Everyone loves a monologue. Writers love writing them, actors love performing them. And when they’re transcendentally good, viewers love watching them. Monologues are an opportunity to uncover hidden depths of a character and their relationships, to reveal important background, and to shape the pace of a story for maximum emotional resonance.
Let me start by encouraging you to not write one.
Monologues are very, very hard. They’re hard for writers. They’re hard for actors. And if the monologue isn’t spectacular, they’re hard for the audience too. Most stories don’t need one at all, and our impulse to write one is usually driven by a masturbatory indulgence in the sound of our own voice.
But there are times when a monologue is important, even necessary, and there are ways to ensure yours is the kind that makes actors salivate and viewers illegally screencap your episode to upload to Tumblr.
So much of what makes a monologue sing is the actor and the director. A gifted actor can make the most lifeless text sound like Shakespeare1, while a terrible actor can make Shakespeare sound like gibberish.
But if you’re writing a script to be read by agents and producers and contest judges, you won’t have an actor, so you’ll need to be aiming for Shakespeare.
In real life conversation, people speak for an average of two seconds before yielding (or being forced to yield) the floor. It’s generally agreed that one page of a screenplay equals about one minute of screen time (on average), and one page of a screenplay is (on average) about 60 lines of text, so using some back-of-the-envelope math, you can estimate that the average line of dialogue should be about two lines if you want a conversation to sound “natural.”
That’s obviously not meant to be prescriptive (please don’t go through your script and painstakingly add and remove words until every line of dialogue is exactly two lines), but if you find that most speeches in your script are three or more lines, you may have some unnaturally loquacious characters on your hands2.
So what makes a great monologue? Great monologues in television usually have most of the following qualities, though not necessarily all of them:
- Three-act structure: a narrative arc with an introduction, a complication, and a powerful resolution
- Deepens character: often reveals an unexpected vulnerability or a power shift or a piece of surprising information
- Circular reference: the end of the monologue ties back to the beginning, or to something said just before the monologue, giving a sense of closure (much like Blake Snyder’s opening and closing image in a screenplay)
- Contains distinct beats and levels: contains distinct beats in which the speaker changes their intensity level, the emotion they’re expressing, or the tactics they’re using to get what they want
- Surprising: communicates surprising information or has another unexpected twist, such as a character reacting to something differently from how they normally would
- Emotional: it doesn’t just communicate facts; it communicates how the character feels about those facts (and sometimes how the listener feels as well – in fact, sometimes the listener’s feelings are even more important than the speaker’s)
- Climactic: structurally, a monologue like this typically takes place at or near the climax of the episode (roughly 70-85% through the runtime)
- Powerful ending: the monologue ends with a sucker punch punchline
I asked friends (and Google) for great examples of TV monologues. Let’s take a look at seven of them and see how they stack up against the features I outlined above.
Sherlock
Season 3, Episode 2 (“The Sign of Three”)
Writers: Stephen Thompson, Steven Moffat, Mark Gatiss
The first monologue we’ll look at is Sherlock’s wedding speech from BBC’s Sherlock. Nothing is revealed in this monologue that I would consider a spoiler except maybe the existence of the wedding itself, but it’s no secret that these characters eventually marry3.
This monologue hits several of the bullet points above:
- Three-act structure:
Act 1 (01:27 – 02:17): Introduction – Sherlock rambles nervously about how he came to be best man at John’s wedding
Act 2 (02:37 – 03:45): Complication – Sherlock behaves as typical Sherlock, managing to insult both John and the bridesmaids, generally offend everyone in the audience, and makes the speech all about himself
Act 3 (03:46 – 05:17): Resolution – Sherlock does something we’ve never seen him do: show vulnerability and express love
-
Deepens character: We’re well aware of what John sees in Sherlock (he’s exciting and charming and brilliant), but for the first time, we learn what Sherlock sees in John and how much he values him. It also might be the first time we see a glimmer of self-awareness in Sherlock and realize that his difficulty in relating to others is more painful than he lets on.
