WHAT IS A MONOLOGUE?
- A monologue expresses the thoughts of a person.
- A monologue must have a beginning, a middle, and an end.
- A monologue should always reveal something, whether it’s a story, a secret, the answer to a question, or an emotional outpouring.
PART THREE of this series on write monologues will focus on emotion.
It is essential that there is an emotional journey in your monologue. Just as there must be a journey in the story from beginning to end, there must be an emotional journey: a change, a development, a transfer from one emotional state to another. There is nothing worse than a monologue that chooses a single emotional state and stays there for the entire piece! Variety is the key.
What does that mean?
Think of your monologue as a roller coaster. There are ups and downs, peaks and valleys. That’s what makes roller coasters exciting, the changes in the ride from start to finish. The mistake many writers make is thinking that intense equals interesting. That if there are a lot of exclamation points, the audience will get involved. Nothing could be further than the truth. The public does not like to be yelled at. You can certainly shock an audience, you can have intense moments. But the longer that intensity lasts, the more your audience will withdraw. More will think about their dry cleaning or their work. Yelling pushes the audience out of the world of the play, which you definitely don’t want.
Also, we as human beings never feel just one emotion at a time. We are happy/sad. Embarrassed/angry. The more variety in the emotion of the monologue, the more three-dimensional the character, the more connection with your audience. This is how you engage and keep an audience: connect through emotion, don’t lead through emotion.
Use this exercise to practice changing emotion within a monologue.
EXERCISE
Write a monologue in which a character watches a parade. Write back to explore the following emotional journeys:
- The character starts ANGRY and ends HAPPY.
- The character starts SAD and ends PROUD.
- The character begins FEARFUL and ends JOYFUL.
- The character begins JEALOUS and ends with PITY.
Every writer wants to write a monologue that brings the house down. That show-stopping moment that brings the audience to the edge of their seats. How is that achieved? It’s just as easy to go the other way, writing a monologue that completely slows down the pace with selfish, indulgent “I remember when” writing.
The answer can often be found in the character’s mind.I need to talk.’ Why does the character need to speak? What is happening that prompts the character to speak? Because right now? Why not yesterday or tomorrow? How are they going for that need? What happens to the character emotionally if he succeeds? What happens to the character emotionally if he fails?
The more you determine the need to speak, the most urgent moment. And the urgency will draw an audience at a time.
EXERCISE
- Take your monologue from Parade.
- Determine the best ‘need to talk’ scenario for your character.
- Determine the emotional quality that best represents this ‘need’ for the beginning of the monologue.
- Decide whether or not the character is successful in achieving their ‘need’ at the end of the monologue.
- Determine the emotional quality that best represents your success or failure.
- Rewrite the monologue to show all of the above.
Make every monologue you write an emotional, urgent, need-to-talk moment.
The next article in this series on write monologues will explore language structure. All characters must speak in a specific language that illuminates their personality. This is especially important in monologues, where we focus on one character for more than a few lines.