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Issue 28 - Writing the Monologue

Welcome!

In this playwriting issue, we're going to take a look at how you write the perfect monologue. Exercises galore!

In This Issue

• PODCAST & VIDEOS
  Theatrefolk publishers record their adventures.
• INTRO
  An introduction to the newsletter.
• WARM UPS
  Get the creative juices flowing.
• SECTION ONE
  The Story.
• SECTION TWO
  The Character.
• SECTION THREE
  The Emotion.
• SECTION FOUR
  Language Structure.
• SECTION FIVE
  Descriptive Writing.
• SECTION SIX
  The Unexpected.
• SECTION SEVEN
  Efficient Writing.
• SECTION EIGHT
  Put it All Together.
• SECTION NINE
  Answering Questions.
• SECTION TEN
  Bonus.
• SHOUT BLOG
  Lindsay and Kristin talk about the song My Brother Andy.
• WHAT'S NEW?
  We have new scripts coming out!
• CONFERENCE ALERT
  Meet us in person.
• IN THE NEXT ISSUE
  What you can expect next.
• MYSPACE
  More places to reach Theatrefolk.
• STAY IN TOUCH
  Contact Info/Read Our Blog.

Podcasts and Video

Keep up with the comings and goings of Theatrefolk on our blog.
Listen to a new podcast from the Georgia State Thespian conference.

Intro

What Is A Monologue?

• A monologue expresses the thoughts of one person.
• A monologue must have a beginning, middle and an end.
• A monologue should always reveal something – be it a story, a secret, an answer to a question, or an emotional outpouring.

In life, we don't speak in monologue. There's no point we turn to our mother, father, brother, sister, best friend, girlfriend, boyfriend and start talking about that smell, that memory, that event.

In the theatre, the monologue can be a great gift. It's a gift to the audience to look up on that stage and see inside the thoughts a human being. For the great monologues are private moments, secrets, emotions, heartbreaks, wonders.

Keeping that in mind, it's no easy feat to write a powerful monologue. There's a lot of dreck out there: rambling "do you remember when's" of past tense cobbled together into sentences.

This month we have an exercise-only issue. You can't talk about writing the perfect monologue: you have to write it!

Warm Ups

Warm up exercises are extremely useful. Use them at the start of class, as the first writing of the day, as a break when writer's block sets in. They act as a pressure-free way to immerse the writer into the world of the work. Sometimes it's real hard to find the motivation to write, so you have to do something to create a creative atmosphere.

Here are some guidelines:

• Time Limit: Set a time limit. No longer than ten minutes. Five minutes is good. The idea is the writer strives to finish the task within the time limit. Push the writing.
• Encourage stream of consciousness: Stream of consciousness writing is an outpouring of thought from the brain to the page. Don't worry about the quality of writing, don't worry about formatting, that's not the purpose. Get in the habit of putting the pen on the paper and do not stop writing until the time is up.
• Do not self censor: Warm ups should never be censored. The purpose is to use the time to write without boundaries. If no ideas come, write about that. If the writing goes off on a tangent, don't worry about it. Go with the tangent. Create a clear passage from the brain to the page and never over think! Thinking often leads directly to self-censorship.

The Warm Ups

• Write a monologue in which a character says goodbye to an organ. It can be any organ. Decide why the organ is leaving.
• Write a monologue about the best lunch a character has ever had.
• Write a monologue about a superhero who hates their superpower.
• Write a monologue where the character tells someone a secret.
• Write a monologue based on a word. Open the dictionary and find a random word, have a word on the blackboard for everyone to use, open the newspaper, a novel, have a list to choose from.
• Write a monologue where the first line is: 'I know you won't believe this, but I'm coming home.'
• Write a monologue where the character is lying to someone they love.
• Write a monologue where the character describes their favourite holiday moment.
• Write a monologue where the character describes their worst holiday moment.
• Write a toast. The character giving the toast hates the person they are toasting. Where the character is in love with the person they are toasting. Where the character doesn't actually know the person they're toasting.
• Write a monologue where the character stands on the steps of the house they are moving out of. They have lived in that house their whole lives.
• Write a monologue where a teenager comes home after curfew and is trying to explain why to their parents.
• Write a monologue where a parent is waiting for a teenager to come home after curfew.
• Write a monologue from the perspective of a stone which has sat by the side of the road for 50 years.

Section One: The Story

The story of a monologue must have purpose. There must be a reason for a character to speak at length! Here are some monologue exercises that focus on storytelling. Keep monologues to half a page.

1. Dealing with the Past

These are very common monologue stories. To illuminate something that is currently happening in the script, a character relates a past story.

