Turning False Monologues
into Dialogue

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > WORKING > EDITING > DIALOGUE > FALSE MONOLOGUES > SCENE

'I have never been about the business of doing feel-good theatre. I don't think all black plays need to be celebratory. I love and admire BRING IN DA NOISE, BRING IN DA FUNK, but I like dealing with darker aspects of what the African American experience has been for a lot of people. When so much of the male population is in prison, how can we be so celebratory, you know, when there are so many individual tragedies being lived and played out?'

-- Robert Alexander

Since False Monologues are often written in pairs, you can create a much stronger run of dialogue by interweaving the lines . . .

This is a fairly typical -- but orderly example -- of a solution. The lines making up these False Monologues can sometimes be used out of order and have a stronger impact that way.


				LARKIN
	Where could he be?

				JOAN
	Well, I don't know. 

				LARKIN
	He can't be anywhere.

				JOAN
	I mean ... 

				LARKIN 
	He has to be some place he would've been before.

				JOAN
	He could be anywhere.

				LARKIN
	That's common sense.

				JOAN
	Anywhere at all. That's what these guys are like.

				LARKIN
	That's what I've been thinking.

				JOAN
	You didn't think of that.

If a False Monologue doesn't come with a twin, you can usually write new lines for the other character and interweave these between the lines of this problem-child.

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Turning False Monologues into Dialogue

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > WORKING > EDITING > DIALOGUE > FALSE MONOLOGUES > SCENE

Turning False Monologues
into Dialogue