Pondering on what to do

It doesn’t seem much time since I was pondering on what to do about George – in actual fact it was our writing group challenge to write something about George. It was only last week but it seems much longer ago somehow. I’ve been unusually busy over the days since we shared our different Georges, but now I need to think about a monologue, because that is our challenge. I want to write it well in advance because I usually leave starting it until very much the last minute. However, writing a monologue will indeed be a challenge, and I will have to give it some serious thought

I know what a monologue is – it’s when one character addresses the audience, or maybe another character, but at some length. The most recent monologues I’ve listened to were in the two ‘Talking Heads‘ series by Alan Bennett, which our book club listened to and then discussed, as a change from reading and discussing something. I looked at Bennett’s work again to remind myself of what I should think about when trying to write mine. I looked up the definition of a monologue to try and give me some more ideas. The word comes from the Greek meaning a single speaker, but their audience could be others, or they could be expressing their own thoughts out loud. I don’t think I’m making much progress here, because how will me reciting a monologue to the group be different from me reading a story?

I’ve fallen back on Wikipedia:

Monologues are similar to poems, epiphanies, and others, in that, they involve one ‘voice’ speaking but there are differences between them… A monologue is the thoughts of a person spoken out loud…

So – it’s definitely spoken, but spoken in a different way from one person talking in a conversation, it’s a reflection on some event or activity or experience, and there’s no reply, answer or response – until it is complete. Have I ever written one, or anything like one? I don’t think I have – but here are links to two parts of a story which might be considered a monologue:

https://loiselsden.com/2020/07/25/a-guilty-secret-i/

https://loiselsden.com/2020/07/26/my-guilty-secret-ii/