.

No, I am not referring to some sudden and terrific news I have received but rather to a classic refrain from characters in film, television, and prose that has always struck me as a bit false.

Characters suddenly finds themselves in some implausible situation, transported to a second-world fantasy or such and all too often they will insist or mutter or ponder if they are dreaming, because this simply can’t be real.

Here’s my problem with that. Dreams, no matter how strange and defying of conventional reality, always feel real. During the dream you don’t question them or their breaks in any rational logic, you always just accept them.

Yeah, I was at work talking to a co-worker, turned the corner of the hallway and now I’m back in high school and stuttering in front of a cheerleader. The transition from one reality to the next happens and you don’t question it.

So, a character opening their eyes and finding themselves surrounded by elves and the like isn’t likely to go off asking if this is a dream because that’s not how dreams work. Not only is the question clearly so overused to have become a cliche but the incongruity of the character asking that question breaks for me suspension of disbelief.

Joss Whedon, apparent scum that he is, I think really nailed the logical and illogical absurdity of dreams in the final episode of season 4 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer. As we follow the characters through their dreams, being stalked by a supernatural entity to give the story some stakes, the world around them shifts and changes in the span of an edit but the characters do not notice. They do not question that the college has suddenly become the high school, that the back of the ice cream truck leads without a break into a basement. That is how dreams work and as we dream them, they feel right, they feel true.

I would advise to excise any mention of a character thinking that the fantastic environment that they find themselves in questioning if it is all a dream.