Writing a monologue: yay or nay?

Nichelle said:

Here's the problem: I've never read a short story that was presented as a monologue, which makes me think it must be a bad idea.

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Yeah, if it's never been done before, you better not do it. The last thing you want to be is original.

I've read plenty of short stories that were narrated first person and mostly interior dialogue.

The problem is that there really should be a point to the story. Conflict, a build-up, some sort of resolution at the end to give the story interest. That's not prevented by first person interior, but you have to have more than recollections and ruminations that don't take the reader anywhere.

guttersquid said:

Yeah, if it's never been done before, you better not do it. The last thing you want to be is original.

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Everything has been done before. When you can't find anyting liek what you;re doing, it usually isn't because it hasn't been done, it's because it has been done, but no one wanted to publish it.

The monologue part has certainly been done. But monologue without story is not, well, a story. In a sense, all first person fiction is a monologue. There are first person stories that have only one character, and these really do come out as monologue more often than not. But they still have story, which means problem, conflict, resolution, etc.

The one kind of fiction that really doesn't need traditional story is the slice of life vignette. These are really just a snapshot of some small part of the character's life, and some literary magazines eat them up. I can't remember one that was pure monologue, but I certainly haven't read more than a tiny fraction of all the slice of life stories out there.

Nichelle said:

Exactly my concern!

I guess the tricky part with a monologue is making the conflict/resolution clear to the reader - it's too easy to ramble on and on without carrying the story anywhere.

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Do it, anyway. I've written stories that were wildly experimental, and sometimes they sold, sometimes everyone, everywhere rejected them. So what? I learned from those that sold, and I learned from those that didn't.

It's not like you're writing a doorstop novel. Write it, get it ouit of your system, and start submitting it. The worst that can happen is that no one will want it, but you'll still learn from the experience. If you don't write it, you'll never know, and it might well fester up inside you, and distract you from writing other things.

If it's interesting, someone will buy it and people will read it.

There are no rules when it comes to ideas.

It's an issue of showing vs. telling. Long monologues tend to be all latter and no former, and too much telling tends to read like an essay rather than a story. If it's engaging and keeps the reader from yawning and wondering, "When do we get to the good stuff?" then you can probably get away with it. Ask yourself if it's necessary for the reader to learn all of this information here, now. Could you maybe relay some of it through dialogue or behavior? Of course you can bend and break the "rules" all you want. The important thing is to not bore the reader or to info-dump all over them to the point that they forget they're reading a story.

Building backstory in short fiction can be tough, which is why I like to write opening scenes with more than one character and/or a dynamic setting where the protagonist is forced to say or do something that reveals a bit about their situation and personality. Mystery can be a good thing. Maybe your protagonist has a strange reaction to an image or comment which makes the reader wonder, "Why is he/she so upset?" You want the reader to engage with the material and one way to accomplish that is to throw them in the middle of a situation and make them ask questions. Of course, you want to eventually answer said questions, since confusing the reader can often be just as detrimental as boring them.