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In this clip, we're going to talk about how to write monologues. Now, the dialogue is
all the spoken words, that's the dialogue. And the monologue is actually a part of the
dialogue. But, basically, a monologue is a person speaking alone. It can be anything
from a short paragraph on up. And, if you've ever seen a Shakespeare play, you know what
a monologue is, because in most Shakespeare plays, there are huge, very long monologues.
You can have a character delivering a monologue and, maybe he's delivering it to another person
and the person can interject a couple of lines. The person might be saying, "I can't believe
this," or whatever the lines are. And, even though it's broken up, still all those paragraphs
that the person is saying is still considered a monologue. Now, a monologue really pulls
in focus to what this character is saying, so a lot of times the monologue will be after
a build up of the dialogue. A big confession or a character talking about his or her life,
or some certain incident or some important belief that they have. Now, when you go to
write a monologue, it's important to know where your character is directing this monologue.
Usually, the character will be directing it to another person or a group of people. So
your character here is confessing to her best friend some terrible things that she's done,
or is running a business meeting and talking to several people at the same time. Now, another
option is a person can talk to him or herself. And so that may be more like I'm getting out
of bed and I'm going, "I have to go to this lousy job today. I can absolutely not stand
this. What am I doing?" And I'm really just talking to myself, there's no one else there.
Another possibility is your character could be directing the monologue to an imaginary
person. So I might be here, oh, imagining this wonderful girl at work who I want, I'm
going to ask out to lunch today and I'm practicing. I'm picturing that she's there and I'm practicing
how I'm going to ask her out. Now another place it could be directed to is an animal
or an inanimate object and sort of rare, but that's a possibility. So, my wife has taken
the kids off for a vacation and left me at home and I'm sitting here staring at the cat
and I might go, "Hey, it's you and me, pal." And I might start talking to the cat. Or I
might look over and go, "Wow, you have gotten me through some really tough times." And I'm
talking to my football that I carried for a twenty yard touchdown years ago. And, of
course, another possibility is to break the fourth wall and you're talking directly to
the audience. Now, if you're, the style of your play allows for that, that's perfect.
In most of my plays, I, we never broke the fourth wall, but in "My One Ticket to Paradise,"
I had the host talking to the audience at the very beginning, kind of setting up a personal
joke with them, getting on their side, in that he's going to be manipulating these customers
to come in to buy a lottery ticket. So he's sharing a personal joke with them. And audience
participation can be really wonderful. Another example is there's a theater of the absurd
play, "Mystery Play," and it's very creative in that as each character is being poisoned
by one of the other characters, as soon as they die, and we see that they're totally
dead there, they wake up wearing a clown nose and stand up and deliver a monologue about
their life and what they really always had wanted to do. So, as you can see, a monologue
can really tie things together. Make sure you know where that monologue is going to
be directed and use it to really enhance your play.