Chances are if you become interested in your dreams or make a conscious decision to pay more attention to them, your dream recall will improve. This is because you are giving your subconscious a message that you are open to your dreams and the messages contained in them. However, there are also ways in which to encourage dream recall through dream incubation, which is basically techniques to give extra messages to your subconscious that you wish to remember your dreams.

A really important method to improve dream recall, as well as being vital in working with and interpreting dreams, is keeping a dream diary. Quite simply the more you write your dreams down, the more you will remember them. To do this you would get yourself a notebook to keep beside your bed. When you first awaken write whatever you remember down about what you were dreaming no matter how scant it might be. Even if its just an impression, feeling, sound or colour that you remember, write that down. The more you do this the more you will begin to remember. It is important to do this immediately upon awaking as dream recall fades really fast. You can wake from a particularly vivid dream and think you will have no problem remembering it and decide to go back to sleep or get up and do something else first and be surprised to realize all memory has faded. By being dedicating to recording your dreams, eventually you may start to wake up remembering dreams in the middle of the night as well as upon waking in the morning. Some people wake up multiple times in a night and fill pages and pages with dream images.

Sometimes people like to date their dream diary for the next morning before they do to bed to give an extra reminder to their brain that they intend to remember. Anything that is a sort of ritual or intention to remembering dreams will probably enhance your dream recall. Some people say a little mantra or prayer about remembering dreams before they fall asleep, but usually just getting yourself a notebook will be intention enough. After that it is just practice and diligence.

As for figuring out how to write fairly legibly in dark, some people have found setting up some sort of ruler system helps. For example if you have chosen a spiral ring notebook as a dream diary, you can use some sort of straight edge to line up to every second spiral as you move down to keep your writing from running into itself in the dark. For others a small book light or flashlight works fine and with practice doesn't seem to wake them so much that they lose recall. Some people find writing their dreams down doesn't work as well as recording them in a little bedside recorder, while others find this wakes them too much. As long as you aren't disturbing your bed partner too much, just experiment and see what works best for you. Another strange tip seems to be to try and write the dream down on the side you woke up on, whether turning over wakes you up too much or for another reason, often turning can lessen recall. The basic idea is to try not to wake up too much and to get whatever you can recorded as fast as possible before details fade.