The problem with these types of monologues is when a character says, "I remember." "I remember" creates an insular experience; it's something that only happened to the character and it's difficult for the audience to share in the event.

Another problem with past monologues is the use of the past tense. When something has happened in the past, it's over, it's done. Using the present tense is much more alive and active.

EXERCISE

• Write a monologue where the first line is 'I remember when…' and uses the past tense.
• Re-write the monologue, taking out all mentions of 'remembering.'
• Re-write the monologue in the present tense.
• Read aloud the first version and then the third. Discuss the differences.

2. Making the Story Count

If a character tells a story, "I went to the grocery store and THIS JUST HAPPENED," there has to be something besides the base story going on for the audience. There has to be more. The story has to show something: character flaw, a plot point we didn't know, a lie, a romance, and so on.

EXERCISE

We'll be using this scenario as a base for most of the upcoming exercises.

• Write a monologue where the character tells a story about going to a parade.
• Re-write the monologue so that by telling the story, the audience sees the character is a liar.
• Re-write the monologue so that by telling the story, the audience sees the character is heartbroken.
• Re-write the monologue so that by telling the story, the audience sees the character is in love.

3. Beginning to End

Monologues must have a beginning, middle and end. Not only that, there has to be a journey, a change, a shift from the beginning to the end of the monologue. This exercise focuses on creating an extreme change!

EXERCISE

Below are three unrelated beginning/endings. Write a monologue to connect each beginning/ending.

• I got the job! / The fish are dead. So am I.
• You disgust me. / I love you more than anything.
• I'm going to Nigeria. / This coffee is gross.

Section Two: The Character

Vivid characters create vivid monologues. Will you use all these details in the monologue? Of course not. But the more you know about them, the more specifically you'll be able to write for them.

You're going to create a character. Use this character for as many of the upcoming exercises as possible.

1. Character Profile

The amount of details you can come up with for a character profile are limitless. Basically, all the small pieces of information that go into making you, should be created for a character.

EXERCISE

Decide on the following:

• Full Name. Age.
• Family Situation.
  • e.g. only child, brothers, sisters, two parents, single parent home
• Relationship Situation.
  • e.g. married, divorced, single, boyfriend/girlfriend, still living at home
• Living Situation.
  • e.g. urban, rural, house, rental apartment
• Describe Their Bedroom.
  • e.g. we can learn a lot by how a person lives
• A Childhood memory.
• A Secret.
• A favourite food and a least favourite food.

2. Character Questions:

Questions are an excellent tool to take writing to the next level: they are something you can answer! Ask you character questions and see what you learn about them.

EXERCISE

Answer the following questions about the character:

• What does this character want in the next five minutes?
• In the next five hours?
• In the next five days?
• In the next five years?
• What do they want for themselves?
• For their family?
• For their loved ones?
• For the town/city they live in?
• For the country? For the world?

Discuss the discrepancies in the answers (and there should be some!). Every person has wants both big and small and often those wants contradict each other. This is what makes them three-dimensional and human.

EXERCISE

• Now that you know the character, re-write the monologue where the character talks about going to a parade. What can you do to re-write the monologue so it clearly shows the character you've just created?
• Make the listener in the monologue someone from the character profile.

3. The Need to Speak

In every monologue a character must 'need to speak.' Otherwise, why is the monologue there? In every monologue you write, you must determine the need for the character to speak. What drives the character? Is there anything that stands in the way of the character's need to speak?

EXERCISE

• Look at your Parade Monologue. Re-write the monologue to give the character a definite 'need to speak.' Choose one from the list below or create your own.

NOTE: The character doesn't have to successfully get out this need. Maybe they need to speak but in the end they're too afraid, or they change their mind, or there is something in the way of their need. Obstacles are good! Flaws make excellent material.

• Define the need, and then based on the character you've created decide if they are able to go through with it.
  • The character needs to reveal a secret to the listener.
  • The character needs to prove something to the listener.
  • The character needs to reveal they love the listener.
  • The character needs to reveal they hate the listener.
  • The character needs to stand up to the listener.

Section Three: The Emotion

It is essential that there is emotion in your monologue. And just as there needs to be a journey in the story from the beginning to the end, there needs to be an emotional journey. There's nothing worse than a one note emotional monologue! Variety is the key.

EXERCISE

• Take your parade monologue and re-write it with the following emotional journeys:
  • The character starts MAD and ends HAPPY.
  • The character starts SAD and ends PROUD.
  • The character starts FEARFUL and ends JOYFUL.
  • The character starts JEALOUS and ends with COMPASSION.

