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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37969
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/37969
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

> People from the comments dislike dream twists but I'm curious how stories like "Alice in wonderland" or "Total recall" or "Wizard of Oz" pulled those endings off.

The problem with "just a dream" is generally that the reader is left with the impression "nothing really happened." That is a disappointing ending, a waste of time.

An exception to this is like "The Wizard of Oz", where due to the dream, the MC Dorothy has been fundamentally and irrevocably changed; Dorothy's dream brought her a new understanding of her life, so emotionally speaking something did happen to the MC, which is far more important than something physically changing.

The same can be true for other stories, I think in Total Recall the sub-story "dream" episodes were all part of a larger, real plot, and we the audience had to figure that out. In Stephen King's very successful novel The Stand, characters are led by dream visions to a real prophet leader that knew what was going on in their post-apocalyptic world.

Alice in Wonderland was (I think I have read), a fantastical adventure that was a critique on politics and society at the time, the "dream" was an allegory for the real world, and otherwise a fanciful children's story; those are **_much_** more forgiving on the need for plot or logic. Watch any children's show, they are fun for kids but boring and ridiculous for adults (unless they contain a message only adults will understand).

If you are writing entertainment for non-toddlers, people with some measure of rationality, the "all a dream" ending is seen as a deus ex machina, a way to rescue an unsalvageable plot line by imposing some new rules. That is not how adults expect stories to work, they **expect** the author to have a satisfying and logical ending that ties up all the loose ends and apparently inexplicable mysteries you have introduced. It is not satisfying to issue a blanket statement that "none of it was real", it feels like a fraud. No amount of logic will change that feeling. Just because a "dream" IS an explanation, doesn't make it an emotionally satisfying one.

Original score: 16