Chapter 39 - author

It's finally done! Thanks for reading "Dreaming Bigger", I'm so thankful for all the positive feedback I've received and I hope you all have enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I wanted to voice a couple thoughts before wrapping up this story for good.

The original inspiration for this story was a compilation of separate short stories and one-time encounters, that spanned real-world weight gain, romance, sub/dom, and magic/rapid weight gain. The idea for a "dream" to capture all of these components came to me, and I decided to write a story around that framework. I was naturally inspired by the movie "Inception" as you probably already guessed, and tried to incorporate the fine line between real and dream in the story itself.

I also wanted to use this story to try out a few new techniques I hadn't done before, and I'm interested to hear your feedback.

First, I wanted to write from the first-person perspective. Olivia Patterson (Youtube/tumblr, check her out) writes in first person which I absolutely love, and in my opinion it makes the story feel more visceral and real.

Second, I specifically avoided giving the characters names, and tried to describe what they look like as vaguely as possible. This was for several reasons. For one, I find that in erotica you can easily get confused trying to keep track of characters, especially when there's more than 3 introduced in a short period of time.

Another reason was that I wanted to blur the line between dreams and reality even more. Making both "projections" and real people nameless makes it harder to keep track of what is dream and what is real.

And finally, and in my opinion most importantly, I feel that not naming or describing the characters allows the readers to immerse themselves in the story more. A named character can make you think of someone else you know, and immediately skew your thoughts on how you feel about the character. If you know exactly how they look, not only are you bogged down by all the details, but also you're immediately forced into a specific "type" or "image" of a character. Unnamed and broadly-written characters allow you to become the protagonist yourself, or be the feeder, or someone else looking on. The characters can be whoever you imagine rather than who I tell you they are.

The lack of character names and descriptors was one of the hardest parts to write. Definitely let me know if you liked this, or if it was too confusing to follow.

Finally, some of you have already mentioned that keeping track of what was dream and what was real was hard to follow. This was done intentionally, since as we now know the characters themselves lost track of what was dream and what was real. I tried to drop some hints here and there for the reader, for example every chapter begins with waking up, and how they wake up hints at being in the dream or not. Definitely let me know if you liked this or not as well.

I have written many other stories in the past, but this is the first I've written in a long time and by far my most intensive and longest story. This story has close to 50,000 words total. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone is 70,000 words for reference. I wanted to not only make good erotica, but a compelling story that captivated you chapter by chapter and left you wanting to know what happens next. I really hope you enjoyed it.

I have plans for more stories in the future, but PLEASE send recommendations on what you'd like to read! I would love some inspiration for another interesting and novel topic to write about, and the more ideas I get the sooner I can start working on the next story!