I’ve found a few techniques work quite well for me:

* Waking up in the night – Commonly referred to as the “wake back to bed” method. You’re somewhere between waking and sleeping and it’s much easier to slip into a dream.
* Reality checks – Checking I’m awake when doing things that appear in my dreams. Holding your nose and trying to breath through it is a great check, although it’s a little freaky when you’re dreaming because you can still breath! Checking your watch and asking “am I dreaming” is also quite useful.

You’re right about locations and events repeating. I have several places and themes in my dreams that keep appearing. Missing maths homework seems to crop up very regularly, which is strange as I left school many moons ago. However, this is useful for me as it lets me know I’m dreaming.

I’ve had a few very strong dreams too, including one where I’m falling out of an airplane. Not good, considering I was due to fly a few weeks after I had the dream. It’s one of the few dreams I’ve had where I wasn’t aware that I was dreaming but it felt completely and utterly real (and terrifying). At least with a little lucid practice you can change these dreams into something less frightening.

All the best in having your first lucid dream. It takes a while and a lot of practice, but it’s an experience unlike anything else and well worth it!

Sometimes I’ll have a dream where I’ll remember in the dream that I’ve been in that particular dream locale before, almost as if it’s another alternate life or something.

I don’t usually go lucid with dreams like this, but that would be awesome!

One trick I learned, and experience has borne this out, is interrupted sleep. Sometime between your 4th and 6th hour of sleep or so, wake up and do something for an hour. Obviously it shouldn’t be too strenous, so reading and or writing are great choices. After the hour, go back to sleep. I’ve had incredibly lucid dreams from this, although not with any control of what I was doing in them.