WRITING THE MONOLOGUE
I. CHOOSING A THEME
Before an experienced writer takes up his pencil he has formed
definitely in his mind just what he is going to write about--that
is the simple yet startling difference between the experienced
writer and the novice. Not only does the former know what his
subject is, but he usually knows how he is going to treat it, and
even some striking phrases and turns of sentences are ready in his
mind, together with the hundreds of minute points which, taken
together, make up the singleness of impression of the whole.
But just as it is impossible for the human mind--untrained, let
us say, in the art of making bricks--to picture at a glance the
various processes through which the clay passes before it takes
brick form, so it is identically as impossible for the mind of the
novice to comprehend in a flash the various purposes and half-purposes
that precede the actual work of writing anything.
True as this is of writing in general, it seems to me particularly
true of writing the monologue, for the monologue is one of those
precise forms of the art of writing that may best be compared to
the miniature, where every stroke must be true and unhesitating
and where all combine unerringly to form the composite whole.
In preparing monologue material the writer usually is working in
the _sounds_ of spoken--and mis-spoken--words, and the humor that
lies in the twisting of ideas into surprising conclusions. He
seldom deliberately searches for a theme--more often some
laugh-provoking incident or sentence gives him an idea and he
builds it into a monologue with its subject for the theme.
1. Themes to Avoid
Anything at all in the whole range of subjects with which life
abounds will lend itself for a monologue theme--provided the writer
can without straining twist it to the angle of humor; but propriety
demands that nothing blatantly suggestive shall be treated, and
common sense dictates that no theme of merely local interest shall
be used, when the purpose of the monologue is to entertain the
whole country. Of course if a monologue is designed to entertain
merely a certain class or the residents of a certain city or section
only, the very theme--for instance, some purely local happening
or trade interest--that you would avoid using in a monologue planned
for national use, would be the happiest theme that could be chosen.
But, as the ambitious monologue writer does not wish to confine
himself to a local or a sectional subject and market, let us
consider here only themes that have universal appeal.
II. A FEW THEMES OF UNIVERSAL INTEREST
Politics Woman Suffrage
Love Drink
Marriage Baseball
Woman's Dress Money
While there are many more themes that can be twisted to universal
interest--and anyone could multiply the number given--these few
are used in whole or in part in nearly every successful monologue
now being presented. And, they offer to the new writer the surest
ground to build a new monologue. That they have all been done
before is no reason why they should not be done again: the new
author has only to do them better--and a little different. It is
all a matter of fresh vision. What is there in any art that is
really new--but treatment?
Do not make the fatal mistake of supposing that these few themes
are the only themes possessing universal interest. Anything in
the whole wide world may be the subject for a monologue, when
transmuted by the magic of common sense and uncommon ability into
universal fun.
III. HOW TO BEGIN TO WRITE
As a monologue is a collection of carefully selected and smoothly
blended points or gags, with a suitable introduction to the routine
[1]--each point and gag being a complete, separate entity, and the
introduction being as truly distinct--the monologue writer, unlike
the playlet writer, may begin to write anywhere. He may even write
the last point or gag used in the routine before he writes the
first. Or he may write the twelfth point before he writes either
the first one or the last one. But usually, he writes his
introduction first.
[1] _Routine_--the entire monologue; but more often used to suggest
its arrangement and construction. A monologue with its gags and
points arranged in a certain order is one routine; a different
routine is used when the gags or points are arranged in a different
order. Thus _routine_ means _arrangement_. The word is also used to
describe the arrangement of other stage offerings--for instance, a
dance: the same steps arranged in a different order make a new
"dance routine."
1. The Introduction
A monologue introduction may be just one line with a point or a
gag that will raise a snicker, or it may be a long introduction
that stamps the character as a "character," and causes amusement
because it introduces the entire monologue theme in a bright way.
An example of the short introduction is:
"D'you know me friend Casey? He's the guy that put the sham in
shamrock," then on into the first gag that stamps Casey as a
sure-'nuff "character," with a giggle-point to the gag.
The very best example of the long introduction being done on the
stage today is the first four paragraphs of "The German Senator."