How do we find intense emotion? The answer can often be found in the character's 'need to speak.' What is their need? How do they go for that need? What happens to the character emotionally if they succeed? What happens to the character emotionally if they fail?

EXERCISE

• Take your Parade monologue.
• Determine on the best 'need to speak' scenario for your character.
• Determine the emotional quality that best represents this 'need' for the beginning of the monologue.
• Decide if the character succeeds or fails in achieving their 'need' at the end of the monologue.
• Determine the emotional quality that best represents their success or failure.
• Re-write the monologue to show all of the above.

Section Four: Language Structure

All characters should speak in a specific language that illuminates their personality. This is especially important in monologues, where we focus on a character for more than a couple of lines. When creating a language for a character think about the sentence structure: sentence length, contractions, vocabulary, predominant punctuation.

EXERCISE

This exercises focuses on the structure, rather than content. For this first exercise do not use the Parade Monologue character.

• Write a monologue where the character speaks in one word sentences.
• Write a monologue where the character is very verbose. Use long, long sentences. The sentences should take up two lines at least!
• Write a monologue where the character speaks in one- and two-syllable syllable words only.
• Write a monologue where the character speaks mainly in three and four syllable words.
• Write a monologue where the character uses no contractions.
• Write a monologue where the character's dialogue is littered with slang.

EXERCISE

Now that you've explored a variety of structure styles, go back to your Parade Monologue.

• Looking at the character, their situation, and their environment, decide on the language structure of your character.
• Re-write the Parade monologue to reflect the specific language of the character.

Section Five: Descriptive Writing

When you write a monologue, all the audience has is the words and their imagination. The writer must be able to create images with their words which will come alive in the audience's mind.

EXERCISE

• Write a monologue where the character describes a sunset. The listener of the monologue is blind and has never seen a sunset. Make sure this is a monologue and not a narrative paragraph. There must be a defined speaker (who speaks in the first person) and listener.

EXERCISE

• Listen to a piece of music. Write a monologue where the character is listening to the same piece of music. What does it bring out of him or her?

EXERCISE

• Re-write the Parade Monologue using the five senses. Don't worry if they're not all suitable for your final product. You'll get a chance to take those out later. For this exercise focus on using all five senses in the monologue.

Section Six: The Unexpected

Always remember you are writing drama and not real life. Telling a story about a parade may happen in real life, but in theatre, there must be a journey, a change, a shift, a twist. We should get much more out of the monologue than a story about a parade. There should always be something unexpected to make the audience sit straight up in their seats.

EXERCISE

Do not use the Parade Monologue for this exercise.

• Write a monologue where a person enters a room.
• Define who the person is, what the room is and why are in the room.
• Once this is defined, the character pulls an object out of their briefcase, bag, purse. It's something that doesn't belong but you must incorporate into the monologue:
  • Object List: Golf ball, Mango, Teddy bear, stopped watch, smooth stone, postage stamp, can opener, Miniature Empire State Building, Tea bag, Chinese slipper.

EXERCISE

Do not use the Parade Monologue for this exercise.

• Write a monologue where a character is sitting on a dock at midnight, talking to a loved one.
• Rewrite this monologue where the loved one is sitting beside the character is a dead body.

EXERCISE

• Look at the Parade Monologue.
• Keeping in mind the character, the character's 'need to speak,' the listener, the specific language, add something unexpected.

Section Seven: Efficient writing.

An efficient lean monologue is always going to be more effective than a rambling bloated monologue. Monologues do not have to be long! Establish what the character needs to accomplish in the monologue and set out to show this in the least number of sentences possible.

EXERCISE

Do not use the Parade Monologue for this exercise.

• Write a monologue that is one page long.
• Re-write the monologue and cut ten sentences. Strive to keep the essence of story and character.
• Re-write the monologue and cut ten more sentences. Strive to keep the essence of story and character.
• The final version of the monologue is ten sentences long or less. Strive to keep the essence of story and character.

EXERCISE

• Look at the Parade Monologue.
• Cut at least five sentences.
• Can you cut more? Can you cut ten? What is the least number of sentences you need to efficiently and still effectively share the character's 'need to speak?'

Section Eight: Put it All Together.

• Write out a clean copy of the Parade Monologue.
• Consider everything we've explored in the exercises and strive to include an element of each.
• At the end, there should be a specific character, with a specific language, speaking in the present tense, on an emotional journey. The monologue should be efficiently written with something unexpected to make the audience really pay attention.

Section Nine: Answering Questions.

As I've said before, questions are an excellent tool to move your writing forward. Now that you have the Parade Monologue exactly where you want it, answer these final questions. By this point the answers should come easily!

