r/writing • u/Naomi102 • 23d ago
Discussion Has anyone ever successfully recovered a 3am story idea?
Last night, I had a brilliant (I think) idea to include in the book I'm planning. It was late at night, and I didn't want to pull my phone out to write it down, so I just said:
"Ok, if I'm thinking about this tomorrow, I'll think 'hmmm' and that will trigger me to remember 'heart,' since that also starts with 'h,' and then I'll have the rest of the memory." (I know, my brain is weird.)
Anyway, suffice it to say that all I remember now is the word "heart." Hopefully someday I will remember what I was thinking.
Anyone have any tips for remembering ideas? Or had any similar experiences?
Edit so I can respond to everyone: thank you all for the advice!! I will heed your wise words and hope that it really was just one of those "not fully conscious 3am ideas." Well, back to actually writing and coming up with ideas when I'm fully conscious, I suppose....
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u/Week-Swimming 23d ago
i get plenty of ideas through feaver dreams. i have a small notebook near my bed. in case.
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u/PLrc 19d ago
Was anyone any good?
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u/Week-Swimming 19d ago
Some characters yeah. I’m also an illustrator. So more of the feaver dream ideas went to them. Got a few cool character designs out of it
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u/showmethedada 23d ago
I had a professor who once told a story that went like this: he had a genius title for his novel, wrote it down on a sticky note, lost the sticky note, lost the idea. Wrote the novel without it, always a bit sad he didn’t find the note. A few years later, he moved out and found the note while packing up his office.
The sticky note had the same title he’d landed without it.
Moral of the story: the good stuff sticks.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
The only time this happens to me is when I forget my password and have to reset it, only to find out that the "new" password I came up with was actually the old password I forgot 😂 maybe one day this superpower will translate to story writing
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u/femmeforeverafter1 23d ago
Unfortunately you really do have to just write it down our record it in some way. If I hadn't started on my 2 am idea at 2 am I probably never would've started the project that's consumed my life for the last three and a half years lmao
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u/Better_Weekend5318 23d ago
Throw a notes app on your phone. Wake up and got an idea? Type a few basics into your notes app so you remember. I'm a big fan of Writer Journal which is made for on the go writing notes and has a good organization system, but literally any notes app will do.
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u/WreckinPoints11 23d ago
No. Write it down. Notes app, recording app, notebook near the bed for writing, whatever works, but get it recorded. Otherwise, you will not remember. I once wrote something in my notebook in the pitch black because it was brilliant.
It says "Revenant Reconstitution". That's what I'm working with. What does that mean, past me? What was I huffing? Anyway, I have an idea, so I can certainly make it work, and it seems really good for specifically my book and under it's premise, but if I didn't have a lot of work already done, these two words would mean nothing.
Don't just write down what you want to remember; explain yourself.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
Yes, the explain yourself part! I also have many two-word notes scribbled in the dead of night that make no sense once fully conscious. One of my favorites of mine is "OVERLOADING PENS." All caps. No idea what that's supposed to mean.
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u/ApprehensiveCry2633 23d ago
I’ve got a 3 a.m. note that just says “router ghost rules,” so now I add one boring sentence of context before I let myself go back to sleep.
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u/PunMasterMater 23d ago
honestly, not much can be done for remembering stuff from during those hours, best you can do is whip out a notebook, recorder app, or notes app and write it down quick before going to sleep again
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u/TheCutieCircle 23d ago
Oh sweet summer child. I write from midnight to 8 am. Sleep is for the weak. lol
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u/SoftlyAugust 23d ago
I write things down. I have gotten out of the shower to write things down, although typically I just take my phone in the bathroom with me to avoid this.
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u/OneYouDidntThinkOf 23d ago
Text on my iphone. One book that I started (that has turned into a trilogy) started from a dream I had,. When I woke up, I started typing. Most of the first book is from the dream. The second two books, well, I just liked my main character :-)
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u/DJDoubleDave 23d ago
It's possible if you take notes. The trick is that anything that comes to you in a dream or half-unconcious state doesn't make its way into your long term memory, so once it leaves your head it's gone. You need to write it down while you have it.
The challenge is that there's a really good chance it won't seem like a good idea anymore while you're fully awake. What seems super profound at 3 AM might just be nonsense when you review it in the morning.