The first line, "My dear friends and falling Citizens," stamps the
monologue unquestionably as a speech. The second line, "My heart
fills up with vaccination to be disabled," declares the mixed-up
character of the oration and of the German Senator himself, and
causes amusement. And the end of the fourth paragraph--which you
will note is one long involved sentence filled with giggles--raises
the first laugh.
Nat Wills says the introduction to the gag-monologue may often
profitably open with a "local"--one about the town or some local
happening--as a local is pretty sure to raise a giggle, and will
cause the audience to think the monologist "bright" and at least
start their relations off pleasantly. He says: "Work for giggles
in your introduction, but don't let the audience get set--with a
big laugh--until the fifth or sixth joke."
The introduction, therefore, is designed to establish the monologist
with the audience as "bright," to stamp the character of the
"character" delivering it--or about whom the gags are told--and
to delay a big laugh until the monologist has "got" his audience.
2. The Development
The "point," you will recall, we defined as the funny observation
of a pure monologue--in lay-conversation it means the laugh line
of a joke; and "gag" we defined as a joke or a pun. For the sake
of clearness let us confine "point" to a funny observation in a
monologue, and "gag" to a joke in a connected series of stories.
It is impossible for anyone to teach you how to write a really
funny point or a gag. But, if you have a well-developed sense of
humor, you can, with the help of the suggestions for form given
here and the examples of humor printed in the appendix, and those
you will find in the funny papers and hear along the street or on
the stage, teach yourself to write saleable material. All that
this chapter can hope to do for you is to show you how the best
monologue writes and the most successful monologists work to achieve
their notable results, and thus put you in the right path to
accomplish, with the least waste of time and energy, what they
have done.
Therefore, let us suppose that you know what is humorous, have a
well-developed sense of humor, and can produce really funny points
and gags. Now, having your points and gags clearly framed in mind
and ready to set down on paper, you naturally ask, How shall I
arrange them? In what order shall I place them to secure the best
effect for the whole monologue?
Barrett Wendell, professor of English at Harvard University, [1]
has suggested an effective mechanical aid for determining the
clearest and best arrangement of sentences and paragraphs in English
prose, and his plan seems especially adapted to help the monologue
writer determine a perfect routine. Briefly his method may be
paraphrased thus:
[1] English Composition, page 165.
Have as many cards or slips of paper as you have points or gags.
Write only one point or gag on one card or slip of paper. On the
first card write "Introduction," and always keep that card first
in your hand. Then take up a card and read the point or gag on
it as following the introduction, the second card as the second
point or gag, and so on until you have arranged your monologue in
an effective routine.
Then try another arrangement. Let us say the tenth joke in the
first routine reads better as the first joke. All right, place
it in your new arrangement right after the introduction. Perhaps
the fourteenth point or gag fits in well after the tenth gag--fine,
make that fourteenth gag the second gag; and so on through your
cards until you have arranged a new routine.
Your first arrangement can invariably be improved--maybe even your
seventh arrangement can be made better; very good, by shuffiing
the cards you may make as many arrangements as you wish and
eventually arrive at the ideal routine. And by keeping a memorandum
of preceding arrangements you can always turn back to the older
routine--if that appears the best after all other arrangements
have been tried.
But what is really the ideal arrangement of a monologue? How may
you know which routine is really the best? Frankly, you cannot
_know_ until it has been tried out on an audience many, many
times--and has been proved a success by actual test. Arranging a
routine of untried points and gags on paper is like trying to solve
a cut-out puzzle with the key-piece missing. Only by actually
trying out a monologue before an audience and fitting the points
and gags to suit the monologist's peculiar style (indeed, this is
the real work of writing a monologue and will be described later
on) can you determine what really is the best routine. And even
then another arrangement may "go" better in another town. Still
there are a few suggestions--a very few--that can be given here
to aid the beginner.
Like ocean waves, monologic laughs should come in threes and
nines--proved, like most rules, by exceptions. Note the application
of this rule in "The German Senator."
Study the arrangement of the points in this great monologue and
you will see that each really big point is dependent on several
minor points that precede it to get its own big laugh. For instance,
take the following point:
And if meat goes any higher, it will be worth more than money.
Then there won't be any money.
Instead of carrying money in your pocket, you'll carry meat
around.
A sirloin steak will be worth a thousand dollar bill.
