Playwriting Exercise: Inner Monologue

One of the best activities for gathering writing ideas is observation. How are you experiencing the world around you? A great way to practice this is to have your students describe your classroom using the five senses:

• What do you see when you look around? What’s something you’ve never noticed before?
• What do you hear?
• What do you smell?
• What are the textures?
• You may think that taste doesn’t have a place, but rooms can have a taste! Overly air-conditioned rooms can taste dry. The smell of perfume can have a taste. Encourage students to use their imagination when it comes to describing how the room “tastes.”

Have students share their observations. What are the similarities and differences? If you get your students into the habit of observation, specifically looking at people, places, and things, they will never run out of material to write about.

This inner monologue exercise takes observation to the next level. Students will: observe an individual, create a few character details, and write a monologue for this person. Who are they? What are they thinking?

Instruction

1. Go to a public place: mall, cafeteria, food court, library — a place where you can easily observe others.

2. Pick an individual who is doing a mundane activity: folding clothes in a store, eating, walking to class, reading, trying on shoes. Write down all your observations. It must be someone you don’t know. You can free-write, write in point form, just get it down on paper. Bring in these observations to class.

3. Divide students into groups and have them share their observations.

4. Students will then come up with a few character details for this person. This is why it’s important that they choose someone they don’t know; they’ll be making up their character. Remind students to review their observation source material. How can they take what they observed and turn it into character details? Students are to write one paragraph. Suggested character details include:

• Name, age
• Family situation. Who do they live with? What are their relationships like?
• Where do they live? How do they live? (Is it neat, messy, minimalist, cramped, spacious?)
• Significant relationship: What is the most important relationship for this character?
  

5. Lastly, students will write a half-page to one-page inner monologue for this character. What are they really thinking about? Focus on the idea that their inner thoughts counter their outside persona. Remember, they’re doing something mundane on the outside, so choose an opposing emotion for their inner thoughts. What do they want that they can’t say or share?

6. Have students share their monologues in small groups.