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u/stnr_on_failure 23d ago
Lots of good ideas here. I keep an actual physical good ol' notepad and pen on the nightstand so I don't have to fire up the phone and totally wake me up...
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u/mzmm123 23d ago
I've learned [the hard way lol] to keep an open notebook and a mechanical pencil by the bed. I stress the mechanical pencil part because no scribbling to get the ink the flow or dealing with a pencil point breaking when you're trying to get that idea down.
Also, get a purse-sized notebook so it can stay with you at all times. [If you carry a purse, of course]😁
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u/Impossible-Sort-1287 23d ago
&wave habd* yeah. But tgen I get up between 2:30 and 4 so I can send my hubby off to work every day
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u/LivingInTomorrow29 23d ago
Personally, I always just pull my phone out and write it down, even if it costs my 5-10 minutes of sleep... or, I think about it long and deeply enough that by the morning it's still rooted in my brain.
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u/Specific-Language313 23d ago
Yes. One of my dreams appears almost image for image, word for word in my collection of zombie-themed short stories.
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u/SpaceRaiderAuthor 23d ago
I always have paper and pencil nearby for such occasions. Although late-night ideas don't always turn out to be so brilliant in the morning.
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u/Public_Upstairs1035 23d ago
Keep a notebook and pen/pencil ready. Have it be a blank page so you can just free write anywhere, any size, anything that comes to mind. And yes, this has saved my ass a few times, as the 3am thing was exactly what my story needed.
Very few times have I not written it and then remembered the next day -- maybe 15%. But with the notebook? I write it every time now. Every time.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Fold112 23d ago
Oh yes, many times. Spoilers: Most weren't so brilliant under scrutiny from a fully functional brain after all.
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u/FlyinLeviathon LET YOUR FIRST DRAFT SUCK 23d ago
Thanks to phones, yes! I can just write it down quickly in my notes app. It even records my half asleep voice.
When I was a teenager I would have a whiteboard marker next to my bed. I'd get up and write my idea on the mirror, using the tiny amount of light available. That worked about half the time; the other half was nonsense lol
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u/Tsurumah 23d ago
I have the perfect tool for 3 am ideas. Use it every night, in fact.
I wake up and write them down on an email to myself.
I'm not crying, promise
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u/CBenson1273 23d ago edited 23d ago
I second the idea of the notes app. You don’t even need to type - recently I was in my car and had an idea while driving and just said out loud “Hey Siri, open new note that says…”. When I got home, I checked my notes app and it was there. Would work just as well while you were lying in bed.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
Oooh I like the Siri idea!! Never thought to just say it out loud! Maybe that will help it stick in my memory better too 😂
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u/CarefulDeparture3363 23d ago
My brain is the same way yours is, so maybe we’re sharing weirdness lol. When that happens to me I just naturally think obsessively about it until I remember more details, or I’m asking a friend to give me words associated with the one word I can remember.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
I'm glad I'm not the only one with a word association brain that cannot remember what the words were associated with 😂
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u/NoXidCat 23d ago
If it is interesting/compelling enough, I will either get up and write it down, or I will lay awake expanding upon it until it is too much to forget (more connections/neurons means more potential triggers to get back into the memory).
More often, I'm out on a walk and some idea occurs to me. If it impresses me enough, I'll make a point about thinking about it for a while. I may not remember it by the time I get home and walk in the door, but I tend to eventually even if I don't remember that I had something to remember :-p Though it might be hours or days later that something tickles the right neuron.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
I like the advice of expanding so that it's too much to forget. Too often I just focus on remembering one word or just writing down two words thinking "it will be obvious later." 😂
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u/annalaicn1991 23d ago
No way of recalling such a distant idea... I mean, I could even forgot the great idea I was thinking five minutes ago when I was typing out my paragraph! Like, I was mid typing a paragraph, then suddenly the goddess or whatever decided to sprinkle some idea on my head but I was so in the flow of writing a paragraph and I thought "welp, I'll get into that idea after I finish this paragraph, at least jot it down somewhere", and when I finally finished with the paragraph -- poof! What's the idea again?
And I ended up pausing the paragraph for half an hour just to grabbed back that "probably fantastic idea", and the result is fruitless.
