Following our recent post by Laura De Vivo, another final-year BA Creative Writing student, CLAIRE SUZANNE, discusses her own experiences of writing a monologue and watching it in performance.
Always keen to make the most of opportunities provided by NTU, earlier this year I took part in a monologue writing workshop hosted by Sara Bodinar, a professional scriptwriter. Unlike most students, I attended online, so I didn’t benefit from the full workshop experience. Still, I decided to take on the challenge to write a monologue to be performed in a collaboration between NTU and Nottingham Actors’ Workshop.
Initially, my mind was as blank as my computer screen. I have drafts of novels, short stories and blog pieces cluttering my hard drive, but no monologues. Although we were given instructions – main character, three act structure – the page remained stubbornly blank on that first day. Disheartened, I decided to try again the next day, and managed to force out a story, but when I read it back it sounded sterile. My heart wasn’t in it, and this was immediately clear. It had no depth. It was a repetitive rant. I pressed delete.
With a familiar blank page glaring at me again, and only 24 hours before I was due to meet Sara in person for one-to-one mentoring, I had no choice but to freewrite. I closed the door, removed all background noise, and somehow managed to get into the zone.
I should mention that this is how I draft most of my fiction. I never plan, but I usually have at least some idea of a theme beforehand. This time, I had no idea what would come out: I just let my mind unleash whatever it wanted. What emerged was something I’d never written about before, something deeply personal that I rarely talk about openly. And this is how ‘Nearly Normal’, as I called it, initially came into being.
Writing it was like therapy, unleashing inner frustration. When I met Sara in person, I sat on the opposite side of the table, shoved the printout towards her, and looked away in pure embarrassment for showing a stranger something so personal on our first meeting. Then: ‘I love it’, she said, smiling.
Of course, early drafts are never perfect, and work still had to be done, but her feedback was extremely encouraging. Not only did she tell me it was funny and flowed well, but she also told me it was very ‘current’. Little did I know I’d written about a subject that, after a lifetime of being dismissed, people were finally beginning to talk about.
Then she gave me the ultimate task: she challenged me to convey an entire neurodivergence in one page. So I went back to freewriting, and one hour later it was done. As simple as that. Dare I say it was easy? I think so, for once. The words had clearly been desperate to escape for years, and flew out like bats from a cave at dusk.
I sent it back for the actors to audition, received a congratulations e-mail from Sara, then heard nothing more until 23 April when it was performed by a wonderful actress at Nottingham Contemporary.
Luckily for me, my monologue was the first to be announced, so I didn’t have to endure a nervous wait. That didn’t make it any easier to hear my innermost thoughts being read out to a room full of strangers, though. I could barely look, and sat with my head in my hands, looking out between my fingers. But the actress clearly understood the part and did a brilliant job, and it was great to have validation when my amazing friend and partner in writing, Laura De Vivo, said ‘That’s you through and through!’
Freewriting (or not planning), a technique developed originally by Dorothea Brande, is endorsed by many writers I admire, such as Stephen King – and now also by me, a little writing enthusiast with big dreams. I feel my creativity has be unlocked. If I plan too much, I get a mental block: logic intervenes, and creativity is suppressed. Not thinking consciously enables me to tap into that little piece of creative paradise and allow the words to tumble out, like being a little tipsy and suddenly having an increased propensity to socialise! It’s like my imagination is locked in a different section of my brain, chilling with my confidence and social skills. My imagination, though, hasn’t been given a life sentence; my imagination can be released, and the key to it is freewriting.
Opportunities can follow one another, too. Since I began drafting this very blog post, I have been asked to read the monologue at the WRAP anthology launch on 21st May. Now, I’m certainly no actress, and reading on stage still terrifies me. But what is life without challenges? Bring it on!
NOTTINGHAM CREATIVE WRITING HUB 