Monologue

In practice

A monologue gives one character the floor. Instead of the quick back-and-forth of ordinary dialogue, a single speaker talks at length while others listen, react or try and fail to interrupt. Because film is a visual medium that usually prefers short exchanges, a monologue stands out, and that's its power: it signals that this moment, and this character's words, matter.

A good monologue is still a scene. The speaker wants something from the listener, such as forgiveness, obedience, understanding or fear, and the speech is how they try to get it. It has a shape, building through images and turns toward a final line that lands. A speech that only delivers information or opinions, without an objective or a change, is usually what readers call a speechy script.

In a screenplay, a monologue is formatted like any other dialogue: a character cue followed by one long block of dialogue, often broken up by brief action lines or short directions in parentheses that show the listener or the speaker's behavior. Most monologues in produced films run from half a page to two pages. Writers who use them best save them for a story's turning points, such as a confession, a threat or a call to action.

A short monologue

Walt wants to change Eli's mind about how to leave, not whether to leave, and the speech turns on the line I should have been in the car. It uses a specific memory instead of advice, builds to a single instruction and gives the listener a visible reaction, which is what keeps a monologue playing as a scene.

Monologue, soliloquy and voice-over

A monologue is spoken to someone. Other characters are present, and the speech is aimed at them, even when they say nothing back. That listener gives the monologue its tension: the audience watches to see whether the speech works, whether the person on the other side of the table is persuaded, broken, frightened or moved.

A soliloquy is spoken alone, or as if alone, so that the audience hears the character's private thoughts. It's common in theater, from Hamlet's To be or not to be onward, but rare in film, where the camera can show thoughts through action and close-ups. When a film character addresses the camera directly, as in Fleabag or House of Cards, it works as a kind of soliloquy that makes the audience a confidant.

A voice-over is narration heard over images, marked V.O. in the script, and it isn't a monologue in the dramatic sense unless it's addressed to a listener in the story. Long voice-overs can work as a frame, as in Goodfellas or The Shawshank Redemption, but they're a different tool: they report and reflect, while a monologue acts on another character in the present moment.

Famous monologues in film

In Network, Paddy Chayefsky gives the news anchor Howard Beale a live broadcast in which he tells viewers to go to their windows and shout I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore! The speech works because it's a call to action with a visible result: across the city, people do exactly that, and the network discovers it has a hit.

Good Will Hunting turns on a quieter monologue. On a park bench, the therapist Sean tells Will that he may have read about art, love and war, but he has never stood in the Sistine Chapel, held someone he loved or lost a wife. Will barely speaks, and the speech changes their relationship because it refuses to be impressed by his intelligence.

David Mamet wrote Blake's speech for the film of Glengarry Glen Ross; it doesn't appear in his play. A visiting executive humiliates a room of real estate salesmen and announces that only the top two closers will keep their jobs. The monologue is a threat, and it sets the stakes for every scene that follows, as the salesmen scramble to save themselves.

How to write and format a monologue

Give the speech an objective and a turn. Before writing, decide what the speaker wants the listener to do or feel, and where the speech changes direction, often from story to point or from control to emotion. Specific images, a memory, a detail, a number, do more than general statements, and the final line should be the one the whole speech has been building toward.

Earn it and keep the listener alive. A monologue lands hardest after scenes of short exchanges or silence have built the pressure that finally breaks. Break the block with brief action lines or short directions in parentheses that show the listener's reaction or the speaker's behavior, but don't over-direct the actor. If the listener could walk away at any time, give them a reason to stay.

Format it as standard dialogue. Write the character cue once, followed by the full speech in a single dialogue block. If you need to interrupt with action, return to the same character with a continued marker, which most software adds as CONT'D. When a speech crosses a page break, screenwriting software adds MORE at the bottom and CONT'D at the top of the next page automatically.

Common questions