: How to narrate a fictional dream in third person? Long story short. A few years ago I suffered from depersonalization and I still struggle with identity and motivation issues. This has deprived

@Jamie945

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Long story short. A few years ago I suffered from depersonalization and I still struggle with identity and motivation issues. This has deprived me almost entirely of the ability to feel emotion in dreams and allowed me to dream from the perspective of an observer far more often than the usual person.

I can feel only a limited spectrum of mild emotions that have somewhat specific triggers. For example, I can only get angry at my parents. I cannot feel fear. (I can feel a far larger array of emotions when awake, although I might react in an inappropriate manner at times.)

As I haven't socialised much, nor written fiction since this has happened, I decided to kill two birds with one stone and try my hand at forum role-playing. Thinking my dreams were bizarre and cool and being interested in the topic, I joined a semi-literate RP, where some disturbance happens in another dimension, making people unable to wake up and causing dreams to merge.

Here's my problem. The character I created comes from a different background and does not share much of my personality and values. I want her dreams to reflect her inner world, but every time I start writing, she ends up taking a passive role. It's as if I'm observing her observing what other people do in her dream. While I came up with a sketchy reason as to why she is more passive, I still need her to feel emotions and act normally.

How do I do it?

The style in which we role-play is the usual third person, past tense, "show, don't tell". It's meant to be somewhat character-based and I think the plot will be rather linear once all our dreams merge. We're still at the "introductory posts" stage.

p.s. If you need to know more about my character, please tell me.

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