Monthly Archives: March 2026

Fiction as Dream and Why Stories Feel So Real

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A few points from Chapter 1 of Keith Oatley’s, Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction

Photo by Pixabay

Have you ever noticed how a good novel can feel more vivid than real life? How we slip into the world of the story and, for a time, live there? In his book, Such Stuff as Dreams: The Psychology of Fiction, psychologist Keith Oatley calls this fiction as dream. It’s the foundation of how stories move us, and more specifically, our readers.

Key Takeaways from Oatley’s Chapter 1

  1. Fiction as Simulation – Oatley suggests that fiction works like a mental flight simulator, the same way pilots are trained before heading out for their first several real-world flights. In story, the mental flight simulator allows readers to “try out” life experiences, emotions, and choices without real-world consequences. These simulations allow readers to practice empathy for characters—those both like and unlike them—which leads to building understanding and compassion.
  2. Models & World-Building – Writers don’t just tell stories; they create models of human experience. These models—characters, conflicts, settings—are a kind of world-building, whether you’re writing fantasy or literary fiction. Writers create liminal spaces… Thresholds for readers to step across so they can enter and live within them and suspend their disbelief.
  3. The Dream State – When readers fall into a story and embrace the suspension of disbelief, they’re not passively consuming. They’re actively simulating, imagining, and learning, almost as if they were dreaming while awake. This is why, when we edit and approach our stories from a more objective viewpoint (after the subjectivity of the initial brain dump), we want to be aware and cautious not to break the dream.

Reflection / Writer’s Lens
As writers, this is powerful. We’re not just stringing words together; we’re crafting living simulations that allow our readers to practice empathy, explore danger and emotionally difficult situations safely, and inhabit other lives. That’s why details matter. That’s why world-building isn’t just for fantasy writers—it’s for all storytellers.

The next time you’re writing—or reading—notice when the dream takes hold. When the story stops being words on a page and starts being a place you are. That’s fiction doing its deepest work.

I’d love to know: What’s the last book you read that felt like a dream you didn’t want to wake from?

Why Some Writers Choose Fiction

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Photo by Jess Bailey Designs—Pexels

Fiction has always been my first love when it comes to storytelling. Since I was a kid. I didn’t know why back then, but after living as long as I have, and after becoming a writer myself, I’ve figured some things out. I’ve come to see that the pull toward fiction isn’t an accident. It’s a choice many of us make, often without even realizing it. And the reasons are as varied as the stories we tell.

Accessing Universal Truths

Memoir is rooted in the individual. It’s told from one, limited perspective. Fiction, while sometimes inspired by lived experience, can go further, reach deeper into the collective experience of humanity. Because we’re forced to look outside ourselves to make meaning of the human dramas we all live and to consider multiple perspectives. The personal becomes universal through character and story, resonating beyond one life.

Multiplicity of Self

Some writers feel more whole in fiction, less confined to a single voice. Fiction can hold the many selves we contain—past, present, imagined, and mythic. Recognizing threads of ourselves in characters, experiencing the overcoming of difficult situations, allows writers to imagine and/or access parts of themselves they may not have been unaware of.

Freedom of Imagination

Fiction allows us to bend, reshape, and even defy reality. A writer can explore an emotional truth without being tethered to exact events. There’s room to play with the what ifs. What if things had gone differently? What if the story belonged to someone else? What if the protagonist wins rather than loses? The catharsis is undeniable.

Emotional Distance / Safety

If a writer is using personal experience as the seed for a story, it can feel too raw or exposing. Fiction offers a protective layer through which the writer can process and explore without laying themselves bare. It can make deeply personal material repeatable.

Control Over Narrative

In fiction, the writer is not constrained by “what actually happened,” as she in memoir. She isn’t bound to the ethics of representing real people. For some, that sense of authority and control is empowering and healing.

Room for Possibility

Sometimes we write not to record what happened, but to imagine what could have happened. We can rewrite endings, invent alternate selves, or explore paths never taken. Fiction gives us the gift of possibility by imagining the future, or inhabiting alternate selves. Writers can try on other lives, slip into other skins, or create characters who embody choices they didn’t (or couldn’t) make. And sometimes, those they’ve never imagined.

Play & Mystery

Fiction offers discovery by allowing characters to lead the way, grow, and unfold, as if the writer is getting to know a living, breathing human. There’s joy in following threads of imagination, in not knowing exactly where the story will go. The unfolding of discovery is part of what makes the process of writing fiction enjoyable.

Ethical Considerations

Fiction doesn’t directly implicate family, friends, or communities, when writing stories drawn from lived experience. Some writers prefer to fictionalize to avoid betraying confidences, causing harm, and/or getting sued. Fiction can transmute lived dynamics into story without outing real people, creating a lesser possibility for backlash from some readers.

Healing Through Transformation

Fictionalizing painful experiences can transform trauma into art. The act of turning reality into story allows for distance, reframing, and meaning making is cathartic. When we write into our griefs, our fears, our longings, fiction alchemizes them. And the transformation, healing often happens for both writer and reader.

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Are you a fiction writer? I’d love to know… Why do you write fiction?

How to Use the Solar Plexus Chakra for Deep Character Development

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This is the next in a series about how to utilize my Writing Through the Body Method™ which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Solar Plexus (third) Chakra rules Personal Power and Agency. The Sacral Chakra relates to how your protagonist takes action to accomplish intentions, goals, and dreams. The Solar Plexus Chakra says I ACT.

By considering how your characters’ take action will give you clues about how to move your story’s trajectory along, or where self-imposed obstacles might show up.

