Finding Hidden Monologues

THE PLAYWRITING SEMINARS > WORKING > MONOLOGUES > HIDDEN >

'For creation you need isolation. A certain piece of you has to stand still and listen. . . . The process of creation is an intimate and miraculous thing. Any object is a kind of snapshot of the life of the artist.'

-- George C. Wolfe

Hidden Monologues ought to be Monologues, but instead have been written so they look visually like dialogue on the page. When this happens, tension, conflict, and forward movement, drain from the scene at a rapid rate.

Red flags warning that a Hidden Monologue lurks within a section of dialogue . . .

There's a series of dialogue lines telling a story, spoken by one character.
- The lines are fueled by internal tension, not external conflict.
- The progression of these lines develops independently of a second character who is present.
- These lines are consistently longer than those spoken by the other character.
And the other character punctuates these story lines with something like . . .
- Uh, huh.
- And then what did he say?
- What did you do then?
- That's amazing!
- Really?
- I never knew that.

You can bring the monologue to life by cutting those "Uh, huh" sort of lines. And the brief -- and insignificant -- responses to them. You probably wrote these things to give your fingers something to do while you were puzzling out the next movement of the monologue. And when you were done, didn't realize what you'd accomplished . . .

Hidden Monologue Example

A Minor Caution: Hidden Monologues are the reverse of False Monologues.

RETURN TO: | Working | Seminar Homepage |