Speaker 1: Writing a monologue may come naturally to you. If so, great. But if not, the idea of writing some text to then perform may sound like a bit of a nightmare, or completely impossible. But as long as you set yourself some small goals and parameters, I assure you that your creativity and inner writer can be unleashed through your writing. Here are some simple writing exercises that will get you started writing a monologue. Write and refine. The number one rule to kick off with is to make sure that you are writing more than what's necessary. You need to write lots of text, and then refine it after it's written. Don't try and write the perfect monologue first time round. That's impossible. You could ask any playwright, screenwriter, or novelist, and they'll tell you how they have 10, 20, 30, or even more draft versions of something before they're finished with it. So the rules are write lots, reread it, speak it out loud, refine it by trimming bits, removing bits, rewording bits, or expanding bits. Write to time. One of the most successful ways of writing text is to give yourself time constraints. Give yourself 3 minutes, 5 minutes, or 10 minutes to write something. Use a pen and paper and keep writing. Don't stop and overthink or judge what you're putting on the paper. Just keep writing continuously so the words are almost like a stream of consciousness. Some of it may be terrible, some of it will be okay, and some of it will be brilliant. Four emotions. This is a brilliant exercise from the playwright Simon Stevens. It's based around writing about four primal emotions. Write in the first person, so I did this rather than he did this, and write as the character, so it's the character speaking. Set a timer for 5 minutes and answer this question. What makes you angry? After 5 minutes, stop and draw a line under what you've written. You can then shake your hand out as well. Don't stop writing until the 5 minutes are up. Next, you're going to repeat this task and answer these questions. What makes you frightened? What gives you hope? What makes you feel ashamed? This is 20 minutes of writing time. It's then time to re-read and pick out your favourite or most interesting sentences that you've written, underline or highlight them, and then re-write them so they're in one chunk of text. And that's your monologue. Using a memory. The next idea to generate text is to use a memory from your life. Perhaps it's a memory from a holiday, a traumatic event, or a first love. Why not use a memory that touches on the previous four emotions we explored? Anger, fear, shame, and hope. Pick a memory from your life and write the story of it as a monologue. The next step is modifying this memory for your character. You may want to change specific details of that memory, such as the location or who was there. You may even want to change what happens slightly, to better suit your character and your story. Don't start from nothing when writing for a fictional character. Instead, draw on interesting stories from your own life, then modify parts of it so it's a memory that belongs to your character. The villain. A great exercise is to write a monologue from the perspective of a villain, defending what they've done. Think of the villain or baddie of a story. This might be someone who has cheated on their partner. This may be a leader who has started a war. This may be someone who has poisoned someone. Write a monologue from their perspective explaining why they've done what they've done. If it helps, you can imagine that they're at a tribunal or in court being tried for what they've done. This gives the words real importance and high stakes. They need to convince other people that they did the right thing. Copy style. Have a look at some existing monologues, then write one in the style of that writer. Some good writers to look at here are Dennis Kelly, Alice Birch, James Fritz and Philip Ridley. They all have unique writing styles. They use different sentence structures and use punctuation, pauses and language very differently. Take an existing speech of theirs and write one for your character, copying the writing style. Don't worry about prioritising content and what the character says. Instead, focus on the style of the writing and recreate that in your words. From this, you may discover your character's voice or a style of writing that you enjoy using. Alphabet. This is a very easy task and very helpful for generating text. Write a monologue and start each new sentence with the next letter in the alphabet. Start at A and go through to Z. You'll then have 26 sentences to work with. This may seem a little illogical or odd, but it's a great way of thinking outside the box and creating text that's interesting and unique. Once you've finished with Z, go back and pick out which sentences you want to keep. You can then modify them if you want by adding in different words to start off the sentences. The letter. Letters are a fantastic format for monologues. Rather than a character on stage writing with a pen and paper, have them speak it out loud to let the audience in. Some ideas for letters are write a letter to your young self, maybe when you were five years old. What would you say to yourself then? Write a complaint letter. What have you been dissatisfied or unhappy with recently? Write a letter to a famous person. Can this be fan mail or hate mail? Write a letter to a family member that you will never send. What do you think about them but never say? Give yourself five to 10 minutes on this task. Write the letter and speak it out loud like a monologue. You can then modify it to make it from your character's perspective if you want. Character memories. This is another brilliant exercise from the writer Simon Stevens. Think of your character and set a timer for 10 minutes. Start the timer and write a list of 51 things that your character can remember. The challenge of getting to 51 things cuts out any unnecessary thinking time and instead activates your imagination and unconscious. Then set a timer for another 10 minutes and write a further 21 things that the character can remember. The second part of this exercise will encourage a little bit more detail and specificity. This list of memories can be spoken out loud and serve as your monologue. Or you may want to pick one memory, focus on that and write a monologue about it. 60 seconds. Finally, one of the trickiest parts of writing and performing a monologue is cutting it. In other words, deleting unnecessary bits to make it shorter. The best monologues last between 60 and 90 seconds. These are short and sweet, economical, concise. Make your monologue all of these things. Set a timer for 60 seconds and speak your monologue out loud. If you run over, start cutting sentences for it to fit into the timeframe. Be strict with yourself here. Make sure that your monologue is 60 seconds, no more. I'd put money on your 60 second version being much better than your two or three minute version. Keep the interesting and essential sentences. Trim the fat and get rid of anything that's not imperative for the character to say in the here and now. With all of these exercises, I recommend writing with a pen and paper rather than typing on a laptop or a tablet. Use chairs, the floor and books or clipboards to lean on. Use notepads or plain paper. One final tip that helps produce thoughtful work is to work with some background music rather than the exam style of cold, dead silence. Use music that's subtle, instrumental and has a bit of energy to it to underscore all the activity in the room. Here's a playlist on Spotify that I've created with music to underscore your work. It's called Apex Underscore. Check out all the songs and artists and use the ones that work for you. And there we go. 10 exercises and ideas to help you write a monologue. Thanks for watching. If this video helped you, please give it a like. Do check out these other videos and subscribe. And if you want to support what I do on the channel, you can click on the link in the video description. All the best.