It’s important to note that while Sherlock is talking about John in this monologue, the monologue is not about John. It’s about Sherlock. His name is literally in the title of the show – the show is about him. So when you have a long, emotionally resonant monologue like this, the goal is generally going to be deepening Sherlock’s character, not anyone else’s.
- Circular reference: The monologue begins with Sherlock talking about how John asked him to be best man and that he didn’t understand why. It ends with Sherlock admitting that he was surprised to be asked to be best man because he’s surprised to find that he has a best friend.
- Emotional: Is someone chopping onions in my general vicinity?
- Powerful ending: “We will never let you down and we have a lifetime ahead to prove that.”
Scandal
Season 3, Episode 1 (“It’s Handled”)
Writer: Shonda Rhimes
What occurs in this scene is technically a spoiler, I guess, but every second of this show is so batshit bananas that I don’t think a preview of this one tiny plot point would diminish your enjoyment of the series.
If you asked me for my top three monologue writers of all time, I’d probably say Shakespeare, Sorkin4, Shonda – not in that order. And this monologue is classic Shonda: a funny, surprising, infinitely quotable and emotionally gutting rollercoaster engineered by an eloquence we only wish we could have when angry. When I asked for TV monologue recommendations on Facebook and a friend posted this link in the comments, I got a preemptive chill before I even watched it.
- Three-act structure:
Act 1 (00:00 – 01:05): Introduction – Rowan tells Olivia (and us) the situation and what they will do to her (“I know more than you can possibly imagine about things of which you cannot dream”)
Act 2 (01:06 – 02:08): Complication – Rowan launches into a protective, belittling, patronizing rage against Olivia for falling for Fitz (“Do you have to be so mediocre?”)
Act 3 (02:09 – 02:56): Resolution – Rowan calmly tells her what’s going to happen next (“Olivia, you are getting on that plane”)
-
Deepens character: Like in the Sherlock monologue above, though Rowan (Olivia’s father) is the one delivering the monologue, this show is not about Rowan, it’s about Olivia, so most of what he reveals here is actually about her.
Olivia, who is often found delivering searing, soaring, Shonda-certified monologues of her own, is reduced here to a sniffling teenager before her towering father. So much is revealed here about their relationship and about the weakness (or what they both fear is weakness) beneath her strength.
We see Rowan’s deep, painful love for his daughter (possibly for the first time), but we also see the controlling, menacing way that he expresses it, and how that’s made her who she is today.
- Contains distinct beats and levels: Rowan moves seamlessly between tender, raging, calmly professional, and cruelly belittling in his attempt to convince Olivia that she has failed him, that she must get on that plane, and that she must never make a mistake like this again
- Powerful ending: “Olivia, you are getting on that plane, come hell or high water. And to be clear? I am the hell… and the high water.”
Mad Men
Season 1, Episode 13 (“The Wheel”)
Writers: Matthew Weiner & Robin Veith
- Three-act structure:
Act 1 (00:39 – 01:19): Introduction – Don opens by talking about his first job and a Greek man named Teddy who taught him about the concept of nostalgia. “My first job, I was in-house at a fur company…”
Act 2 (01:20 – 02:23): Complication – He explains what nostalgia is (“the pain from an old wound”) and how the carousel can invoke it. “This device isn’t a spaceship, it’s a time machine.”
Act 3 (02:24 – 03:20): Resolution – He brings it home emotionally for himself, for the executives in the room, and for us. “… to a place where we know we are loved.”
- Deepens character: Yes. Don is an enigma at this point in the series. Does he have feelings at all? Is he just always in manipulation mode? But this slideshow of photos of his kids and wife feels real and for probably the first time on the show, you get a glimpse of the depth of emotion he buries inside himself.
- Circular reference: Sort of. Just before the monologue starts, one of the Kodak executives asks Don if he “figured out a way to work the wheel into it,” adding that “we know it’s hard.” A few minutes later, Don brings this home emotionally when he says, “It’s not a wheel… it’s a carousel.”
