Formats›A monologue, in five

A monologue, in five

A reusable format. Take it, change what does not fit, use it again — for a class, a crit, a meeting, a recording. Nothing in it is specific to one room.

What this is for

A monologue is one person speaking, uninterrupted, with no reply expected. It is probably the oldest format there is, and it is usually arrived at by accident: somebody talks for too long and everybody agrees afterwards that it was a monologue.

Done deliberately it is a different thing. The five rules below all cost the speaker something, and what they buy is the one thing a discussion cannot produce: a position stated whole, at its full length, before anybody starts adjusting it.

A monologue is not a lecture and not a pitch. A lecture transfers something the speaker already knows to be true. A pitch wants a decision. This wants neither, and the fifth rule is where that shows.

The format

ONE VOICE       nobody replies, and this is said before it starts

HOW LONG        a number, said out loud at the start, and kept
THE POSITION    the one thing you are claiming, in a sentence, early
MAKE ME WRONG   what would show you wrong, said inside it, not after
NO QUESTIONS    none at the end — if there are any, they are elsewhere

NOT THIS        what you are not claiming, and will not defend today

One voice above, a refusal below, and four rules between.

What each rule is asking

ONE VOICE. Said before it starts: I am going to talk for eleven minutes and nobody has to respond. It is a courtesy, and it also does real work. A room that does not know the shape spends the whole time preparing to speak, and preparing to speak is not listening.

HOW LONG. A number, out loud, at the start. Then keep it. The number is what makes the room able to relax; going over is what makes a monologue feel like something being done to people.

THE POSITION. One thing you are claiming, in a sentence, near the beginning rather than saved for the end. Withholding the position until the last minute is a structure borrowed from storytelling. It turns listeners into people waiting to find out whether they agree.

MAKE ME WRONG. Said inside the monologue, not appended to it. This is the rule that separates the format from a speech: you state the thing that would defeat your own position while you still have the floor and nobody can be accused of having forced it out of you. If you cannot name it, you are not holding a position — you are describing a preference.

NO QUESTIONS. None at the end. This is the rule people push back on, and I would give it up last. A question period converts a stated position into a defended one within ninety seconds, and a defended position hardens. Put the questions somewhere else: the next day, in writing, in a different room, where the answer can be you are right, I will change it.

NOT THIS. What you are not claiming. A monologue with no stated limit invites every adjacent objection, and answering those is what turns eleven minutes into an hour.

A worked one

ONE VOICE       "Eleven minutes, nobody has to say anything, and I'm
                not taking questions at the end."

HOW LONG        Eleven minutes. Stopped at eleven.
THE POSITION    "We should stop showing work in progress on Fridays."
                Said in the second minute, not the tenth.
MAKE ME WRONG   "A Friday where somebody changed their mind because of
                what they saw." Said at minute seven, unprompted.
NO QUESTIONS    None taken. Said where to bring them: written, before
                Wednesday, to everybody rather than to me.

NOT THIS        Not a claim about showing work at all, and not about
                anybody's project in particular.

Note that NOT THIS is carrying this one. Without it the first objection is that somebody's own project is being got at, the next fifteen minutes go on saying it is not, and nobody hears the position at all.

How to use it

1. Write the position as one sentence first. If it takes a paragraph, you have two monologues or none.
2. Write what would make you wrong before you write anything else. It is the hardest line and everything else is easier once it exists.
3. Say the shape out loud at the start — length, no replies, no questions at the end — and say where the questions go instead. Naming the alternative is what stops the last rule reading as a refusal to be challenged.
4. Keep the number. Stop mid-sentence if you have to.
5. 🔴 Do not soften the position because the room is silent. Silence is what the format asked for; reading it as disagreement and hedging is how a monologue turns back into a hesitant discussion with one participant.

Three ways a monologue fails

It has no position. Eleven minutes of material, carefully arranged, claiming nothing. Nobody can disagree with it, which will feel like it went well.

It saves the point for the end. The room spends ten minutes guessing where it is going, and the two minutes that mattered arrive when everybody has stopped listening.

It takes questions. The position is defended before it has been thought about, by the person least able to change their mind about it at that moment, in front of everybody.

Prayas Abhinav. Licensed CC BY 4.0 — copy it, change it, build on it, including commercially. Say where it came from, and if you changed it.

Take a copy: specification-format.md. Yours to alter.