the sound of one voice talking

I don't know why, but I thought writing a monologue was going to be easy.

I've been writing a monologue for the last couple of weeks. It's for an idea I want to pitch to Radio 4, and it's really been doing my head in, because now I've got into it, It's probably the most difficult bit of writing I've done.

I just kept hitting a dead end. I knew where the story was supposed to go, and I knew the other people who were involved in the story, who played an active role in the story, but I just wasn't able to write the story.

Via Micheal Jacob I sent an email to Hugo Blick, creator of Marion and Geoff and who has just done a season of Monologues on BBC1 recently asking him for any advice - he hasn't replied yet. Micheal came up with the suggestion that, as an exercise, I should write the story from the point of view of one of the other characters. Which I did and it helped me realise where I was going wrong.

Where I was going wrong was that I hadn't planned it properly. I was under the impression that a monlogue was one person talking in their own inimitable way about 'stuff' and touching upon elements of the story until finally you get to a conclusion or a denouemont. Silly pillock.

It's not. Because 'stuff' isn't really that interesting. What that would be, would be a 'rant.' A monologue has to be a story, and a bloody good story. It needs plotting as carefully as any narrative does. Even though you never hear from the characters mentioned throughout the story, you need to know every single one of them well enough that you would be able to write the whole thing from their point of view if needed. And it doesn't just need a beginning a middle and an end, it needs drama, it needs cliffhangers, it needs suspense and teases, it needs every little trick you can muster of to keep the reader reading or the listener listening, because the sound of just one voice talking can be a bit of a bore otherwise.

A massive help has been Alan Bennett's Talking Heads, series which I would recommend to anyone who, like me, is trying to write these bloody things for the first time. If you can suggest any others, please do. I'll be more than happy to check them out.

Anyway, I've now got my script to about 15 minutes, and I've done a second draft which I was happy with this afternoon, but I've just read it again and decided it's absolutely terrible. So I'm going to hide it in a drawer for a few days and see what happens.

I'm going to write some sketches because the Scallywagga series 2 deadline is pressing and I also want to send some stuff to School of Comedy (C4) and Wrong Door (BBC3), which thoroughly deserves a second series.

Tonight I'm gigging at a rugby club. It's going to be horrible, I can feel it. Not only is there nowhere to plug my guitar in but I'm following two really, really strong acts: John Scott and Anvil Springstein. I may very well die on my hole.