An outline...

We need a spine for the story. I see it being quite episodic, which is almost dictated by the subject: you sleep, you wake, you sleep, you wake. But it still needs a strong throughline.

I had an idea for this, but I'm not sure I really want to make it as sad as this! Alec, see what you think.

My thought was that Danny's mother gets pregnant. It's all very exciting. Shortly befor she announces this impending arrival, Danny starts having his incredibly vivid – lucid – dreams. He meets the Rag and Bone Man, and sees himself in the night mirror. He enters dreamland, and is befriended by the guide character, whom for some reason I want to call Kipper. So let's use that for now.

The pregnancy continues, and Danny has some terrific adventures with Kipper. (I know, we need to say what those are – essentially it's his (and the reader's) introduction to our central notion of dreamland. The place you can do anything, but where you're not altogether in control.)

The baby comes, perhaps prematurely, and immediately there are concerns. Danny has his first dream in which Kipper dies. (Yep, Kipper is a personification of the baby.)

The baby gets very sick, and the Eden of the great rambling artistic home starts coming apart. Danny's mother is in deep distress, his father retreats into his studio.

At school, people know about the sick baby. Danny is the target for a bully, Nathan, who sees the situation as a good way to get at Danny.

Ultimately, of course, the baby dies. The story reaches its nadir. Mum and Dad in pieces. And in the dreams, Kipper's continuous, and often amusing, deaths, end with one final one. Kipper is really gone. Danny loses his friend.

From there, Danny has to find his way out. Out of the grief and blackness. He has to face his fear of death. And somehow he has to save his parents from their grief. This is where the Room of Strange Doorways comes in. Danny has to find out what's really going on with Mum and Dad. He has to go inside their heads. (Or perhaps just one of their heads.)

The final chapters are the climb away from that awful low point. The arc takes Danny, who is of course also going through the big change of puberty, through an experience of death and grief and out the other side.

I think this could all be very powerful, but I'm not sure I want to write a story quite this dark/serious. Alec, let me know what you think.