Scout, character in "Murder, Key West Style," came to me in a dream

When I'm in full writing mode and laser focused on a story, I regularly dream about different aspects of the story.

In fact, the story never leaves my mind when I'm writing. Like a clothes dryer, the story tumbles around in my head no matter what I'm doing. Round and round, up and down, back and forth – all while I'm doing every day tasks or sleeping.

The dryer action often results in new dialogue, scenery, background, descriptive detail, plot twists, or character development.

Sometimes, the dreams are so profound, they wake me up. That's why I keep a pen and notepad on my nightstand. If I wake with inspiration, I jot it down. When I review the notes later, it's either brilliant or a load of crap.

In the case of Scout and "Murder, Key West Style," it turned out to be very good stuff, which added a key element to the story.

Here's the dream I had that produced Scout: Blurry, but sunny beach setting where I could see two figures sitting in the sand, side-by-side. As I walked toward the figures, they came into focus. Figure on the left turned out to be Sarge, an American war hero who died homeless in Key West. He's one of the main characters in the story. It's his mysterious death that launches reporter Nick Steele's investigation into how the Marine really died.

The figure to Sarge's right turned out to be his faithful companion, a scraggly German shepherd. When I was within a few feet of Sarge and the pooch, the dog turned his head sideways and licked Sarge's face, who patted the mutt's head and said, "You're a good boy, Scout."

The action shot me out of slumber. I sat on the edge of my bed and made a note of what I remembered. I finished the note by jotting down Scout's name.

The dream hung with me all the next day. I felt like I should add Scout to the story, which was already through it's second re-write. Before I added Scout, however, I wanted to find out how prevalent pets were with the homeless.

Google revealed a ton of photos of homeless folks all over the world with a wide variety of pets, including a high number of dogs. An article I found on the subject said studies indicated about 5 percent of the homeless kept pets.

That research told me Scout was a plausible fit for my novel. But before I added the pooch to the story, I bounced the idea off my oldest son, Michael, who is a lawyer as well as a writer. He liked the idea of adding Scout to "Murder, Key West Style."

That sealed the deal. I went through the second draft of my manuscript and added the mutt.

To top it off, my editor said she believed Scout made the story stronger.

Really glad Scout came to me in a dream, and delighted he's part of the story.Murder, Key West StyleDave Vizard

What do you think?