The world of dreams

I've been trying to work out exactly how it all works. In the story, dreamland is somehow beyond us all: the Rag and Bone Man is an emissary from that world, so it's not simply inside our heads.

But I think the way it works is that dreamland is an extra dimension to the world, but one which has no form of its own. It's somehow an energy, or something basically so peculiar that we can't begin to visualise it. So to interact, it uses our own imaginations: it forms around our ideas and dreams the way pearls form around grains of sand. Everything the main character, whom I'm calling Danny (for the moment), perceives in dreamland is a combination of that other world and his own imagination.

Danny is a powerful dreamer. Highly imaginative, a daydreamer, a future poet or artist. His dreams are vivid, both sleeping and daydreaming, and he's frequently in trouble at school for not paying attention.

That's why dreamland, this other world, finds him. It uses imagination as a bridge, or a channel to this world. And through it, Danny learns lessons, faces demons, and triumphs.

Exactly how, I still have to decide...