: “And then …” abandon ship at once. It’s over. Because with “and then” you are signalling the story could go on for ever – and you will have turned your dream into your listener’s nightmare.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