Below is a brief explanation of the Solar Plexus Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Third Chakra – Solar Plexus Chakra

Location
Directly below the sternum, above the stomach

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Courage to take risks, ability to deal with crisis, strong self-esteem and strength of character

This is about how your character responds to situations that require action, whether self-imposed or an expectation from an outside source.

Primary fears
Indecisiveness and helplessness, blind rage and destructive anger, lack of focus or purpose in life

This is where you’re able to start seeing your character move, take action, respond to crisis—or not—as well as how their innate internal drive is expressed when they don’t take action.

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Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Solar Plexus Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist has the desire to move across the country, but something is preventing them from doing this. Is it an exterior obstacle, and if so, how do they respond/react to this obstacle. Or is it a self-imposed obstacle—a fear, a connection to a person or people that’s keeping them in place, or some other kind of internal struggle?

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Establish your character’s intention, goal, or dream. Why do they want it?

• Have they already taken steps to realize this intention, goal, or dream? If so, what are they? What’s left to make it happen?

• How will they overcome the obstacle(s) in their way?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

How to Use the Sacral Chakra for Deep Character Development

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I recently wrote about how, if you take into account the ideas that come from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theories on achieving flow along with Candace Pert’s findings about how human emotions originate in the exact locations of the seven main chakras and that “our bodies are our subconscious minds,” you can utilize the chakras to banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell your untold stories.

This is achieved through the Writing Through the Body™ method, which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Sacral (second) Chakra rules Partnerships and Creativity. The Sacral Chakra relates to how your protagonist connects with and responds/reacts to others in one-on-one relationships, as well as their impulse to create. The Sacral Chakra says I FEEL.

By considering how your characters’ connect, react, and respond to others, one on one, you can begin to uncover important that will begin to inform your story’s trajectory.

Below is a brief explanation of the Sacral Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

Second Chakra – Sacral Chakra

Location
Just below the navel

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Self-value without the need for exterior validation, healthy psychological boundaries, confident creative expression

This is about who your character is drawn to in one-on-one relationships, how they behave in those relationships, and respond to the words and behaviors of them. It is also about how your character self-expresses, creatively.

Primary fears
Not being important “enough” to another (jealously, anger), happiness and pleasure (self-sabotage, pessimism, creative blocks), loss of body through death or illness

This is, in some ways, an extension of the Root Chakra, in relation to feeling secure in the world, and can surface when allowing oneself to be vulnerable with another. This vulnerability can also create fear/blocks in creative self-expression.

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Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Sacral Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding or identify a particular behavior or response in your character, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: Your protagonist is a painter and is experiencing a creative block. You have just remembered (for them, through your writing) a seemingly harmless comment someone from their past made about one of their paintings, and it draws up some kind of pain in your protagonist. Why?

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Hold one of your character’s one-on-one relationships in mind. What is the overarching tone of that relationship? What makes it so in their shared history (no matter how short) and their individual histories).

• Does creativity—in any form—figure into this relationship, or cause strife in it?

• How adaptable or rigid are these characters, and what are their personal boundaries like? Are they equal in this, is one better than the other, or are then unaware and enmeshed?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO

How to Use the Root Chakra for Deep Character Development

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I recently wrote about how, if you take into account the ideas that come from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s theories on achieving flow along with Candace Pert’s findings about how human emotions originate in the exact locations of the seven main chakras and that “our bodies are our subconscious minds,” you can utilize the chakras to banish writer’s block, achieve flow, and tell your untold stories.

This is achieved through the Writing Through the Body™ method, which uses the chakra system as a practical tool for uncovering a character’s desires, wounds, and motivations. By exploring these psychological foundations, writers are able to portray their characters’ behaviors, reactions, and responses on the page with greater depth and emotional truth.

For example, the Root (first) Chakra rules Tribal Power and Tribal Consciousness, which is about identity in relationship to Tribe, or family of origin. Deep down, the Root Chakra relates to how an individual (character) sees themself and the degree of their feelings of security in the world. The Root Chakra says I AM.

In your writing, by considering characters’ places within their families of origin—even if the family members are not part of the present story—you can begin to uncover important information about your characters’ current behaviors and motivations, which will inform the story you tell about them.

Below is a brief explanation of the Root Chakra, its traits and characteristics, and some ways you might integrate its attributes into your character development.

First Chakra – Root Chakra

Location
Deep in the pelvis, just in front of the tip of the tailbone

This does not directly apply to your character but is used for visualization purposes when doing certain exercises within the Writing Through the Body™ method, offered here as an FYI.

Primary strengths
Tribal/family identity, bonding, support, and loyalty that create a feeling of security and connection to the world

This is about who your character is connected to or disconnected from, and how this impacts their sense of identity and security in the world.

Primary fears
Physical survival, abandonment, loss of order

Does your character have any of these fears to any degree in relation to anyone or anything—or in general?

_____________________

Writing exercise

Take some time to sit quietly, and think about the aspects of the Root Chakra as they relate to all your characters. 

Write a sketch of a character that may not be materializing as fully as you would like, and answer the questions below as fully and exhaustively as possible. 

Tip: Every time you arrive at a new place of understanding, ask “why?” Continuing to ask “why?” is how we get to the deep psychology of our characters. 

Example: You discover that your character had a falling out with her favorite aunt years ago and they have never resolved the conflict. Why?

Questions to begin your exercise:

• Who are they most bonded to in their family of origin and why?

• Is there any estrangement in their family of origin? If so, how has that impacted them?

• What is their relationship to money and their general ability to survive in the world?

Let me know what you discover in the comments.

As always… Sending you mad writing mojo…

Happy writing!

Johnnie
OOOOO