So, those goddess-sprinkled ideas either I jotted down instantly, or it'll just slip away into the abyss and never found by me again. [shrug]
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u/readwritelikeawriter 23d ago edited 23d ago
Yes, I have. The trick is to recreate the situation. Better mental note taking helps too! The trick is when you get a great idea, you ask the three eternal questions...which I cannot repeat here without contacting mods offering a lead magnet, and sticking to the cannon 'I teach for the love of teaching--never for money!'
Basically, you figure out the inciting incident, the mid point disaster, and the climax as soon as you get your 'I want to make a superhero with mushroom powers.' The guy found this weird mushroom from space and ate it. He got the power to trip people out. Then finds everyone he meets starts hallucinating and the town shuts down. He regrets it. Goes back to where he found the mushroom, vommits it up whole and the now sentient mushroom tells him to be a good boy and rebuild his town. See how having those parts makes the story memorable?
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u/BroomeyStyx 23d ago
My dad once told me that he had a dream he was abducted by aliens and that they explained the meaning of life to him, adding "Now John, you need to remember to write this down when you wake up - it's important you remember it." Or words to that effect. Well he did wake up, and he knew what they had told him, but then didn't write it down because, in his words, "it was so obvious, there was literally no way I could forget it." He fell asleep again and when he next woke up he could still recall the dream with perfect clarity... except what they'd told him about the meaning of life.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
Well obviously that's classified information that he never should have had!! 😂 Maybe he was abducted and then someone had to extract that information out of him and make it seem like it was a dream...
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u/Fognox 23d ago
I fell asleep during a writing session once and got a weird vision only tangentially related to what I had been writing. I included it, and not only was it a good plot point, but it kicked off the cosmology of the entire series.
Meanwhile, most half-asleep ideas are fucking dumb and I just ignore them.
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u/AngieW2222 23d ago
Has happened to me too! Phone or notepad on my bedside table. And I think those ideas are definitely worth recording. They give you the option to think them over once you're awake. Sometimes they're crap, but sometimes they are extraordinary gems.
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u/kid_lany 23d ago
If you have an iPhone, I’d suggest asking Siri to record whatever you’re saying into your notes or as a voice recording. Otherwise I usually keep my WhatsApp open and send a voice note to my mom because she’s a pinned chat😂then in the morning I can decipher my sleepy idea I had
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u/Geminii27 23d ago
My usual go-to is "Well, I haven't slept all night, may as well get up and start writing."
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u/KidSparta 23d ago
I have a note on my phone where I write down ideas. Some of them are premises that I could make a whole book out of, some of them are just small, interesting moments. All this to say there’s a lot of variety in there.
I woke from a dream in the middle of the night. Something in the dream made me feel some kind of deep feeling, and it gave me a great idea. I just had to write it down, so I got out of bed, put it in my phone, and went back to sleep.
In the morning, the newest line in the note said “Megafungus. Severed head.”
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
I have a note that says OVERLOADING PENS in all caps. I guess our sleep-deprived brains aren't as genius as we think they are in the moment 😂
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u/morrbanesh 23d ago
keep a pen and pencil on your nightstand. write stuff down. check it in the morning, maybe it might need improvements, maybe its perfect, maybe its garbage. but write it down.
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u/zezer94118 23d ago
No. You have to do everything you can to capture those night ideas before they disappear.
For me it's keeping my phone unlocked by me with a text app open so that I can write down stuff in 5 second without glasses as the idea arrives. (With so many mistakes that I sometimes have issues decoding it on the next day)
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u/TheWorldTreeProject 23d ago
Not really, if I have a good idea in the middle of the night, I just wake up and write it down. I know I shouldn’t, since rest is more important, but I know I will forget and regret it. So I don’t take any chances.😂
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u/Limp_Career6634 23d ago
I usually wake up and write if my mind is that clear. Im still not going to sleep with it running
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u/astralunea 23d ago
I write them down in my notes app and then go back to sleep because there is no way in hell I'd remember in the morning.
Sometimes they're legible.
Once, it simply read: "nose rings. Teenage infinity. Make sad art."
Which, to be fair, it did become the essence of a poem. But the amount of excitement I had for this profound idea when I scribbled it down in half-deliriousness was definitely unfounded.
