It seems to me like conventional lucid dreaming wisdom states that the longer you sleep, the better it is for lucid dreams, because REM (dream) sleep is longer the more you sleep.

But some recent experimenting and reading on my part has led me to come up with a somewhat contradictory theory that seems new, in that I do not recall reading it before on lucid dreaming sites. It fits in with this article nicely:
Strange but True: Less Sleep Means More Dreams: Scientific American

It states:

""When someone is sleep deprived we see greater sleep intensity, meaning greater brain activity during sleep; dreaming is definitely increased and likely more vivid," says neurologist Mark Mahowald of the University of Minnesota and director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis."

"Nielsen also found that dream intensity increased with REM deprivation. Subjects who were only getting about 25 minutes of REM sleep rated the quality of their dreams between nine and eight on a nine-point scale (one being dull, nine being dynamite)."

In my view, dream vividness, dream awareness, dream recall, and lucidity (or nearness to it) are all closely related, if not the same thing. If a dream is vivid, it is the same as easily recalled. And the reason it is so vivid and memorable is because you were aware of what was going on. And the more aware you are, the more likely you are to remember to reality check or realize it is all a dream and become lucid. So these are all different ways of expressing more or less the same concept.

I have found that if I have a sleep debt, and wake myself up a few times during the night, I find it much easier to recall a detailed dream and journal it each of those awakenings, than if I had plenty of sleep previously.

I have read about REM rebound elsewhere on lucid dreaming sites, but it always seems to refer to either using alcohol, etc. to suppress REM early in the night to have a rebound later in the same night, or to refer to total sleep deprivation to force a rebound.

My theory refers to neither. Say you naturally sleep 8-9 hours a night. My theory is that (assuming you start with no sleep debt) if you sleep only, say, 6-7 hours that night, the missing REM of those last 2 or so hours rebounds the following night, meaning more recall, higher vividness, more awareness, and a higher chance of becoming lucid. If you get 6-7 hours that night also, the effect is compounded the night after that.

It still is very important to dream journal and to reality check regularly. I use an alarm to wake myself up several times in the night to journal my dreams.

Has anyone else found something like this to work for them?