When Do Monologues Truly Matter in Fiction?
Monologues get a bad rap.
A lot of writers treat them like the literary version of an awkward dinner speech: too long, too indulgent, a guaranteed pacing killer. And sure, they can be that. But if you study how the great storytellers use them, you’ll find that monologues can be among the most potent tools in your narrative kit.
And here’s the thing—it’s not about writing a “beautiful speech.” It’s about knowing when a monologue is the only way to deepen a story’s meaning, push a character’s arc, or make the reader feel something they couldn’t otherwise. That’s what I want to dig into here—the moments when monologues truly matter.
I’m guessing you already know the theory. You’ve read Aristotle and Chekhov, you’ve analyzed Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in Ulysses, you’ve taught this stuff. But even for us who’ve spent years studying storytelling techniques, it’s easy to underestimate just how precise and strategic monologues can be.
So let’s take another look—with examples that show how masters do it.
What Monologues Are Really For
If you strip away the surface, monologues aren’t about characters talking—they’re about narrative control.
Revealing a Layer of the Character You Can’t Get Any Other Way
Think about Raskolnikov’s monologues in Crime and Punishment. Without them, he’s just another guilt-ridden man in a murder plot. But Dostoevsky pulls us inside his moral collapse and self-justification. We see the conflict he can’t speak aloud to others—monologue as the story’s psychological engine.
Structuring Narrative Rhythm
Ever notice how Toni Morrison uses internal monologues in Beloved? She breaks the flowing third-person narration to create pulses of raw, subjective time. It’s not filler—it’s architecture. The shifts tell us when a character is on the verge of emotional revelation or breakdown.
Letting Theme Emerge Without Preaching
Look at Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying. The stream-of-consciousness monologues let each family member reveal their own fractured truth about life, death, and family. Faulkner doesn’t step in to tell us “here’s the meaning.” The characters’ voices do it—monologue as thematic delivery system.
When monologues work, they reshape the narrative, not just fill space.
When Monologues Really Earn Their Keep
Revealing Internal Conflict That Can’t Be Externalized
Some conflicts can’t play out in dialogue or action. Think of Winston Smith’s private thoughts in 1984. The most terrifying moments are in his monologues—his private betrayals, fears, and desperate hope.
Marking a Psychological or Moral Turning Point
When Walter White says, “I am the one who knocks” in Breaking Bad—yes, it’s dialogue, but functionally a monologue. It signals a point of no return in his arc. Fiction uses the same moment—monologue as a structural pivot.
Subverting Reader Expectations
Monologues can reframe a story in a heartbeat. In Lolita, Humbert Humbert’s monologues seduce the reader into seeing the world through a deeply unreliable lens—then force us to question our complicity.
Shifting Narrative Voice
Haruki Murakami often uses monologue-like digressions that slip into philosophical musings. They add dimension to otherwise minimalist prose—moments when voice intentionally becomes porous and layered.
Providing Catharsis
In The Remains of the Day, Stevens’ late monologue about his wasted life delivers the book’s emotional core. Without that release, the whole narrative would remain too cool and reserved.
Exposing Unreliable Narration
Unreliable narrators love a good monologue. Think of Fight Club—the protagonist’s introspections mask the deeper truth of his fractured psyche. We need those moments of unguarded voice to hear the cracks.
Building Intimacy
A carefully placed monologue draws the reader so close they almost become the character’s confidante. It’s why Ishiguro’s narrators often draw us in gradually—by the time the monologue comes, we feel complicit in their inner world.
Crafting Monologues That Actually Work
Keep It Dynamic, Not Static
A monologue should reveal change, not just opinion. If a character starts and ends the same, you’ve wasted it. Morrison, Faulkner, and Woolf knew this—monologue as a mechanism of transformation.
Mind Your Pacing
Drop a monologue in the wrong place and you kill your momentum. Great storytellers often embed them at natural hinges—after a major beat or before an emotional climax.
Honor the Voice
Every monologue must sound utterly of the character. That means not just word choice but rhythm, syntax, hesitation, thought pattern. Stevens in The Remains of the Day wouldn’t sound like Molly Bloom, and vice versa.
Resist the Urge to Explain
If your monologue’s main purpose is to “clarify” plot or backstory, cut it. Let it reveal character, not info.
