Scoring a Monologue, Part 4 - Putting It All Together

Now that I have covered objectives, stressing words, and beats, it is time to put scoring a monologue all together. If you haven't already gathered, Julie's objective here is to get Alice to understand that she is having a difficult time and that her way of coping with it is by getting drunk. What you don't see in this monologue is the other part of the play. Alice could be anybody. It so happens that in the play, Alice is Julie's roommate who copes with things by eating and overeating, too. However, in general, for a performance of just the monologue, that does not matter. Julie wants Alice, w whoever she is, to understand.

So, now that the objective is clear, it would be time to put emotions into the monologue as well as mark the stressed words and beats. When I started marking my monologue, it was actually a huge mess because I had a copy and just printed it and was writing in pencil all over my paper. Eventually I decided I needed it typed it up with spacing. What I am showing you now is a way I've made my markings much neater by typing what I had marked. However, to give you an idea of how a completely scored monologue may look, this is an idea. (And sorry about the last "Matter-of-factly," being selected. I just didn't get it unselected before taking my screen shot. It doesn't mean anything).

Remember, though, that everybody is going to score monologues differently. There is no right or wrong. Scoring a monologue is not something that is for grading (hopefully not, anyway), but for personal use to understand better how you would perform a monologue.