Dream twists just spoil our senses of disbelief. I can see how that can be excetuted carelessly, but if done for the need of showing what the main character wants or fears most then maybe it would be the better way of involving the trope.

My story is about the issues between good-layer Adrian and his brother Isaac. Coming to the climax, there is a brief but painful sequence where Adrian finds Isaac has shot himself together with Adrian’s wife Noelle;

The deal with the brother characters are several issues such as Isaac’s own wife cheating and his paranoid suggestions about her ‘sneaking around at night’, whereas the tension building up with Noelle who is going through clinical depression is a subplot.

The importance is that when the dream is revealed and that it never happened, it is very well shown to the reader that from the real events of the story, Adrian is genuinely so afraid that the two people he loves very much will come together and ‘free’ themselves from their misery if he doesn’t negotiate with them first.

Should this be a good strategy?