The Dream

November arrives like a slow breath—cool, heavy, and full of echoes. The days grow shorter, the dark comes earlier, and the boundary between waking and dreaming thins. You start to notice it in small ways: a flicker in the corner of your vision, a whisper that follows you from sleep, a scent that doesn’t belong to the real world. Maybe it’s the season’s quiet or the long nights, but lately, your dreams have begun to linger.

In this prompt, you are invited to explore a dream that refuses to fade. Each morning, fragments of it stay with you—a sound, a symbol, a face you’ve never seen yet somehow know. The dream might be beautiful or terrifying, tender or strange. It might even begin to change the waking world around you. Doors that used to open easily now stick. Your reflection pauses a beat too long. The people you meet seem to remember things you don’t.

Ask yourself: What does the dream want? Is it a memory, a warning, a promise? Does it pull you toward something—or away from it? Perhaps the dream world is more real than the one you wake to. Perhaps November itself is a kind of dream, a month caught between light and dark, beginnings and endings.

You can write this prompt as:

• A short story where the protagonist realizes they can’t escape the dream.

• A poem that blurs the line between night and day.

• A letter written to the self that exists only inside the dream.

• A diary entry from someone who no longer knows when they’re awake.

Let atmosphere and sensory detail guide you. Think of the weight of fog, the hush of early frost, the color of dawn when it almost breaks. Let the dream spill into the story—subtle at first, then unstoppable.

Key Words: haze, threshold, whisper, mirror, persistence, sleep, frost, recall.

When you’re done writing, read your piece aloud once before bed. See if the dream finds its way back to you.