How to Make Your Monologue Dramatic; Emerging Writer’s Workshop Two

I’ve written a few monologues before, but all have read like a sprawl of thought slammed onto the page, poorly written and certainly not dramatic. Thankfully, Angela Street showed me and the rest of her Emerging Writer’s Workshop how to make a more engaging monologue through three simple steps, giving us the confidence to rewrite our attempts.

1. Is your central character doing something to someone?

This forms the basic action of the scene; what your character is doing. The prisoner struggles to persuade the interrogator of his innocence. The boyfriend tries to apologise to his girlfriend. A patient struggles to hide their pain and convince a loved one of their comfort. It’s much like a scene in any film or play, except the character cannot just be retelling a story, or else they are a narrator, saying what happened instead of trying to achieve a goal.

Before the class had even begun, Angela tasked us with writing a monologue inspired by bits of fluff and glitter left on the floor by an earlier art and craft session. I was a bit nervous as we only had a few minutes, and ended up writing a fantasy story about a father’s mistake.

Was I too late? Did I not say the words in time? These stars; her ashes, poor little ashes are all that remains of her. I didn’t believe, I didn’t want to believe, and my imaginative lack the chain that choked her life away. Is this how they all end, in a puddle on the floor, from long life or from the likes of me, a disbeliever, chanting with refuses of, “they don’t exist.” Such childishness. She was right, and Christ she’ll be back soon. Could I say I spilled some art and craft kit? Perhaps a sign, yes for Aunt Jude’s birthday – but what sign? Do I have time to make one? Or will she know? She knew a lot; she must know how fairies reach their end.

Rather than addressing the audience, this is just the father’s internal thoughts. If he spoke to us as if a friend, for example, it could work, but only if he tried to do something to that friend, perhaps justifying an action, such as to hide the dead fairy and conceal the truth.

2. Why is your character saying it now?

In Dial M for Murder, Tony decides to kill his wife Margot because of the secret affair he discovers she had with Mark, who is now right under his nose. A character must act for a reason. Perhaps they have witnessed something shocking, or need to borrow money after losing a job, and must turn to a parent without appearing to be a failure. My attempt seems obvious; he’s just killed a fairy by accident, but why? If he hasn’t believed in fairies his whole life, why is this the first to die? Are they in a new house near fairies? Or, has he had the time to play along with his daughter’s ideas until a new project at work stole his attention, repressing his imagination to the point that he no longer played along with her beliefs?

3. Who is your character speaking to?

You might have already done this when considering your character’s basic action, but you need to know who your character is speaking to. It could be a radio show, a board-room meeting, or an alien communicating with the mother-ship. It could be anything, so long as one character is doing something to another. In my example, I could put someone in the room with him, such as his daughter, and have him conceal the truth and make up excuses on the spot, or it could be him telling a friend about the situation. In the latter example, he needs to be doing something other than telling. Perhaps his daughter came in and he made out he’d spilt an art and craft kit, and allowed her to use the glitter/fairy entrails to finish the birthday card she’d started to make her fairy friend, and Dad is now struggling to justify his actions to a friend, trying to make out that he was protecting her from a painful truth.

I recently heard a great monologue on a radio play called, The Interrogation, which started with a husband telling the story of how he lost the trust of his wife after an accident hurt his child, and how he now felt like a stranger in his own home. What made it work was how it revealed the husbands violent outbursts towards his wife and how he didn’t want to admit he was a bad man.

1. Is your central character doing something to someone? His basic action was to justify his violence to the audience and himself.

2. Why is your character saying it now? His estrangement had bubbled to the point of him striking his wife.

3. Who is your character speaking to? This was a little vague, though I could imagine he was talking to a friend, or perhaps this is the argument he later tells the police.

These three steps have already given me an idea on how to rewrite my monologue. It’s all very new to me, but underneath are the same principles of storytelling, though this form seems more about how the words themselves are actions; tools in your characters’ arsenal to get what they want. Hopefully, practice with the characters I’m currently writing will not only reveal more about them, but hone my dialogue skills as well.

You can find out more about Angela Street and her writing workshops on her website.

Subscribe to Radio 4’s Drama of the Week to listen to future episodes.

How to Turn-Out Your Creativity like a Wardrobe

When was the last time you had a turn-out? If you’re anything like me, it’s been a while; five years of bills and receipts, CDs I once enjoyed, and photos and bric-a-brac of memories long since passed. It was liberating to clear out the clutter, lending to clear thought and concentration, leading me to wonder if the same could be done with creative ideas.

