Students
in my creative writing workshops often ask me about how to write real
characters who are three-dimensional. Writing a monologue is a great way
of getting into a character’s head and looking out at the world through his/her
eyes.
If you’re finding it difficult to ‘pin down’ your characters, try letting them write about their life and you might discover something interesting about them you never suspected.
Here is a monologue I've written about a disillusioned man who works at an unusual place. I hope you enjoy it.
Harry aka Bob has been excited all week. He’s just discovered words and wrote LIFERS HAV RITS TO! LET ME AUT YER BASTADS! on his cell wall. He beamed when I told him that his punctuation would really impress the Governor. We’re working on his spelling and vocabulary so he can write letters to his Missus. [I realise that as his vocabulary expands, mine is shrinking.]
‘Love letters?’ I asked naively. He looked at me as if I’d just given him ringworm.
‘Yer seen my Missus?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You haven’t any photos.’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ he said, snorting with laughter, before punching me playfully on my right shoulder and slamming me into the cell door. Thank God, I’m left handed. The doctor at A & E said he’d seen far worse dislocations than mine and told me to stop whining.
‘What about the pain?’ I whimpered.
‘That’s the body’s way of warning you,’ he said enigmatically as he walked off.
‘Warning me of what?’ I shouted after him, but got no response.
‘I fought in the Second World War for blokes like that doctor,’ an old man said proudly as I staggered towards the door.
‘You shouldn’t have bloody bothered!’ I shouted just before the automatic door clipped my shoulder. My screams echoed down the hospital corridor.
‘Pansy!’ The old man shouted back.
I thought of taking him on, but had to catch the bus home. Of course, no prison staff to pick me up. So here I am, staring into my bathroom mirror, contemplating my future with a head full of lice, a dislocated shoulder and in chronic pain. I don’t understand what went wrong. At 21 the world was my oyster. [Oh, God, I’m starting to use clichés and I’ve got a first class degree in English!] At 21 I could have taken on the world like tenderloin toughie Jimmy Cagney in ‘Angel with Dirty Faces’, so how did I end up being fifty-years-old and working in a prison as a creative writing tutor? No, shouldn’t that be Creative Writing Tutor? [Dear God - why am I bothering about Proper Nouns when I’m teaching lifers?] My mother always said that compassion would get the … what did she say? I think I’m getting Alzheimer’s as well as a dislocated shoulder. Oh, no! I’ve just written an ambiguous statement and I keep telling the lifers about the problems ambiguity causes in Law Courts. What’s happening to me? Where’s the creative clarity I had at University when I called a spade a cunning contraption with a heavy handle and a biting blade that could be teased into the terra firma with a flat foot?
I told the Governor I needed time off work because of my dislocated shoulder and within seconds, his face was a colour-copy of the prison walls – sludge grey.
‘What will happen to the prison if you don’t teach Harold Baldwin to write letters?’ He whispered, clenching his fists over his desk for support.
I couldn’t help noticing the interesting contrast in colour between his white knuckles and the walls. I’m always telling the lifers they should observe interesting details in the prison to help them paint creative word pictures in their letters to their families.
Unfortunately, their superior observational skills created a riot three days ago: the lifers started observing all the wheeling and dealing going on in their ‘patches’. The next day, Frankie-Four-Fists-McKleane went to the library to ‘observe’ words in a large book called “Find An Interesting Word Book” and discovered a collection of knives, a detailed map of the prison and an escape route hidden inside the space where the pages should have been. He wrote about his surprising findings in a letter to his Missus, telling her that some of the lifers had practised writing their names on the map.
When the Governor called me in to decipher Frankie’s letter, I felt honour-bound to grass those involved, thinking they’d be moved to another prison. They weren’t. The escape committee comes out of solitary in two weeks and since knowing this Edgar-Allan-Poe-piece-of- information, I’ve been having surreal dreams about being chopped into pieces, squeezed through a small mincer, covered with an intestinal lining and being offered up as the Free Range Succulent Sausages Option in the prison canteen.
When I told the Governor with counterfeit-nonchalance that I didn’t care a toss what would happen to the prison if I didn’t teach Harold Baldwin to write letters as I didn’t know who Harold Baldwin was, his hands developed a strange irregular tremor as if they were doing the tango without any lessons. At that moment, I knew that the stress of the job was affecting him big time.
‘Of course you know Harold Baldwin - you’ve been teaching him to read for six months.’ He squeaked in such a high falsetto that I wondered if an unseen lifer had suddenly crept in and strapped gaffer tape around his testicles.
I told him he must have mixed up his files because I’d never seen Harold Baldwin, let alone taught him.
