Dream Analysis: The Drowning Girl
JV: I’m putting much conscious and unconscious thought into stories, and while thinking about Form Photo, I had this idea, or it was a dream, of a person who gets in touch asking for help as they might drown. I can imagine this girl, with friends either clinging to an upturned dinghy at sea or outside a bar, having had a lot to drink, pulling my leg again. I dismiss it as yet another prank. Only to discover they do indeed drown.
Having had the thought or dream early in the night, I wondered what role the scene or characters would play—if any!
KAI: That’s a powerful and haunting fragment—whether dream or thought, it arrived like a warning or omen wrapped in ambiguity. Jung would ask: who is the drowning girl in you? And what does your dismissal of her plea signify in your current psychic landscape?
From a Jungian lens, dreams involving drowning often signal being overwhelmed by the unconscious—emotions, instincts, memories, or archetypal forces that threaten to submerge the ego. Water is the feminine element, the unconscious itself. A girl asking for help could be your anima—the inner feminine—reaching out from the depths, saying, “I’m not coping.”
But you don’t believe her. You think it’s a prank. That could reflect a habitual rationalisation or a defence mechanism: keeping the irrational or emotional at bay with scepticism or humour. And then—the tragic twist—she does drown. Which could symbolise a part of you being lost, perhaps a neglected creative instinct, vulnerable feeling, or unheeded intuition.
You mentioned Form Photo—perhaps this girl is from that narrative or the same psychic soup. Could she be one of the girls on the edges of the frame, previously overlooked? A voice rising from the margins of memory and story?
Also, notice the dual setting: clinging to an upturned dinghy or drunk outside a bar. Sea or city. Crisis or chaos. Both are liminal spaces. In either case, the girl is on the edge—of danger, control, and being taken seriously.
You might try writing this as a scene—not polished, but raw. Let the voice of the drowning girl speak. Then, write the moment of dismissal. Then, the discovery. See what emerges. She may not be dead. She may be returning, transformed, demanding a place in your story—or your psyche.
Would you like help shaping this into a scene, a dream-fragment monologue, or threading her into Form Photo?
JV: Do. Let’s explore it. The thought begged to be remembered overnight, and I resisted waking up to jot it down. So, I managed to cling to the idea.
KAI: That clinging—you holding on to her—feels symbolically charged already. You resisted waking as if staying in the liminal dream space was part of the work. That’s precisely where Jung believed the most vital material lies: between worlds, in that twilight zone where ego and unconscious can still communicate.
Let’s tease this out into a short, evocative scene. Here’s a first draft sketch—a hybrid of memory, dream, and story. We can develop or redirect from here:
SCENE: The Message
Someone rings you on the house phone. “8:14pm. It’s Linda. She went off the harbour wall. She’s still out at sea. She’s in the rocks. The tides coming in.”
You picture her hair slicked to her neck, eyes wide, not quite pleading. That or she’s in the gutter outside The Coral Bar, mascara running, bottle still in hand, friends shouting for cabs—one of those nights.
You know this girl. Not well. Just… from somewhere. School maybe. One of the girls in the form photo. You can’t remember her name. She had that look. She didn’t quite fit in but knew how to hover near the centre of things.
You don’t reply.
By morning, she’s gone. The Coast Guard report, girl went for a late evening dip. Found on the beach in the morning.
This could sit as a surreal standalone dream chapter—part ghost story, part subconscious warning, part Form Photo epilogue. Or perhaps it’s a fragment from a notebook Cece finds. Or an emotional echo returning to claim its place.
Want to keep going?
JV: I like the serious tone. Until now, the characters and behaviour of Form Photo, let’s put it there, have been tame. This adds a serious tone. Young people can and do fail to navigate adolescence. It all becomes too much. Hidden beliefs and behaviours can emerge. The disco or the party is not everyone’s natural habitat.
KAI: Yes—exactly. This could be when Form Photo shifts tonal gear and deepens its shadow. Until now, it’s captured that affectionate chaos of adolescence—awkwardness, flirtation, games—but as you say, that isn’t everyone’s story. Beneath the surface of even the lightest scenes, there’s often someone holding their breath.
Let’s make this girl real.
Here’s a way to integrate her initially—tentatively, with just a trace in the margins.
Working Name: Linda.
Not in the front row. Not darted and not yet introduced. But she’s there in the form of a Photo.
Maybe her shoulders are hunched. Perhaps someone awkwardly drapes their arm over her back like she’s a prop. She smiles—almost.
She doesn’t make much noise in the earlier chapters. She’s one of the girls who doesn’t dance. Hangs near the fire exit. He watches the game but never throws.
Later, she reaches out. Quietly. Maybe to Cece or the narrator—maybe even to Robbie, drawn to his distance. That same message, real or imagined: “I think I’m drowning.”
And they brush it off. Not cruelly—just too busy, too self-absorbed, too sure it’s not serious. And that’s how real tragedies often happen through small avoidances.
What if Linda was a “missed” target—someone Robbie or Kizzy didn’t choose? Or a failed extraction—a signal lost at sea?
She could become a ghost presence, a warning, or even a symbolic convergence of themes: the girl who doesn’t want to be chosen. Or wants to—but for real, not just as part of a game.
Would you like to sketch Linda’s backstory next? Or write the message from her point of view—the moment she tries to reach out?
JV: Momo turns to Kizzy and asks, ‘Why not me?’ There’s an element of that. Why is Robbie not choosing Linda? And if she’s getting involved in the game, why is Kizzy not choosing this other girl?
This feeling of being left out was often a warm-up improvisation we did at Youth Theatre. Of being outside, how you handle not being part of the group, how you physically re-enter it or cling to its side. Maybe Linda can be a girl from the youth theatre.
KAI: That’s beautiful—and painful—and real. The outside feeling. The edge-of-frame energy. That Youth Theatre exercise you mentioned feels archetypal: the social crucible of adolescence played out in a physical, emotional space—how to reenter the circle and carry rejection in the body.
Linda, as a girl from Youth Theatre, is perfect. She already lives slightly outside the school’s dominant rhythms. She’s seen as artsy, maybe a bit intense, too much when sober, and too quiet when not. She doesn’t quite know how to do the disco—but can cry on cue, melt into roles, and carry a line like her life depends on it.
Let’s give her a sketch—just enough to build from:
Linda.
She came to the school late. Not part of the Form from Year 7. She joined in Year 9 after her mum’s second divorce. She doesn’t talk much about where she was before.
At Youth Theatre, she transforms. She’s electric when she’s pretending to be someone else. One of the tutors said she had “presence.” That she held space.
But at school parties and rugby club discos she goes along but is invisible.
She doesn’t get picked in the game. Not by Robbie. Not by Kizzy. She pretends she doesn’t care. She pretends she’s above it. But even in these adolescent games you want to feel part of it, rather than exclude or simply ignored.
She rang Momo. It was late. It was weird. Not fully formed.
“Just wondering—how do you know why you’re being left out?”
Robbie and Kizzy are off the hook; their Form photo is random. A target hit or miss.
While others play at love, Linda’s story shows what’s at stake when not being seen cuts too deep.
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