My turn-out was inspired in part by Julia Cameron’s book, The Prosperous Heart, which views prosperity not as money but as self-worth, and hopes to free readers of anxiety and increase the flow of creativity into their lives. “Clearing away the rubble makes for clear thoughts,” she says in chapter four, and such was my experience.

I was meant to be packing up my room for moving, but instead filled several bin-bags with paperwork and boxes of CDs to sell. It didn’t stop there though. I unsubscribed from several newsletters and emails that I never read, and tossed out old magazines. It was nice to feel clarity returning as I filed away my neatly closed folder of documents into my tidy drawer.

Memories and bric-a-brac were the worst, such as old photos of out of touch friends from school, and old receipts, badges and tickets. I threw it all out, save a few key cards from big events and photos from treasured family holidays. What was scary was how those items brought back the same memories, feelings and emotions as when I’d first filed them away, although now I’d changed and the memories no longer fit. I found a ring once given to a past girlfriend, and could remember the same love I’d felt, which now seemed naïve and wrong. From out of sight, energy remains, and stops new energy flowing into your life, energy you may need, so it’s good to throw out these things, like old clothes you no longer like to wear.

The experience reminded me of something I’d read in The Wind is My Mother, a book by Native American Medicine Man, Bear Heart. He spoke of the vision quest, a venture into wilderness to communicate with a higher being. His questers fasted for up to four days in the wild, which allowed them to become vessels, empty of daily requirements and thought to allow communication to flow through them. I re-read this and thought about my turn-out, how I was now free of clutter and open to receive.

I’m not saying we need to go without daily requirements or possessions to be creative (and stress Bear Heart’s warnings that these quests are only done with an experienced sponsor) but look at how freeing ourselves of clutter, filling our lives with only that which we enjoy, and how, for example, clearing out junk emails and staying on top of our finances can leave us with a clearer, freer mind, hopefully allowing creativity to flow more easily though us.

I also believe you can turn-out your creativity, much like a cupboard or a wardrobe, and discard those ideas and projects that no longer fit or excite. I really wanted to crack on with another project after my masters, and filled my head with ideas for feature films, shorts and plays. My insecurity over writing my next big thing led me to become so clogged with story threads that I couldn’t concentrate on a single one.

I wrote down my ideas in a word document, taking them from brain to paper, freeing me of the burden of carrying them. I then went through and asked of each story what it was really about. Several seemed to be about the same thing, so I collated those ideas into a single idea that expressed what I wanted to say. Some seemed to best relate to old projects that still needed work, so I decided rather than write something new, I’d revisit a past project.

I also asked why I want to write this story. What excites me about it, and if nothing, out it went. I also asked if the idea was practical, if the characters and motivations were believable, and some I found didn’t really fit together, and so I cast those aside too. In the end, I had a much shorter list, but of ideas that I could honestly say I wanted to work on.

Clearing our environment of junk to allow clear thinking, allowing ourselves to become a vessel for creativity to flow through us, and organising our creative ideas to stop us being weighed down and unable to write have been the focus of this post. If you’ve been at all clogged or unfocused, perhaps some of this could apply to you. If so, take a breath, relax, turn-out unwanted possessions and ideas, and take baby-steps each day towards your goal.

If anything, I hope this advice will guide you to a freer and happier existence, and open doors to fresh energies and experiences, as I hope to bring into my renewed, creative life.

Click the following link to check out Julia Cameron's, The Prosperous Heart.

And here for more information on Bear Heart's book, The Wind is My Mother.

My Season Inspired Sonnet; Summer's End

I'd already started writing a poem before I read John Keats, To Autumn, a poem that paints a majestic picture of a season, and used a similar personification of nature to write my finished piece.

I started out with the last two lines, which I thought made a profound statement that could be used as the final couplet in a sonnet, which ends like a good story with a clear expression of theme. The rest came from lots of scribbles in my A4 notebook, a good size for writing poetry as it gives you lots of space to play around with different rhymes alongside the poem and cross-out and start over several times.

Below, I've linked to Keats' poem and a walk in Winchester which supposedly gave him inspiration; I'll be taking that walk later this week as part of my travel and hiking blog. For now, if you can spare a few minutes, let me know what you think of my poem in the comments section below.
 

Summer's End

I know, with misty breath and empty sky,
That creatures will have flocked or taken sleep,
And from my frosted window, wonder why
Our summer fun must fade and turn life bleak.
Creeping its glimmering decay, a snail
Like frost eats autumn’s crunch, replacing lake
Side laughter with a howling empty gale
That strips the trees till neither ash nor oak.
Then, the first flake weaves onto skin like silk,
And stepping-stones of crystal spread the pond,
And townsfolk, snowball playing, skate the milk
With knowing hope, a dance till winter’s end,
For trees that lose their colour
Return full bloom in summer.


