The Dream Journal
Perhaps the single most important tool to create is a record of the dream experience. Collected together in one place, a series of dreams will help focus attention on and later within the dream. Getting used to writing them down will help improve recall and reveal a depth hitherto unrealised.
Keep a pen and paper well within arms reach and immediately upon waking start getting down anything and everything that comes to mind and then let go as/if you need to sleep further. I once awoke after every dream period throughout the night and in the morning had fragments from 5 dreams. It is amazing how some dreams, seemingly incomprehensible can remain with us for years and leafing back through the pages of old dream books, the dreamer was surely someone else. Weird dreams.
One feature that will emerge from persistent recall is the accuracy of memory which will assist in the reality checks necessary for Lucid Dream Induction.
The key to inducing lucid states lies in an immersion strategy that gradually trains the mind to identify the state of consciousness that the dreamer is in. Once one has read a book or two and has some feel for how other people look at their dreams then there are few ideas to bear in mind at the onset of sleep but most important is to write down the whole experience, everything you can remember immediately upon waking. Keep a notebook with a pen within arms reach. I am able to sleep with lights on or off so it doesnt bother me and I write everything, every detail as soon as I awake. Some nights I wake after a dream, write it down and go back in and repeat all night. As soon as the mind becomes active, the delicate traces are shunted out of short term memory unless you were really moved by an event. The more effort one invests in writing down the details one soon becomes aware of how much detail is actually available and how complete the dream-world is. However there are and will be inconsistencies and these are the key to the gate of Lucidity.