-
Contains distinct beats and levels: It’s a quiet monologue but it definitely has levels. In the beginning, Don seems light-hearted, telling a folksy story about a Greek man he used to work with, but as the monologue progresses, what he’s saying takes on a heavy emotional weight until he himself is nearly in tears.
The rhythmic click, click, click of the slide carousel and the ghostly light of the projector (and of course the non-diegetic music scoring the scene) adds to this feeling of growing emotional weight.
- Emotional: Yes. We see real emotion in Don (and in at least one other character in the room).
- Climactic: Yes. This monologue takes place 35 minutes into the 48-minute first season finale.
- Powerful ending: “It lets us travel the way a child travels, around and around and back home again, to a place where we know we are loved.”
The Blacklist
Season 2, Episode 6 (“The Mombasa Cartel”)
Writer: Daniel Knauf
This clip contains major spoilers for this one particular episode, but not for the series as a whole (except that you learn the backstory of how Red and Dembe met, which I would not consider a huge spoiler but is technically unknown until this reveal).
I pity the fool who wrote a spec script for The Blacklist when it was in its prime. Every damn episode has a killer monologue at the end for Raymond “Red” Reddington (played to perfection by James Spader) and nailing that in a spec is probably the hardest part of imitating this show.
His monologues are always a fascinating story with beautiful imagery and an emotional gut punch at the end, and this one I’ve selected is one of the best.
- Three-act structure:
Act 1 (00:00 – 00:59): Introduction – Red sets the stage and tells the story of a young boy captured by the cartel. “Twenty-nine years ago in Sierra Leone…”
Act 2 (01:00 – 01:30): Complication – Red explains that he took the boy after he’d been left to die and saw to his education. “His name is Dembe.”
Act 3 (01:31 – 02:00): Resolution – Dembe tries to dissuade Red from killing Geoff, but fails. “You see? That is what a good man does.”
-
Deepens character: Yes. Every episode of The Blacklist involves Red convincing the FBI to help him take down a criminal mastermind from his secret “blacklist” for the good of mankind. They do, and it does benefit mankind, but it also always turns out at the end that Red had some secret selfish motivation for taking down this particular criminal, like obtaining a shipping container full of illegal weapons, etc.
What’s special about this episode, and thus this monologue, is that it turns out this particular criminal takedown isn’t about personal gain at all, but about vengeance on behalf of someone Red loves. That someone is Dembe, Red’s mysterious personal driver and bodyguard who we as an audience already felt some affection for. The monologue has emotional resonance because it shows a depth to Red that we hadn’t fully seen before – a selflessness and a love for another person.
- Contains distinct beats and levels: Red starts out almost friendly, educating, but then becomes bitter and angry over Dembe’s treatment, then proud as he reflects on Dembe’s accomplishments, and finally resolved when he kills Geoff.
- Surprising: Yes. We didn’t know this backstory about Dembe or that Geoff was a bad guy (he’s initially presented as a friend).
- Emotional: Yes. Red gets emotional when talking about his love and respect for Dembe.
- Climactic: Yes. It takes place 37 minutes into a 43-minute episode.
- Powerful ending: Yes. “That is what separates men like him from men like you… and me.”
The Leftovers
Season 1, Episode 1 (“Pilot”)
Writer: Damon Lindelof & Tom Perrotta
This is from the first episode of the show so I wouldn’t say it’s a spoiler.
This is Nora’s “Heroes’ Day” speech from the pilot of The Leftovers.
- Three-act structure:
Act 1 (00:23 – 01:20): Introduction – Nora tells the crowd about a beautiful day at the beach with her family a few months before the “departure.” “The best day of my life happened… but I didn’t know it.”
Act 2 (01:21 – 01:46): Complication – She tells the story of a terrible day a few months before when the whole family had the stomach flu. “I thought… this is it.”
Act 3 (01:47 – 02:06): Resolution – She says if she could have her family back, she’d gladly take that horrible Saturday. “I’m not greedy. I’m not asking for the perfect day at the beach. Just give me that horrible Saturday.”
