Fretting and Sore-Throating

New creative writers often develop fanciful stories that are reduced to dreams in the end... like in a Nathanial Hawthorne piece. In other words, their protagonists finally "Wake up!" and their plots are boiled down to tricks of fantasy. I often try to break them of this convention... but now I'm begging for it. When I wake tomorrow morning, please, please, please let this be some whacked anxiety dream fashioned by one of my Intro. to Creative Writing students!