Click here for a link to Keats' poem, and here for a guide to Keats' walk in Winchester. 

Down at the Farm; A London Short Film Festival Weekend

I couldn’t resist a weekend of short films, lectures and networking opportunities, but what really sold this London Short Film Festival (LSFF) event was combining all this with a countryside camping weekend at the Quadrangle farmhouse and barn near Shoreham, Kent. I saw great films, met wonderful people, learnt more about producing a film, and left feeling validated as a professional screenwriter, filled with the confidence to go forth and make a film, not tomorrow, but today.

The LSFF runs every January, but this was their first time Down at the Farm. They’d invited about thirty farmhands to camp from Friday to Sunday afternoon, and really looked after us, with many IPA’s included as networking drinks, and all our locally sourced, top notch meals for a little extra, which kept us going through the back-to-back line up of films and talks.

In the first talk, Valentina Brazzini and Tristan Goligher from London film production company, The Bureau, mentioned how you have to love the project you are working on. This is something I remembered from my MA. Not only do you have to have something to say, you have to have passion for the project, and be able to defend it. When I pitched my latest feature film to David Pope of Advance films, I discovered a part of my story that I wasn’t passionate about, couldn’t defend it, and realised it didn’t match what I wanted to say.

You also have to be able to identify your projects weaknesses and counter them before they become a problem. Jamie Stone spoke about his latest film project, Orbit Ever After, a magnificent sci-fi love story, all made for a measly fifty thousand pounds. Instead of ignoring the projects weaknesses, Jamie developed new, shoe-string budget in-camera special effects and demonstrated them in his pitch with the BFI, which secured him the funding.

Roger Hyams from the London Film School discussed how short films don’t have to be narrative based. At first, I was a little uneasy as I’m passionate about storytelling and felt Roger wanted to see more art house pieces, but I left realising the scope of short films. He said that a film can be like a poem, with the example of a film about the New York Elevated Train, which was a succession of train images, glorifying the filmmaker’s joy of trains. He spoke about La Jetée (which I saw the following day and loved), a huge narrative set in a dystopia after world war three, but told in about thirty minutes through a succession of still images. It really only worked as it fit the film's idea of memories and images, but showed how you can think outside the box about which form works best for your piece. 

It was great to hear from Polly Stokes, Producer and Development Editor at Film4, who said they would like feature films, specifically genre pieces, such as comedy and sci-fi, as quite a lot of new writers write straight dramas. One of the best pieces of advice was how shorts are best as simple, beautifully expressed single ideas, such as the short, Talk, which follows a lonely man who wants to find someone to talk to. It made me reassess my shorts, which I find are quite complicated as there are often several ideas and possible themes at work.

Michael Caton-Jones, director of films such as The Jackal and Rob Roy, showed us his essential short, a 1936 documentary called Night Mail, which he said was a simple film that became something else when explored, which I often find in poetry. I felt it was like a war-time army going into battle, a very serious, well-oiled machine with honour. The best thing was how Michael said that film is not a visual medium, but an emotional one, that film isn’t about showing a story through pictures, but expressing emotion through picture and noise.

I got valuable tips on pitching to industry professionals when I pitched with David. He said it’s important to give your job title up front, as, for example, if I say I’m the screenwriter and he’s the financier or studio executive, he can relax, as he knows he won’t do business directly with me. When I pitched, I kept swapping between detailing the story and the characterisation of my protagonist, but he said that next time I should just tell him the story, because if it’s well written, the characterisation will come out naturally. I need to let the story speak for itself.

The final talk on producing got me thinking about forms, permissions and wages; all the practical stages of producing a film. This, along with seeing Jamie’s film and the films of Steve Oram, who was unafraid to make the films he liked making, made me realise that it isn’t impossible to get a project on screen. I’d started this weekend worried that everyone else would be more professional and successful than me, but I left feeling a part of this short film family, and confident that if I wanted to get a project produced, that I could do so. It’s actually quite easy to get hold of cameras in today’s world, and there are lots of people to collaborate with. Time and money are often excuses used to mask fear of failure, but in the end, it doesn’t matter what happens so long as you make the films you’re passionate about.


The next LSFF takes place in January 2014, but there are events throughout the year.

The next big short film festival on the calendar is Encounters in Bristol. I hope to be there. If you're interested, check it out, here.