Soliloquy

In practice

A soliloquy is a speech in which a character, alone or believing they are alone, speaks their thoughts aloud. Hamlet's "To be, or not to be" is the most famous one: no one else is on stage, and the audience hears him argue with himself about life and death. The soliloquy gives the audience direct access to a mind, without the filter of what a character would say to someone else.

For screenwriters, the soliloquy is a rare and powerful tool. Film usually shows thought through action, faces and voice-over, so a character speaking alone at length can feel theatrical. Used in the right moment, though, it can be the scene an audience remembers: a character at breaking point, talking to an empty room, a mirror or a grave, and finally saying what they could not say to anyone.

The common mistake is using a soliloquy to explain the plot. A soliloquy works when it shows a character deciding, doubting or confessing, so that something changes while they speak. If the speech only tells the audience what they already know or what happens next, it becomes exposition, and it will feel like the writer talking instead of the character.

A soliloquy to an empty theater

No one hears Margo but the audience, so she can say what she would never say to the director. The speech moves from anger to a decision, which is what separates a soliloquy from a rant: by the last line she is someone different from the woman who walked on. Addressing the empty seats keeps it natural in a film, since she is speaking to the place that made her.

What a soliloquy is

A soliloquy is a dramatic speech in which a character reveals their thoughts and feelings while alone, or while unaware of being overheard. Merriam-Webster defines it as a dramatic monologue that represents reflections or unspoken thoughts by the character. The word comes from the Latin soliloquium, from solus, "alone," and loqui, "to speak."

The convention is that the character is thinking aloud. The audience accepts that the words are the character's private thoughts, so a soliloquy is understood to be honest in a way that dialogue is not. A villain may lie to every other character, but in a soliloquy he tells the audience the truth.

Soliloquies flourished in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama, especially in Shakespeare, Marlowe and Webster. They became less common as realism took over the stage in the nineteenth century, but they never disappeared, and they remain central to how audiences understand Hamlet, Macbeth and Iago.

Soliloquy examples

Hamlet has seven soliloquies, including "O, that this too too solid flesh would melt" and "To be, or not to be, that is the question," in which he weighs suicide against the fear of what comes after death. Macbeth's "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow," spoken after he hears of his wife's death, compresses his despair into a meditation on the meaninglessness of life.

Richard III opens with Richard alone on stage: "Now is the winter of our discontent." In a few dozen lines he tells the audience he is "determined to prove a villain" and lays out his plan, making the audience his accomplices. Iago in Othello uses soliloquies the same way, confiding schemes he hides from everyone on stage.

In film, soliloquies appear in adaptations of Shakespeare and in moments of extreme pressure. Taxi Driver's "You talkin' to me?" scene has Travis Bickle speaking alone to a mirror, which works like a soliloquy. Characters talking to a grave, a photograph or a sleeping person are often given a soliloquy in disguise.

Soliloquy vs. monologue and aside

A monologue is a long speech by one character, but it is addressed to other characters who are present, even if they do not reply. A soliloquy is addressed to no one in the scene: the character is alone or speaks as if alone. Every soliloquy is a kind of monologue, but most monologues are not soliloquies.

An aside is a short remark a character makes to the audience, or to themselves, while other characters are on stage and supposedly cannot hear. It is brief and quick, often a single line. A soliloquy is longer and usually takes place when the stage is empty of other characters.

Direct address to the camera, as in Ferris Bueller's Day Off, Fleabag or House of Cards, is a close cousin. The character knowingly speaks to the audience, often with irony, while a classic soliloquy is the audience overhearing thought. Voice-over is another way film gets inside a character's head without having them speak aloud.

Soliloquies in screenplays

A soliloquy is written in a screenplay like any other dialogue, under the character's name. If the character speaks to an object or the empty room, a direction in parentheses such as (to the mirror) or (to no one) can make it clear. There is no special format and no need to label it.

Because film is a visual medium, long speeches with no one listening can feel stagey. Writers often give a soliloquy a physical anchor, something the character is doing or looking at, and break it with action lines so the reader sees the performance as well as the words.

Many films use voice-over where a play would use a soliloquy. The choice changes the effect: voice-over is calm and reflective, often spoken from after the events, while a soliloquy happens in the moment, out loud, with the risk that the character might be overheard.

How to write a soliloquy

Put the character under pressure. A soliloquy belongs at a moment when the character must decide something, or has just lost something, and cannot talk to anyone else. That pressure is what makes speaking aloud feel necessary rather than convenient.

Let the speech change. The best soliloquies have an arc: the character starts in one place and ends in another, having argued themselves into a decision, a realization or despair. Hamlet does not know at the start of "To be, or not to be" where his thought will lead.

Keep it honest and keep it short. The audience trusts a soliloquy to show what the character really thinks, so use it for truths the rest of the script hides. In a screenplay, a page or less is usually enough; a soliloquy that runs longer should earn every line.