- Deepens character: I believe this is the first time we’ve ever met Nora, who will turn out to be a very important character.
- Circular reference: Yes. She starts by talking about a perfect day her family shared at the beach, but ends by saying she doesn’t even need that – she just wants to have them back, even if it was the worst day they’ve ever had.
- Contains distinct beats and levels: Yes. She seems peaceful when reflecting on her nice day at the beach, and even laughs when talking about the terrible day when everyone was sick, but then fights tears at the end when she says she just wants her family back.
- Surprising: Yes. It’s the first time we’ve met Nora (I think?) and we’re surprised by this speech.
- Emotional: Yes.
- Powerful ending: Yes. “I’m not greedy. I’m not asking for the perfect day at the beach. Just give me that horrible Saturday, all four of us sick and miserable but alive and together.”
Breaking Bad
Season 4, Episode 6 (“Cornered”)
Writer: Gennifer Hutchison
The only spoiler this monologue contains is that it reveals one pivotal thing that happened in Season 3. Don’t watch it if you don’t want to know.
Also this monologue is a pretty awesome moment that you should get to experience in context if you haven’t watched this far in the series yet.
- Three-act structure:
Act 1 (00:51 – 01:00): Introduction – Walt asks Skyler what she sees when she looks at him. It’s almost a friendly question, but it’s chilling. “What is it you think you see?”
Act 2 (01:01 – 01:23): Complication – He tells her that a business big enough to be on the NASDAQ would crumble if he went to prison. “You clearly don’t know who you’re talking to, so let me clue you in.”
Act 3 (01:24 – 01:37): Resolution – His rage overfloweth. “I am not in danger. I am the danger.”
- Deepens character: Yes. Walt shows a side of himself to Skyler that she has never seen, altering their relationship forever and cementing for the audience how far he has really gone.
- Circular reference: Yes. Attempting to appeal to Walt’s fear, Skyler suggests he might “(get) shot when you open your front door.” He ends the monologue by famously saying “I am the one who knocks.”
- Contains distinct beats and levels: Yes.
- Surprising: Yes. Skyler appeals to Walt’s fear and weakness, but is surprised to learn she’s only stoked the fires of his ego.
- Powerful ending: “I am the one who knocks.”
Parks & Recreation
Season 6, Episode 9 (“Second Chunce”)
Writers: Amy Poehler & Michael Schur
The content of this monologue is only a spoiler in that it takes place in season 6 and so it reveals something about the emotional/plot journey the protagonist has taken by that point in the series.
This is another monologue that is delivered by someone other than a main character. The purpose of this monologue is not to reveal hidden depths of Kathryn Hahn’s character (though it does do a bit of that) but to propel the protagonist to make a pivotal choice.
- Deepens character: The monologue itself doesn’t reveal information about Leslie’s character, but the advice Jennifer gives her triggers a major decision in the next act, and the fact that this advice resonates with her in the way it does expresses something about her character and how she’s grown.
- Climactic: Yes. This monologue occurs 17.5 minutes into a 21-minute episode.
- Contains distinct beats and levels: Yes. She goes from critical to silly to inspiring to business-like.
- Surprising: Yes. Leslie expects Jennifer to help her run for office, but instead she encourages her to not run at all.
- Powerful ending: “You can trust me… because I don’t care enough about you to lie.”
***
You can now like this page on Facebook! Click the “Following” dropdown and select “See First” and “Notifications On” to get notified of new posts.
Footnotes
- This short film, Sunspring, was written by a computer and the dialogue is complete nonsense, but the monologue linked here is captivating because of Elisabeth Gray’s inspired performance
- A great way to know for sure is to join or start a group that reads scripts out loud. If your dialogue is unwieldy, it will be obvious as soon as you hear it.
- I wish I meant Sherlock and John, but sadly I do not.
- I didn’t include any Aaron Sorkin monologues in this post because they’re mostly more rants than the kind of monologues I wanted to dissect in this post, but they are usually very emotional, affecting, and well-structured.