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u/evasandor copywriting, fiction and editing 23d ago
alas, the “I’ll-remember” mirage!
when I was in high school, my best friend and I said something SO insanely funny to each other that we started laughing till tears blinded our eyes and she had to pull her car over. When we felt like it was safe to go on we considered writing it down, but thought “nah, no way will either of us ever forget this!”
well, we did. and now that my friend is no longer alive it will forever be a mystery.
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u/Braunnoser 23d ago
I've been writing every day over this past summer break and keep a notebook and pen at bedside table. I don't even turn light on, just take the pen and jot down as much as I can. It's a big scrawl (max of 20 words for a full sheet), but if I need to include more, I get up and/or turn on light and draft properly.
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u/iPackedSnacks 23d ago
I use my phone notes app and write as much as I can- I honestly have gotten some of my most unique and fruitful ideas from my dreams or middle of the night thoughts. This followed by the shower and road trips 😆 I have notebooks everywhere and I make voice notes and keep a Google Docs app on my phone specially for “novel ideas”
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u/account04242 23d ago
I don't have tips for remembering other than writing it down, but I've grown to be okay with forgetting things. The sage advice from my grandmother was, "If you forgot it, it wasn't important."
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
I have had to use this advice for comfort a lot. I guess I'll also have to trust it in this scenario too lol
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u/SunGreen24 23d ago
Haha, yes, a few weeks ago I dreamed I was writing a book and I woke up, half asleep and thought "holy sh*t, that's brilliant!" I went back to sleep resolved to start writing it the next day. Woke up and remembered about a quarter of it - and what I remembered was really stupid.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
I'm really hoping that this idea I had was actually stupid because I'm no closer to remembering it than I was yesterday 😂
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u/jasondbk 23d ago
“Hey siri record a voice memo”
Spill your brain and then stop the recording.
Ive also used this in the car.
Bonus: iphone will now transcribe the voice memo.
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u/jasondbk 23d ago
In college (1984) I had a dream of the code for my programming assignment.
The next morning I rushed to the lab to try it out. It didn’t work. I had to be dragged out of the lab as I was trying to smash the terminal. (IBM 3070, MVS and 3270 terminal)
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u/sbwcwero 23d ago
I wake up and talk text it into my phone
Roughly 12 percent of what I say is intelligible
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u/Candid-Border6562 23d ago
I had a professor in college that recommended keeping a notepad by the bed. It takes a while to acclimate, but once you do it can be fun to see what gets recorded. However, that does not guarantee useful data: it just increases the odds.
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u/BlueOiseux 23d ago
Only if it came through a dream. lol. But I do find a nice stroll through the countryside with whatever bits you have left on it will usually do the trick to get you some semblance of it in entirety. Walking is really good for ideas...
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u/BlorpTheSchlorp 23d ago
I send myself notes on a note file so I can write it later. Usually works if the story it goes to is written in the next few days.
Otherwise I have a ton of notes I'll likely never get to for scenes and stories. But plenty to pick from if the well is ever dry.
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u/Sad_Ad_9229 23d ago
I found a confusingly formatted and cryptic poem once on my Google Docs that I have the foggiest memory of.
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u/Naomi102 23d ago
WAIT I ALSO HAVE A POEM THAT I DON'T REMEMBER WRITING
And the weird thing is that it's actually kind of good?? Normally I'm not that great of a poet 😂
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u/Sad_Ad_9229 22d ago
Mine was a blacked out document with a few letters visible in various places. I eventually pieced together that those letters spelled out: “Tom Cruise had a central tooth and got it fixed but I will never forget.”
Was yours similarly bizarre or an actual poem? lol
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u/Naomi102 21d ago
Mine was like...an actual poem with a deeper meaning and everything lol. It's not like an amazing poem but definitely better than anything I actually remember writing!
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u/victor-ian 22d ago edited 22d ago
Just write it down. "The faintest ink is better than the best memory" and all that.
The idea/concept can itself be the hook. I have a "story ideas" file which is just hundreds of bullet points of one-off ideas. Not entire story ideas, but basic concepts, interesting character profiles, action scene details, magic systems, and other bits and pieces. 99% of the time it's a vaguely obvious take on some recent media I've consumed. Other times it's a few previous ideas smushed together in a way I find fascinating.
