It's not every dream involving my characters that produces this reaction for me; it's something to do with the tone of the dream. These dreams are very intense, and it feels almost like I've had some kind of union with the character involved.
So of course, now I'm not sure if I should actually write the plot point my dream told me to write or not.
2. I used to be able to come up with interesting minor characters at the drop of a hat. This was about five years ago or so. It's rather interesting in that most of my plotting/writing abilities at that time were pretty awful, thus why my stories didn't get anywhere. But seriously, if I needed a personality and so forth for the janitor or the boyfriend's baby sister or whoever, I could give you their entire life story in an instant.
With my current story, however, I'm having a lot of difficulty with that. I've definitely lost my talent. Both the protagonist and antagonist seem to be developing well, but the side characters are flat as wallpaper. There are a couple that aren't bad . . . the protagonist's father is somewhat interesting, for instance. But for the most part, I can't think of anything to spruce them up.