: Re: Why using the "It Was All Just a Dream" Trope? There is a particular trope that became quite infamous across many media: the "it was just a dream" revelation, where, usually at the end of

@Gonzalez219

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"It Was All Just a Dream" [IWAJAD] is useful for "character" stories; Dorothy undergoes a large transformation in the Wizard of Oz, from being a little girl to being at first an unintentional hero (she is denying she is a hero) to finally being a true, brave and intentional hero by the end of the tale, in the service of saving her friends. The WOZ is very similar to a coming-of-age story, without puberty being involved; it is a "becoming an adult" story.

In a few TV series we see vignettes of IWAJAD, a few minutes of some disaster occurring and then the character wakes up from a nightmare, hyper-ventilating and hyper-agitated. This is to show their internal fears of their precarious situation in life.

Often, it can be foreshadowing as well; the dream can be some twisted version of what is about to happen. If you don't want to be supernatural, you can still use it, like the princess intuits the prince she is about to marry is a monster, and has nightmares about this, that seem real.

But the primary use of IWAJAD is when, actually, as an author, you don't want anything BUT the character to change. That is the only transformation you want to show, whether the "dream" is most of the story, or just an interlude within a story; you want the dreamer to go forward with a personality change, often this is the reason she takes actions (like acquiring and hiding a weapon) that will be very relevant in the plot to come.

If you sense a rise in IWAJAD stories, perhaps a change is coming in taste for stories, that people are becoming more interested in pure character-transformation stories instead of adventure, Hero's Journey, Saving the World, Sword and Sorcery, Sci Fi, or other stories less focused on character, morality, and emotional struggle.

I don't know if a change is coming; but the market does cycle. There are fads in what readers want (and thus what publishers and agents want); the shifts are typically driven by new bestsellers or a few that by chance are in the same vein.

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