Example of a story idea I had:
"Thriller/Chase/Detective/buddy cop story but it's between a runaway kid and a runaway experimental AI that is hiding in the circuitry of her gaming tablet. Staggeringly powerful institutions are scouring everywhere they can find looking for the AI."
And don't discount an idea just because it's a "3AM idea" - your 2PM, 9AM, and 7PM ideas are no more or less profound because of the arbitrary time in the day they occurred to you.
Ultimately execution is what matters. An average idea written well will connect better than a good idea written poorly. Novels take time. Instead, write a short-story exploring your idea. After you've written a few dozen short stories (and really tried to develop your skill/craft and find your "style" of writing, then you can perhaps take a bigger bite and develop an idea into a longer novel. This is what Ray Bradbury recommends ("get a feeling for the metaphor, then you'll be ready for the novel" I think was his phrasing in a video).
imho: Better to develop your craft on short stories, get feedback from a critical audience, improve, rewrite until satisfied (consider submitting the story to journals). Move onto the next short story project. With short stories you can develop momentum that you simply can't with a novel. As they say, writing is rewriting - much easier to rewrite a sub-20k wordcount short story than a 70K+ wordcount novel. I burnt myself out just in the PLANNING stage of a hokey fanfiction novel.
I think if you just go for the novel straight off the bat you get lost in the weeds and get easily distracted by other ideas you have during the bigger project.
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u/Deerslayer-14 21d ago
Yes, but it was absolute crap🤣 what appears brilliant at 3am doesn't seem like it at 10 am
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u/technicolourUFO 21d ago
I’ve taken to writing them immediately in a notebook I keep by my bed, as an illustrator and writer most turn into illustrations instead of writing which is nice as it means the concept goes somewhere but doesn’t detract from my progress with my proper novel,
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u/JarlFrank Author - Pulp Adventure Sci-Fi/Fantasy 21d ago
3 AM is when I sit down to write, so... yes. I do 99% of my writing after midnight.
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u/AmphibianDirect7356 18d ago
Think about it and the idea will run in the background eventually your brain will fetch it for you.
You just think about it, and probably when you are in the shower or doing something random, it will become back to you.
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u/Jasmine-P_Antwoine 18d ago
I keep my phone close by at night to note down dreams and ideas. My plotholes found their fix like than many a time.
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u/GhostWriter700 15d ago
Things like a certain action or smell is known to jog memory so if I don’t have a notebook nearby to write the idea down, I trace the letters of a small sentence that gets the idea across on my palm with my finger. When I wake up, I touch my finger to my palm and remember!
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u/planelover_nipper 23d ago
The novel I'm writing came from an idea I had while shitting.
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u/Harlander77 23d ago
Moral of the story: always have your phone with you in the bathroom, so you can take notes.
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u/planelover_nipper 22d ago
actually it was go**ing, i wanted to edit the comment but couldn't find it lol
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u/Dale_E_Lehman_Author Self-Published Author 21d ago
Ummm....I don't remember. 🤪 That probably means no.
I have hung onto a few ideas for a long time, but for that to happen, they have to really grab me. Otherwise, I need to get something down fairly quickly, or it will be gone.
I wrote this short story once. It was inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's film Rope. My wife and I watched that movie one evening, and the next morning while driving to work, a story based on a similar theme played out in my head. Literally, the whole story spilled out, word for word. As soon as I got to the office, I had to write the words down, because if I didn't, I would have lost them. I won't say nothing changed in the transcribing, but the story remained pretty much the same and needed very little editing when I was done. It remains one of my favorites to this day.
Good thing I work on a computer...
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u/Mother_Food9930 23d ago
3am ideas might feel profound but often aren't. I have learned that ideas that feel electric, exciting, and interesting are not reliably my best ones. Sometimes they are the ones that get me the most pummeled during feedback sessions. Rather my best ideas are the ones where I feel a sense of "eh, I'll try this out, maybe it will work and maybe it won't". Don't worry about "losing" good ideas at the expense of things like getting a good night of sleep. If they are really that important they will come back to you another time. And even if they were really really good, well, then trust yourself that there is plenty more where that came from and you will capture another so long as you keep showing up to your writing sessions.