‘Have you heard of Harry the Hatchet? Have you heard of Bob de Niro?’ he squeaked repetitively. [And there’s me telling the lifers not to be repetitive in their letters as it could cause monumental problems with sustaining their families’ interest.]
His falsetto voice was setting up an appalling vibration in my head, which, coupled with the searing pain in my shoulder, almost caused me to faint. But I haven’t worked with lifers for nothing. Ignoring the agony, I answered him soothingly.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of Bob de Niro, Governor. I’ve been trying to teach him to read for six months.’
‘Well, Bob de Niro is Harry the Hatchet is Harold Baldwin. And do you know what he did?’
I said I didn’t want to know, but he insisted on telling me in spite of my agonising pain.
‘He took a hatchet and chopped his mother-in-law into pieces.’
The Governor stared at me, obviously trying to gauge my reaction as I pondered on the possibility of being able to chop a body into pieces. In my lucid moments, I knew my dreams were only wild fantasies. You’d have to be a surgeon to be able to hack through all the bones, wouldn’t you? The hairs on the back of my hands suddenly shot up; the prison could be filled with an operating theatre of surgeons for all I knew.
‘Look, Tristan… we’re all in this together,’ the Governor continued, lowering his voice an octave and projecting one of his facsimile smiles onto the prison wall. The change to over-familiar-clichéd gear didn’t do it for me. ‘You can’t take time off. I’ve got to think of the welfare of my staff. What’s going to happen to everyone after Harold/Harry/Bob runs rampant through the prison?’
Imagination is a double-edged sword; I knew exactly what would happen if I didn’t teach Harold/Harry/Bob: the prison would look like an abattoir. So tomorrow, I’ve got to teach this woolly mammoth of a man; a mammoth who hasn’t yet mastered the complications of the alphabet, how to write letters home to a family full of Neanderthals.
As I walked home in the deary dark accompanied only by head-lice and intense pain, my mother’s prophetic words seared my brain: ‘Darling – there really are more useful subjects than English.’
Oh, Mummy - why didn’t I listen?
[An extract from my book "How To Write And Sell Great Short Stories".]
© Linda M James 2011
If you’re finding it difficult to ‘pin down’ your characters, try letting them write about their life and you might discover something interesting about them you never suspected.
Here is a monologue I've written about a disillusioned man who works at an unusual place. I hope you enjoy it.
TRISTIAN
Why
are you doing this? I ask myself for the hundredth time as I try to brush
my teeth with three flat bristles. Pay’s lousy. Food’s lousy. Inmates are really
lousy. Yesterday, I leant over Harry the Hatchet [I’ve never asked] who now
calls himself Bob de Niro, [that’s what happens when you tell them to be
imaginative] and some little buggers buried themselves in my hair. They must
have been at it all night because I can see my hair moving in the mirror. Harry aka Bob has been excited all week. He’s just discovered words and wrote LIFERS HAV RITS TO! LET ME AUT YER BASTADS! on his cell wall. He beamed when I told him that his punctuation would really impress the Governor. We’re working on his spelling and vocabulary so he can write letters to his Missus. [I realise that as his vocabulary expands, mine is shrinking.]
‘Love letters?’ I asked naively. He looked at me as if I’d just given him ringworm.
‘Yer seen my Missus?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘You haven’t any photos.’
‘There’s a reason for that,’ he said, snorting with laughter, before punching me playfully on my right shoulder and slamming me into the cell door. Thank God, I’m left handed. The doctor at A & E said he’d seen far worse dislocations than mine and told me to stop whining.
‘What about the pain?’ I whimpered.
‘That’s the body’s way of warning you,’ he said enigmatically as he walked off.
‘Warning me of what?’ I shouted after him, but got no response.
‘I fought in the Second World War for blokes like that doctor,’ an old man said proudly as I staggered towards the door.
‘You shouldn’t have bloody bothered!’ I shouted just before the automatic door clipped my shoulder. My screams echoed down the hospital corridor.
‘Pansy!’ The old man shouted back.
I thought of taking him on, but had to catch the bus home. Of course, no prison staff to pick me up. So here I am, staring into my bathroom mirror, contemplating my future with a head full of lice, a dislocated shoulder and in chronic pain. I don’t understand what went wrong. At 21 the world was my oyster. [Oh, God, I’m starting to use clichés and I’ve got a first class degree in English!] At 21 I could have taken on the world like tenderloin toughie Jimmy Cagney in ‘Angel with Dirty Faces’, so how did I end up being fifty-years-old and working in a prison as a creative writing tutor? No, shouldn’t that be Creative Writing Tutor? [Dear God - why am I bothering about Proper Nouns when I’m teaching lifers?] My mother always said that compassion would get the … what did she say? I think I’m getting Alzheimer’s as well as a dislocated shoulder. Oh, no! I’ve just written an ambiguous statement and I keep telling the lifers about the problems ambiguity causes in Law Courts. What’s happening to me? Where’s the creative clarity I had at University when I called a spade a cunning contraption with a heavy handle and a biting blade that could be teased into the terra firma with a flat foot?