When you go down to the bank to make a deposit, instead of giving
the cashier a thousand dollar bill, you'll slip him a sirloin
steak.
If you ask him for change, he'll give you a hunk of bologny.
The first line blends this point with the preceding one about
the high cost of eggs. The second line awakens interest and
prepares for the next, "Instead of carrying money in your pocket,
you'll carry meat around," which is good for a grin. The next
line states the premise necessary for the first point-ending
"--you'll slip him a sirloin steak," which is always good for a
laugh. Then the last line, "If you ask him for change, he'll
give you a hunk of bologny," tops the preceding laugh.
From this example you see what is meant by monologic laughs coming
in threes and nines. The introduction of each new story--the line
after the blend-line--should awaken a grin, its development cause
a chuckle, and the point-line itself raise a laugh.
Each new point should top the preceding point until with the end
of that particular angle or situation, should come a roar of honest
laughter. Then back to the grin, the chuckle, and on to the laugh
again, building up to the next big roar.
With the end of the monologue should come complete satisfaction
in one great burst of laughter. This, of course, is the ideal.
3. How and Where to End
A monologue should run anywhere from ten to fifteen minutes. The
monologist can vary his playing time at will by leaving out points
and gags here and there, as necessity demands, so the writer should
supply at least a full fifteen minutes of material in his manuscript.
"How shall I time my manuscript?" is the puzzling problem the new
writer asks himself. The answer is that it is very difficult to
time a monologue exactly, because different performers work at
different speeds and laughs delay the delivery and, therefore,
make the monologue run longer. But here is a very rough counting
scale that may be given, with the warning that it is far from
exact:
For every one hundred and fifteen to one hundred and forty words
count one minute for delivery. This is so inexact, depending as
it does on the number of laughs and the monologist's speed of
delivery, that it is like a rubber ruler. At one performance it
may be too long, at another too short.
Having given a full fifteen minutes of material, filled, let us
hope, with good points made up of grins, chuckles and laughs, now
choose your very biggest laugh-point for the last. When you wrote
the monologue and arranged it into the first routine, that biggest
laugh may have been the tenth, or the ninth, or the fifteenth, but
you have spotted it unerringly as the very biggest laugh you
possess, so you blend it in as the final laugh of the completed
monologue.
It may now be worth while thus to sum up the ideal structure:
A routine is so arranged that the introduction stamps the monologist
as bright, and the character he is impersonating or telling about
as a real "character." The first four points or gags are snickers
and the fifth or sixth is a laugh. [1] Each point or gag blends
perfectly into the ones preceding and following it. The introduction
of each new story awakens a grin, its development causes a chuckle,
and the point-line itself raises a laugh. The final point or gag
rounds the monologue off in the biggest burst of honest laughter.
[1] It is true that some monologists strive for a laugh on the
very first point, but to win a big laugh at once is very rare.
IV. BUILDING A MONOLOGUE BEFORE AN AUDIENCE
When a writer delivers the manuscript of a monologue to a monologist
his work is not ended. It has just begun, because he must share
with the monologist the pains of delivering the monologue before
an audience. Dion Boucicault once said, "A play is not written,
but rewritten." True as this is of a play, it is, if possible,
even more true of a monologue.
Of course, not all beginners can afford to give this personal
attention to staging a monologue, but it is advisable whenever
possible. For, points that the author and the monologist himself
were sure would "go big," "die," while points and gags that neither
thought much of, "go big." It is for precisely this purpose of
weeding out the good points and gags from the bad that even famous
monologists "hide away," under other names, in very small houses
for try-outs. And while the monologist is working on the stage
to make the points and gags "get over," the author is working in
the audience to note the effect of points and finding ways to
change a phrase here and a word there to build dead points into
life and laughter. Then it is that they both realize that Frank
Fogarty's wise words are true: "There is only one way to tell a
gag. If you can cut one word out from any of my gags I'll give
you five dollars, for it's worth fifty to me. Words are costly."
Some entire points and gags will be found to be dead beyond
resurrection, and even whole series of gags and points must be
cast away and new and better ones substituted to raise the golden
laughs. So the monologue is changed and built performance after
performance, with both the monologist and the author working as
though their very lives depended on making it perfect.
