story premise

I had this great idea for a story yesterday. The basic premise is this:

How do you tell the difference between something you remember and something you dreamed? Really, the only major difference is memory continuity -- you wake up one day, and have two distinct memories of something having just happened. Either your last day ended and you went to bed, or you had some adventure that we believe was generated by your subconscious. Most of the time your brain figures it out with the following logic: one means you should be in bed, which you are, and the other means you should be running away from Ninjas in china or something because you stole their prized statue of a green monkey. It could happen.

But during most dreams, you believe everything at face value. And you seem to lack the memory of having just gone to bed. Somehow this continuity isn't questioned.

Oh man i'm spinning off a couple of different ideas about dreams, all story worthy.

• Original idea: Every one of your dreams ends the same, you are somehow tricked into pushing a red button that sends you back to the waking world and destroys your memory of the dream. Like Groundhog Day but with a sinister puppetmaster toying with you every night to make you push this button. Except you notice a girl beginning to recurr in your dreams. Each time, it's her trying to stop you from pushing the button, as this dream world needs your help desperately, but so many times you end up pushing the button anyway (which usually erased the memory of her, but she keeps appearing in the bits you remember) The puppetmaster of this dream world is doing something bad, and you can stop him if only you could break this horrible cycle of red-button pressing. 
• Spin off 1: Every dream begins the same as well. You wake up from your bed and do something. But this memory is so mundane that it is lost.
• Spin off 2: What do sleepwalkers think when they wake up? Or hungover people when they don't entirely remember how they got there either? This seems to break my theory of memory continuity, as folks are still just as easily able to tell what was a memory and what was a dream. Well, maybe notsomuch with the drinking. hm...

So yeah i really only have one idea. but I like it. I should figure more out.