This week: Monologue or Monolong? Edited by: Jayne Doe  
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A good monologue can be the crowning jewel of a written piece. Hamlet’s “To be or not to be” soliloquy, Fleabag staring into the camera, Walter White declaring, “I am the danger.” On stage or screen, monologues can be intense, stripping a character down to their core being.
It’s a lot trickier in fiction. A few pages of uninterrupted speech—possibly even a single page—in a novel can make even the most dramatic reveal feel like run-on dead weight.
What a Monologue Actually Does
A monologue isn’t as easy as “a character talks for a long time.” If they are done well, they serve three key purposes.
1. They amplify emotion. Fear, rage, grief, or another emotion poured out without interruption. It’s raw, often uncomfortable, and usually unforgettable. This works in fiction, too.
2. They provide a spectacle. Delivery matters as much as the words. The pauses, the mannerisms, the tone of voice, the way a scene is blocked all serve to captivate the viewer.
The spectacle can sometimes go beyond the speaker, with action overlaid in other areas of the set. Things happen while your character is being all esoteric. That’s not something that lends itself to fiction.
3. They suspend time. Live monologues don’t break immersion, because we experience the speech with the character. It’s part of the audience-performer contract; we don’t mind if other characters stand still (or move around quietly doing something pertinent) while the performer spills his guts.
In fiction, it’s much harder to suspend time the same way, and that's why prose monologues can turn into "character speaks for too long." It’s not impossible to do it correctly, but it’s an uphill battle.
I am not saying all stage and screen monologues fit the three criteria. Many don’t, and I stand by my belief that supervillain monologues are annoying, and the hero should blast them off the screen mid-exposition.
That’s just me, though. I’m not dissing your comic book adaptations. I simply wouldn’t mind if they shortened their rants a little.
So, Why Doesn’t This Work as Well in Fiction?
We’ve all heard “Show, don’t tell.” Monologues are a gigantic block of telling, and you can’t really fit a ton of background action into the writing.
Additionally, readers already have access into a character’s interior world through the basic concept of “show.” That’s what actions, narration, and interior monologue are for along the way. Once your character launches into that big block o’ text, it’s going to feel at best redundant, and at worst like an infodump.
Plus, all your reviews will point out you’re using too much exposition, and that gets annoying.
Without the live energy and additional blocking, your monologues will:
 Drag. A page of uninterrupted talking feels static. Readers want action, dialogue, and movement.
Feel artificial. In real life, people get interrupted, trail off, circle back. A polished, uninterrupted monologue can ring hollow, especially in the middle of action. Action here doesn’t mean “fighting, chasing, and space lasers.” A monologue can mess up any kind of action unless you deliberately stylize it, and that’s not easy to do. (Yes, it’s a skill. Yes, it can be learned. Still, it’s always a risk.)
Eat pacing. As I mentioned, when it’s done live, the monologue doesn’t stop the action. It pauses it, because we can see what’s going on. In a story, the reader’s finger may already be twitching toward the next page, so they can get back to the action.
None of this means you shouldn’t use monologues. All I’m saying is the form works against them, so it’s something to carefully consider.
When Do Monologues Work in Prose?
Like all things with rules, conventions, and best practices, there are always exceptions. Some writers pull it off by bending prose closer to performance.
James Joyce (Ulysses) and William Faulkner (The Sound and the Fury) leaned into stream-of-consciousness that reads like spoken thought. This highly stylized writing lends itself to monologues that feel natural and unforced.
Contextualized speeches also lend themselves to a writer—reader agreement where blocks of text may be accepted. Courtroom scenes, deathbed confessions, letters, or journal entries make sense as long blocks of text, but they often use rousing language and heightened emotion (like an epic closing argument scene).
Speaking of language, heightened language that borders on performance can often absorb monologues well. When fiction edges toward poetry — for example, Toni Morrison’s Beloved — it can break a lot of rules. Many poems are monologues after all: emotions compressed, heightened, and stripped to essentials.
Borrow the Essence of Monologues
Remember, performance breathes life into monologues, and without the directly viewable performance, the speech risks losing a lot of its impact simply by virtue of stopping all the action.
When you’re tempted to let a character chew through three pages with straight monologue, pause:
Do you really need the monologue, or do you just want the feeling of one?
When you want that raw, dramatic honesty, take a look at the overall story, and ask yourself:
Can I use interior monologue? Let us inside the character’s head directly, where pauses and fragments feel natural. Do this throughout the story (where it makes sense to do so).
Can I break this up? Instead of one massive block of text, scatter speech with interruptions, action beats, movement, or some back-and-forth dialogue. Readers interpret this as ‘action,’ so you’ll stay on their good side.
Can I make this more dynamic? Nobody is saying you need to turn your character’s voice into something it’s not. But theatrical monologues thrive on cadence. In prose you can mimic that with sentence length, punctuation, and white space.
Is my narration doing its job? Keeping your narration active helps convey the “live” action that’s missing from prose.
Don’t try to turn your story monologue into a blocked script (it will look awkward and feel off to the reader). Do watch a few monologues and try to capture the essence of how it’s done using all the tools in your writer’s toolbox.
As always, happy writing. |
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Drama: October 01, 2025 Issue [#13383]
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