Then, when it is "set" to the satisfaction of both, the monologist
goes out on the road to try it out on different audiences and to
write the author continually for new points and gags. It may be
said with perfect truth that a monologue is never finished. Nat
Wills, the Tramp Monologist, pays James Madison a weekly salary
to supply him with new jokes every seventh day. So, nearly every
monologist retains the author to keep him up to the minute with
material, right in the forefront of the laughter-of-the-hour.
V. OTHER SINGLE TALKING ACT FORMS
The discussion of the monologue form has been exhaustive, for the
pure monologue holds within itself all the elements of the other
allied forms. The only difference between a pure monologue and
any other kind is in the addition of entertainment features that
are not connected gags and points. Therefore, to cover the field
completely it is necessary only to name a few of the many different
kinds of single talking acts and to describe them briefly.
The most common talking singles--all of whom buy material from
vaudeville writers--are:
(a) _The Talking Magician_--who may have only a few little tricks
to present, but who plays them up big because he sprinkles his
work with laughter-provoking points.
(b) _The "Nut Comedian"_--who does all manner of silly tricks to
make his audience laugh, but who has a carefully prepared routine
of "nut" material.
(c) _The Parody Monologist_--who opens and closes with funny
parodies on the latest song hits and does a monologue routine
between songs.
(d) _The "Original Talk"_ Impersonator--who does impersonations
of celebrities, but adds to his offering a few clever points and
gags.
VI. A FINAL WORD
Before you seek a market [1] for your monologue, be sure that it
fulfills all the requirements of a monologue and that it is the very
best work you can do. Above all, make sure that every gag or point
you use is original with you, and that the angle of the subject you
have selected for your theme is honestly your own. For if you have
copied even one gag or point that has been used before, you have laid
your work open to suspicion and yourself to the epithet of "chooser."
[1] See Chapter XXIV, Manuscripts and Markets.
The infringer--who steals gags and points bodily--can be pursued
and punished under the copyright law, but the chooser is a kind
of sneak thief who works gags and points around to escape taking
criminal chances, making his material just enough different to
evade the law. A chooser damages the originator of the material
without himself getting very far. No one likes a chooser; no one
knowingly will have dealings with a chooser. Call a vaudeville
man a liar and he may laugh at you--call him a chooser and you'll
have to fight him.
There are, of course, deliberate choosers in the vaudeville business,
just as there are "crooks" in every line of life, but they never
make more than a momentary success. Here is why they invariably
fail:
When you sit in the audience, and hear an old gag or point, you
whisper, "Phew, that's old," or you give your companion a knowing
look, don't you? Well, half the audience is doing the very same
thing, and they, like you, receive the impression that all the
gags are old, and merely suppose that they haven't heard the other
ones before.
The performer, whose bread and butter depends on the audience
thinking him bright, cannot afford to have anything ancient in his
routine. Two familiar gags or points will kill at least twenty-five
percent of his applause. He may not get even one bow, and when
audiences do not like a monologist well enough to call him out for
a bow, he might as well say good-by to his chances of getting even
another week's booking. Therefore the performer watches the
material that is offered him with the strained attention of an
Asiatic potentate who suspects there is poison in his breakfast
food. He not only guards against old gags or points, but he takes
great care that the specific form of the subject of any routine
that he accepts is absolutely new.
Some of the deliberate choosers watch the field very closely and
as soon as anyone strikes a new vein or angle they proceed to work
it over. But taking the same subject and working around it--even
though each gag or point is honestly new--does not and cannot pay.
Even though the chooser secures some actor willing to use such
material, he fails ultimately for two reasons: In the first place,
the copier is never as good as the originator; and, in the second
place, the circuit managers do not look with favor upon copy-acts.
As the success of the performer depends on his cleverness and the
novelty of his material, in identically the same way the success
of a vaudeville theatre lies in the cleverness and novelty of the
acts it plays. Individual house managers, and therefore circuit
managers, cannot afford to countenance copy-acts. For this reason
a monologist or an act is often given exclusive rights to use a
precise kind of subject-material over a given circuit. A copy-act
cannot keep going to very long with only a few segregated house
willing to play his act.
Therefore before you offer your monologue to a possible buyer, be
sure--absolutely sure--that your theme and every one of your points
and gags are original.