I Had A Dream...but I forgot it

When Amabelle has her dreams, she is in a safe environment and protected by her loved ones. She knows where she is, and it's the same place every night. She stops having her dreams while on the move because her mind is in a different state. She's scared, stressed, unsure of where she is going and what she is doing.

As a sidenote, one could argue that the dreams stop because the author wants to speed up the narrative and get the reader's focus on what is happening presently in the novel. For me, the dreams slowed the progress of the story, so this is one way that I took it.

Now, on to my own dreams. I often remember my dreams, and usually if they are interesting or significant (funny), then I will write them down. I guess you could say I keep a dream journal. I also did a study of dreams in my psychology class in high school, where I recorded my dreams every night to see if I could remember them. From this I conclude that consciousness has a major influence on remembering dreams; I try to remember my dreams so it makes it easier.

Usually I remember my dreams, or at least traces of them, when i sleep for a shorter amount of time. Every Wednesday & Friday, I get up early for my 8am class, but go right back to bed when i get out (9am). I sleep for 1-2 hours, and I always have dreams, and lots of them, very vivid. And just this weekend I had very short sleep periods and had lots of dreams, so this leads me to believe that shorter periods of sleep cause easier remembrance of dreams. Also, I always have trouble falling asleep, so one could say that stress causes one to remember dreams (this is opposite to Amabelle's situation, where the stress of being on the move caused her not to recall her dreams).

So...I believe that there are three major factors for dream remembrance, at least from my experience: Stress, Length of Sleep, and Consciousness.