What Do 'Killing Eve,' 'Angela's Ashes' and Toni Morrison's 'Beloved' All Have in Common?

Behold the storytelling superpower of monologues.

One of my favorite TV shows is Killing Eve, written by the brilliant Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Jodie Comer’s character, Villanelle, is one of the most fun villains I’ve ever seen portrayed on screen, and there’s one moment in Season 2 that I can never get out of my mind. It’s a group therapy scene where the therapist asks, “Does anyone else have anything they want to say?” Villanelle, pretending to be her arch-nemesis, Billie, responds:

A great monologue stays with us. Not just in our memories, but in our hearts. We love watching them on the screen. But for some reason, this powerful form of expression is often forgotten when writing personal essays and memoirs. It shouldn’t be. Monologue can be so powerful in writing, both in fiction and in memoir.

In Toni Morrison’s Beloved, Baby Suggs has an epic monologue that honors all the golden rules. She hooks us at the beginning with: “Here, in this here place, we flesh; flesh that weeps, laughs; flesh that dances on bare feet in grass.” And she keeps us hooked, line by line. (Of course she does, it’s Morrison!) In Angela’s Ashes, Frank McCourt rounds the end of one of his most stirring monologues with: “You might be poor, your shoes might be broken, but your mind is a palace.” These words remind us to cherish what we truly own, what no one can interfere with. They linger long after we close the book. Whether on screen, stage or the page, the best monologues do exactly that: They resonate like no other kind of writing.

I’m so excited to be teaching Using Monologues to Power Your Memoir Writing, an intensive craft seminar for Narratively Academy next week. It’s going to be a very fun, generative session where we’ll study examples of great usages of monologue in memoir and explore how to use them as templates and models for our own narratives. If you’re interested in learning how to write memoir monologues that are as vibrant as Morrison, McCourt and Waller-Bridge, I hope you’ll join me on Saturday, November 9.

Interested in joining but can’t afford the full price? We are happy to offer sliding scale, income-based full and partial scholarships, which you can apply for here.