Someone had asked me to start a thread for beginners on how I started lucid dreaming and some tips, so here goes.  Thanks for asking!

I first learned of lucid dreaming when I was 16 from reading D. Scott Rogo's book Leaving The Body.  I was desperate at the time to learn to have OBE's.  In it are several techniques for astral projection, including a section on Monroe, but the chapter on lucid dreaming sounded intriguing to me since I've always loved remembering and writing down my dreams.  

The tool that worked for me was to clear my mind before sleep and learn to "observe" myself falling asleep.  While doing this the only thing on my mind would be the thought, "Tonight I will dream with conscious awareness."  It took only three days for this to work.  From there I went on to read Stephen LaBerge's book Lucid Dreaming which I recommend if you really want to learn lucid dreaming and all its possibilities.

Some tips I've learned and found helpful are:
1.  Train yourself to recall your dreams on a regular basis and write them down.  
2.  Have the desire to have lucid dreams to the point where you are thinking about it during the day.  Periodically throughout the day stop yourself for a moment and ask, "Am I dreaming?"  Of course you will know you are not, but this is excellent practice for training your mind to ask the same question during dreams.  The trick here is not so much to tell yourself why you are not dreaming at the moment (because you may "over-train" your analytical mind to convince yourself you are not dreaming during a dream!) but to make yourself aware of what it feels like to have conscious awareness.  You see, we can do so many things during waking life without being very consciously aware of what we do.  While we work, drive, cook, clean, watch TV, etc. our minds are on other things. We are so trained to multitask that we don't ever really just stop and think for a moment what conscious awareness feels like.  
3.Another idea for training during waking is to take notice once in a while of details.  We also don't take time to notice details of what things really look like or how we really do things.  For instance, notice to yourself that this is how I open the front door and step outside, these are the movements I make to open the fridge and take out the milk, etc.  If you do this in various situations during the day you will be training yourself to look for incongruities in your dreams.  So many times in regular dreams things just magically happen and we don't notice the strangeness of it.  But as you train yourself you will begin to see little things in dreams that will make you say, "Hmm, that is strange..." and that is the start.  The next thing that will happen is you will say, "Could I be dreaming right now?"  This will trigger you to realize your circumstances, surroundings, etc., and the next step is for you to say out loud, "I?m dreaming!"  
4.It is my feeling that saying it out loud is extremely helpful to make the bridge from regular dreaming to lucid dreaming.  You would never exclaim in waking life "I'm dreaming!" so to do it in a dream really solidifies the fact and acts like a switch. Once you say this, everything changes.  The lighting, the clarity, colors.  You will feel as if you are in another reality, and you will be.  It is a state all its own.
5.Also, when you have time one morning after awakening, try going right back to sleep while thinking "I will dream with conscious awareness" or "I must remember to tell myself I'm dreaming" (or use whatever statement you like).  This works well too since your body is already rested and dreaming will come easy.
6.I still believe that lucid dreaming is a varying form of going out of body.  Lucid dreaming is just focusing your awareness to observing that your mind is dreaming.  I believe if you tell yourself "I don't want to be dreaming right now, I'd rather focus my awareness outside of the dream state" then you will be able to truly leave your body.  I don't know how easy it is to wake yourself up from REM without actually waking yourself physically.  
7.Hugh Callaway wrote a book called Astral Projection under the pseudonym Oliver Fox.  He discovered a way to induce OBE's from lucid dreams by observing the act of a "false awakening" which is once the dream fades and you feel the pull of waking up.  You will feel awake only to discover that you know your physical body is still sleeping.  You may have a dual consciousness at this point, and this is the point where you realize you are out of body.

I hope it works for you!  Thanks for letting me share it.

Love,
Vicky

neat Vicky, I 've read the same books and experimented the same way as described. I'm working on another book about dreams, all kinds, and obes too, all of them related to human evolvement and consciousness here so appreciate another who journeys with me into these really satisfying areas, my pov. :D if not for my dreams to act as guidance, I think I should have been a real basket case. :(
the dreaming/obe landscape is far more interesting to me than physical life, yet the two realities are so deeply intertwined I've noticed as to be inseparable as we go along. to me dreaming adventures is like turning oneself inside out so that now I need a new vocabulary..darn...have to go to inventor school for that...love, alysia

lol. In some ways i find lucid dreaming more enjoyable, a lot more random things happen and you can still operate just like you were OBE. They do feel different though to me anyway.

I like that lesson vicky it really covers everything the beginner needs! Exactly the type of stuff i did when i first started out to try and get something, it does work! Just thinking about it helps and can make it work! Can't wait to hear more.

Ryan