I want help remembering my dreams...

Sometimes, I have dreams where I can partially control them. However, I can hardly remember them when I wake up and it does not feel real at all. They're not in any detail and very vague.
However, sometimes throughout the day, I see stuff and it brings back memories of that part of the dream, but I can never remember a lot.
I've never had a lucid dream - or that I can remember - but I've tried the techniques to 'force' them on.

How can I remember my dreams fully, or are there any techniques to force Lucid dreaming?

One way to remember your dreams is to jot it down immediately after you wake up, because the moment you start doing anything in real life, your dream becomes vague. Or you can hold on to a point of your dream in your head and think it over and over again.

But how come people who have Lucid Dreams remember it for sometimes years after?
I was talking to someone the other day, and he said he remembered a dream he had over 7 years ago...

And even when I try to jot it down in the morning, I can only remember a tiny bit of it, if not anything.

Most probably he has a strong memory or the dream holds much significance to him.

I'm not a lucid dreamer so I've no ideas about lucid dreams. But I still roughly recalled a childhood dream because it was the most exciting of all the others and I hardly had any dreams when I was young.

Yeah if there is a dream which means alot and you think alot about it, the memory becomes stronger so you remember it for longer.

one thing most if not all lucid dreamers or anyone trying to have a lucid dream is a dream journal. Keep a notbook or pad and pen next to your bed so when you do have a dream you can write it down immediately after waking up. keep doing this and youll find that you remember more of your dreams. when you record your dreams try and add every detail you know about the dream. lucid dreams feel very real and are vivid so in my opinion they are easier to remember. i remember all the 5 short lucids i had from last year. they were exciting so it was hard to forget them. i don't know how true that is for the veteran dreamers who've had 10+ lucids. i hope this helped you!

You could try to keep a DJ like others have said. If you still can only remember tiny pices of your dream try waking up after each of your REM periods then jot down your dream. I gurentee that you will be able to remember most, if not all of your dream. :)

Don't worry about dreams seeming distant and vague. When you go lucid its a whole new world and will seem as real as life and will not fade the same way... that's been my experience. I've had 13 now and also have other dreams I vaguely recall or cannot quite recall, but not the LDs

Try to set times aside to purposely wake up naturally.Turn off the alarm clock, keep all people and animals out of your room, wear earplugs if you have to. If this is not possible, at least change your alarm to something less jarring than beeping or a talk show, soft music, something classical, works for me.

If this doesn't help or can't be done, I strongly second what MarineRecon said. Finding and waking up between your REM cycles is a surefire way to remember some dreams.

Something else that helps is getting to bed a little earlier than normal. It has often been said that 3:00 - 5:00 AM is the best dreaming time. So if you go to bed anytime after 12:00 AM you will not be at the proper sleep level during this time. This is something I have read about and verified for myself.

But the best thing you can do is start to regularly keep a DJ. Write in it every morning, even if you only have fragments or can only say, "Couldn't recall." The very act of writing down your dreams will cause you to remember them more. This has also been often said and is another thing I have personally experienced.
- DreamBliss