This is K.M. Wyland and you are listening to the 529th episode of the Helping Writers Become Authors Podcast. I hope you enjoy this week's episode.

What is Dream Zoning?

Seven Steps to Finding new story ideas.

Every writer knows a thing or two about daydreaming,

but what about dream zoning?

What is that?

And how can it help you cultivate inspiration

for your storytelling?

Put simplistically, Dream Zoning is basically just daydreaming on steroids.

It's purposeful, focused daydreaming. It's intense, it's fun, and if you're a writer, it's the

mother load of all story ideas. I have name dropped Dream Zoning a lot in recent years, but after an exchange on Patreon with Susan Geiger, I realized some readers may not fully understand what I'm talking about.

Susan said, I look forward to trying out Dream Zoning. I've heard you talk about it on your podcast before, but never fully understood it. So because Dream Zoning is such an amazing tool and experience, I figured it was time to do a core episode about it. The word Dream Zone came into my consciousness years ago when I read from where you dream a transcript of Pulitzer winner

Robert Olin Butler's lectures about the process of writing fiction. In the book he talked about how he would take the time to find a story

inspiration by sitting back at his desk and zoning out. He'd watch the

pictures in his head following them, not guiding them, but just watching to see what would unfold.

Later he would record the snippets of his imaginings on index cards and use them to formulate an outline. If you ran

into a plot problem or question he would revert to Dreamzoning to find the

solution. Now like many writers I immediately resonated with his

description of this deeply intuitive mental space. I'd naturally gone there for years

even calling my imaginings my movies when I was young.

The Dream Zone was the space I lived in between waking and sleep every night, as well as the space

I physically played in as a child when acting out my stories.

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