I told the Governor I needed time off work because of my dislocated shoulder and within seconds, his face was a colour-copy of the prison walls – sludge grey.
‘What will happen to the prison if you don’t teach Harold Baldwin to write letters?’ He whispered, clenching his fists over his desk for support.
I couldn’t help noticing the interesting contrast in colour between his white knuckles and the walls. I’m always telling the lifers they should observe interesting details in the prison to help them paint creative word pictures in their letters to their families.
Unfortunately, their superior observational skills created a riot three days ago: the lifers started observing all the wheeling and dealing going on in their ‘patches’. The next day, Frankie-Four-Fists-McKleane went to the library to ‘observe’ words in a large book called “Find An Interesting Word Book” and discovered a collection of knives, a detailed map of the prison and an escape route hidden inside the space where the pages should have been. He wrote about his surprising findings in a letter to his Missus, telling her that some of the lifers had practised writing their names on the map.
When the Governor called me in to decipher Frankie’s letter, I felt honour-bound to grass those involved, thinking they’d be moved to another prison. They weren’t. The escape committee comes out of solitary in two weeks and since knowing this Edgar-Allan-Poe-piece-of- information, I’ve been having surreal dreams about being chopped into pieces, squeezed through a small mincer, covered with an intestinal lining and being offered up as the Free Range Succulent Sausages Option in the prison canteen.
When I told the Governor with counterfeit-nonchalance that I didn’t care a toss what would happen to the prison if I didn’t teach Harold Baldwin to write letters as I didn’t know who Harold Baldwin was, his hands developed a strange irregular tremor as if they were doing the tango without any lessons. At that moment, I knew that the stress of the job was affecting him big time.
‘Of course you know Harold Baldwin - you’ve been teaching him to read for six months.’ He squeaked in such a high falsetto that I wondered if an unseen lifer had suddenly crept in and strapped gaffer tape around his testicles.
I told him he must have mixed up his files because I’d never seen Harold Baldwin, let alone taught him.
‘Have you heard of Harry the Hatchet? Have you heard of Bob de Niro?’ he squeaked repetitively. [And there’s me telling the lifers not to be repetitive in their letters as it could cause monumental problems with sustaining their families’ interest.]
His falsetto voice was setting up an appalling vibration in my head, which, coupled with the searing pain in my shoulder, almost caused me to faint. But I haven’t worked with lifers for nothing. Ignoring the agony, I answered him soothingly.
‘Yes, I’ve heard of Bob de Niro, Governor. I’ve been trying to teach him to read for six months.’
‘Well, Bob de Niro is Harry the Hatchet is Harold Baldwin. And do you know what he did?’
I said I didn’t want to know, but he insisted on telling me in spite of my agonising pain.
‘He took a hatchet and chopped his mother-in-law into pieces.’
The Governor stared at me, obviously trying to gauge my reaction as I pondered on the possibility of being able to chop a body into pieces. In my lucid moments, I knew my dreams were only wild fantasies. You’d have to be a surgeon to be able to hack through all the bones, wouldn’t you? The hairs on the back of my hands suddenly shot up; the prison could be filled with an operating theatre of surgeons for all I knew.
‘Look, Tristan… we’re all in this together,’ the Governor continued, lowering his voice an octave and projecting one of his facsimile smiles onto the prison wall. The change to over-familiar-clichéd gear didn’t do it for me. ‘You can’t take time off. I’ve got to think of the welfare of my staff. What’s going to happen to everyone after Harold/Harry/Bob runs rampant through the prison?’
Imagination is a double-edged sword; I knew exactly what would happen if I didn’t teach Harold/Harry/Bob: the prison would look like an abattoir. So tomorrow, I’ve got to teach this woolly mammoth of a man; a mammoth who hasn’t yet mastered the complications of the alphabet, how to write letters home to a family full of Neanderthals.
As I walked home in the deary dark accompanied only by head-lice and intense pain, my mother’s prophetic words seared my brain: ‘Darling – there really are more useful subjects than English.’
Oh, Mummy - why didn’t I listen?
[An extract from my book "How To Write And Sell Great Short Stories".]
© Linda M James 2011
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