• Who is the character speaking to?
• Why are they speaking to them?
• What has the character been holding inside?
• Why is it important to speak at this exact moment in time?
• What will happen after they’re finished speaking?
• How will this monologue affect the character?
• How will the monologue affect the listener?

Section Ten: Bonus!

10 Tips for writing an award winning monologue. Check out this website!

Shout Blog

This month we're going to talk about the song 'My Brother Andy.'

Lindsay - Lyrics

'My Brother Andy' is sung by Kate near the end of the First Act and reprised at the end of the Second Act. It's a tough song for the actor: lyrically it's a raw, emotional song and musically she sings alone without any other vocal support.

Kate presents as a happy, positive, chatty, everybody knows her kind of girl. She's the kind of girl that comes across so strongly everyone thinks they know her: she seems happy, so she must be happy, and further to that, she must have the perfect life. Ariane calls her 'Pollyanna' more than once.

Of course, no one has the perfect life. Everyone has a problem or a secret; some hide it better than others. Ariane for example, seems to go out of her way to look miserable. Kate goes out of her way to look happy, despite what she may be hiding.

When another character tells Kate that she's 'lucky' because she doesn't have the same problems as Ariane, we learn, in fact, she just might: 'My Brother Andy' is about Kate's older brother. He's a drug addict who clearly has had a destructive effect on his family:

Before the needle war,
The punch, the kick, the roar.
The lies he told,
The money he stole,
And every time, the very last crime, promises grimed.
That's what he did.

Lyrically I really strove for lean, lean storytelling. I wanted to create images with the fewest words possible. I'm especially proud of 'needle war' and 'Promises grimed.' I think they show exactly what was going on with Andy, in only four words!

This is an important song, because it shows the audience that the 'perfect' girl is dealing with very real problems. It's a moment only between character and audience – no one else in the play knows about Kate's brother.

It also shows that perhaps Kate's not so vastly different from Ariane after all. This idea is specifically shown during the reprise of the song. Here the tables are turned; Ariane is the one who must stop Kate from making a very bad choice. Ariane must be the positive friend.

In earlier drafts of the play, Kate lashed out at Ariane in this moment with a big monologue. But, this is a musical! Any important emotions must be revealed in song. Now, Kate's feelings come out in the reprise with new lyrics.

Everything's a mess,
Faking happiness.
The end of my rope,
I feel no hope.

It's a powerful moment.

Kristin - Music

My Brother Andy was one of the toughest to get started with because it was one voice on its own.

It needed to be simple melodically but it needed to feel like a song; If it was too simple it would be boring. I liked the idea of the melody continually rising and falling, like Andy's life. I also liked that at the end of verses when Kate says 'that's what he said' the melody doesn't resolve. It's almost a musical question.

When I heard it sung for the first time, it confirmed our ideas that the song needed to be simple. The music informs the emotions: the anger, the sadness the frustration. She doesn't have to cry, the music does it for her.

That's the thing about doing musicals. Songs occur where the emotions move into such a powerful place that they must be sung. The music serves the emotions. You don't have to act songs. It's all there in the music and the lyrics.

What's New

We've got new scripts and new writers! Check out these new additions to the Theatrefolk catalogue: A Box of Puppies by Billy Houck, and Upon a Sea of Dreams: A Journey on the Titanic by Kathleen Donnelly.

Conference Alert

Here's our upcoming conference schedule. If you're attending, please drop by and say hi!

• NCTAE - North Carolina Theatre Arts Educators Fall Sharing 2010 Monroe, NC
  Sep 18, 2010 to Sep 19, 2010
• Educational Theatre Association,Annual Conference New York
  Sep 30, 2010 to Oct 4, 2010
• FATE Conference
  Oct 16, 2010 to Oct 16, 2010
• CODE Conference Niagara on the Lake Queens Landing
  Oct 29, 2010 to Oct 31, 2010
• Texas Thespians
  Nov 18, 2010 to Nov 20, 2010
• Missouri Thespians
  Jan 5, 2011 to Jan 9, 2011
• 2011 TETA Conference Houston, Texas
  Jan 27, 2011 to Jan 31, 2011
• Florida Junior Thespians
  Feb 11, 2011 to Feb 12, 2011
• Florida Thespians
  Mar 16, 2011 to Mar 20, 2011

In the Next Issue

It's the What's New issue! Learn about the new plays in our catalogue and read interviews with the playwrights.

MYSPACE

Another way to keep in touch with us! If you're doing one of my shows, join my MySpace. Easy contact for questions or comments!

• Lindsay on MySpace

Stay in Touch

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Some of our playwrights post to the Theatrefolk Blog. Check it out for insights into what's happening with Theatrefolk.