I’m just starting, and I do actually remember my dreams a bit better now (I procrastinated and just started on my DJ 2 nights ago 
)my first entry is 2 words, 2nd is a big paragraph. But like the the subject says, how vivid can it get? I’m starting to be a little discouraged, but trying not to be!
dont be… i started like you and now i write down dreams that are so long that sometimes i just write the theme if i dont have time to write them…
i often write down a couple of pages in my diary…
so be patient and DON’T stress it… when i started enjoying
dreams no matter how many i have them or are they about something i wanted them to be or not, my recall increased a lot!
enjoy!
I Used to remember them quite Well. Since I Came here all this trying for a LD Has Made my Dream Recall go down. I Can only Remember snipits. But i’m slowly getting better.
that is what i said… i found one post here somewhere that totally changed my point of view on the subject… you will have enough nights in your life to lucid dream, dont hurry yourself cause it is bad! explore your dreams, make them a part of your life!
when i first tried to get an ld i was totally into it ant it was all i could think about and it did me no good! now i enjoy my normal dreams and what they are telling me and when i get my first LD i will be very happy, but i am not down untill that day!
do the diary, do the rcs, think about dreams , and have fun with all this, including great people on this forum!
good luck!
Thanks! I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone say “enjoy normal dreams” on here yet, this is a LD forum after all, but that makes a lot of sense.
hey try using a fancy-coloured pen that you won’t use anywhere else in your dream journal. It works wonders apparently.
If i intensely think about the dream, i usually remember it for years.
I remember a dream, in detail, that I had when I was four. It was my first lucid dream.
It really depends how I wake up and when. If I am woken up in a dream I tend to forget it before I can even pick up a pen. But if left to wake naturally and close to the last dream I can usually recall it in as much detail as when I had the dream.
The more you note down your dreams, the more details you will remember, in some cases I can close my eyes and replay the dream in my mind in perfect detail, very vividly.
I can remember dreams the same as I would a memory from when I was awake. They are both just memories.
When I was younger my dreams were veeery vivid. But now they aint that vivid, but I still remember some.
Edit: typo
It varies alot for me. Last night the dream I had (“Am I Dead” in my dream journal) was incredibly vivid. One of the most intense dreams ive had in a long time.
So far my LDs have not been very vivid, and I have almost no control. But I get better with every LD 
My dreams usually aren’t vivid at all but if I write them down I can remember them for a lot longer than if I hadn’t.
It varies.
Most dreams i remember are kinda short.
But they are realistic. That is, unless everything is watercolors or something.
Anyway, they are very vivid, but still have that "dreamy"ishness to them.
Anyone know what i mean? Umm…
dreamyishness
my recall has gone up by just a little bit b/c of the DJ
i mean, before i wasn’t trying to remember my dreams
i think my recall is great tho
here is what i do… if i wake up during the night after a dream i write down notes like a few words that will trigger my recall of that dream… when i wake up i usually, if the dream wasnt something spectacular, dont remember anything
and think " oh no, no dreams today…"
then i look at the notes and like something hits me in a head and i remember the whole dream instantly!! then, or later i write it down, mark the dream signs and interesting things and give a TITLE to the dream… i find this very important cause it gives like a special meaning to a dream… i make up some funny TITLE like if it was a movie…use your imagination!!! i find this very useful!!!
during the day when i hear or think about something it usually triggers my memory to recall another dream that i totally forgot about and didnt even have a notes about it…
so usually i wake up with notes about dream or two and during the day another dream comes to me…
there are also notes that dont do the work, i just forgot what that was about, and also i sometimes remember that i mad some notes about something but when i teke a look i find no notes at all… FA and a dream about taking notes…i guess that would be a great time to practise myself to do a RC!!!
so there you go!!
i hope it helps!
I’ve found that WBTB can really be exploited to an extreme degree. Since WBTB is my prime technique, dream recall comes cheap. I have at least one dream for every 30 mins. of sleep, far more than I care to write down unless a dream really was fascinating. Thing is, clarity is usually bad, and I blame it on the alarm clock that wakes me up. If I were to teach myself to wake up on my own instead, it would be a different story.
Most of the time I can’t remember my dreams vividly, until a couple of nights ago when I had a massive ND where I designed a canal for ships to go underneath Alaska. I woke up about a year into the dream (at least it felt that long) thought “This can’t be real.” Then I realized it was and thought, “Oh noes, my life’s work!” Then I realized that it would have been a huge economic failure anyway and calmed down a bit. I was angry at myself because it included escalators; a huge dreamsign for me.
try doing WBTB without the alarm clock my body wakes up at 4 in the morning every morning instinctively almost annoyingly
i love my body