Workshop Thirteen

To get to the heart of what our characters sound like, this week we’re going to look at monologues. By focusing your attention on a long piece of speech from one character, you can improve and enhance that character’s voice, which will, in turn, enhance that character’s dialogue all the way through your work.

Quick definition: a monologue is a speech where one character addresses another character or characters. So why is it useful when we’re trying to write better dialogue?

Nearly every time my agent reads through a draft of one of my manuscripts, she comments that ‘so and so character has inconsistencies in their dialogue, times when they don’t sound like themselves.’ To fix this problem (and I know I should have learned by now!) I write a monologue from the character in question so I really get to hear their voice. It makes it harder for me to get my characters voices mixed up in my head.

See, the really difficult thing about writing dialogue is making everyone sound distinct, something we talked about in the first workshop on dialogue. By having each of our characters sound like themselves rather than like you or me, the author, we’re helping create a believable world for our readers.

Three tips to improve your monologues:

1- Spend a moment before you start writing actually listening in your mind for your character’s voice.

2- Read your monologue aloud when it’s done – you’ll hear the voice far more clearly.

3- Look for obvious words or groups of words that you’re reusing. CUT THESE OUT or MAKE SURE YOU USE THEM FOR ONLY THAT CHARACTER.

Monologues help us practice getting to know our character. You may never use the monologue in your final text, or you may find that it is perfect for some scene or other. Whatever you do with your final monologue, I recommend trying the following exercise.

This week’s writing prompt:

Write two MONOLOGUES. Each character has witnessed the same accident and they are describing to the police what they saw. Each character has no more than 150 words.