Know When Not to Use One
Sometimes a glance, a silence, or an action beats any speech. Chekhov’s rule applies here: “Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” Same with monologues—know when they’re the wrong tool.
That’s where I land: monologues aren’t a “literary device.” They’re a deep structural choice. Use them when they matter—and when they do, they can transform a story in ways no other technique can.
I’d love to hear what techniques or examples you’ve found powerful—what’s a monologue that’s changed how you think about fiction?
When Monologues Really Earn Their Keep
We’ve all read monologues that feel tacked on—where a writer gets a little too fond of their own prose or falls into an exposition trap. But when a monologue earns its place in a story? That’s where magic happens.
Below are the moments and story situations where monologues become not just helpful but necessary. I’ll walk you through why each works, and some examples that I think still teach us a lot—even if we’ve been studying fiction for decades.
Revealing Internal Conflict That Can’t Be Externalized
Some emotional truths simply can’t surface in action or dialogue. I think this is one of the most misunderstood uses of monologue—it’s not about telling instead of showing; it’s about showing what cannot otherwise be shown.
Look at Winston Smith in 1984. His monologues are where we see the raw, trembling edge of hope and despair that no outward action can reveal. His public face is carefully guarded, even with Julia. Without his inner monologues, the reader would never feel the full scope of his psychological imprisonment.
In short: when the story hinges on an internal war, you need the monologue to reveal it.
Marking a Psychological or Moral Turning Point
Sometimes, a monologue marks the moment a character makes an irreversible choice—and we need to hear their reasoning (flawed or not).
I always think of Walter White’s “I am the one who knocks” speech. Technically, it’s a line of dialogue, but functionally it’s a mini-monologue—it stops the scene cold and signals a seismic shift in who Walt thinks he is.
In fiction, this is common in modern psychological novels. In Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov’s monologues signal the exact points where he drifts deeper into guilt and madness, and later when he begins crawling toward the possibility of redemption.
If a turning point is purely external, it often feels hollow. Monologues give us the inside of that change.
Subverting Reader Expectations
A well-placed monologue can upend how readers see both the character and the entire narrative. Nabokov was a master of this.
Take Humbert Humbert’s monologues in Lolita. On the surface, they’re beautifully composed confessions of love and regret. But the more we read, the more we become aware of the manipulation, the rationalization, the horror beneath the words. The monologue forces the reader into a deeply uncomfortable position—we become complicit in Humbert’s delusions, until we’re forced to reckon with them.
Used this way, monologues become ethical traps, narrative subversions. That’s an incredibly sophisticated tool.
Shifting Narrative Voice
Some authors use monologue-like sections to shift tone, pace, or register mid-narrative—creating a new layer of meaning.
Haruki Murakami is brilliant here. In Kafka on the Shore, Norwegian Wood, and 1Q84, his protagonists often slip into long philosophical digressions—meditations on love, time, memory. These moments contrast with the more external, minimalist narrative, and remind the reader that the story is being filtered through a very human consciousness.
When done right, this shift builds intimacy and creates narrative texture. It’s a signal: pause here. Think about this.
Providing Catharsis
Without catharsis, even the most elegant novel can feel emotionally cold. Monologue can deliver that catharsis directly, through voice.
One of the best examples I know is Stevens’ monologue near the end of The Remains of the Day. He’s spent the entire novel repressing emotion. When he finally acknowledges—too late—his wasted life and lost love, it’s a gut punch. The restraint of the rest of the novel makes the monologue devastating.
Catharsis isn’t about melodrama—it’s about giving the reader emotional release that feels earned. Monologues can do that when nothing else will.
Exposing Unreliable Narration
Sometimes we want readers to hear the cracks in a character’s voice. Monologue can expose this beautifully.
Think of the unnamed narrator in Fight Club. His internal voice sounds rational, even witty, at first. But as the novel progresses, the monologues subtly reveal inconsistencies and self-deceptions that foreshadow the story’s deeper twist.
The unreliable narrator monologue is a dance—you reveal just enough to let the attentive reader see the edges fraying.
Building Intimacy
Finally, one of the most powerful uses of monologue is to build deep intimacy between character and reader.
Kazuo Ishiguro excels at this. In Never Let Me Go and The Remains of the Day, his narrators address the reader almost conspiratorially. Their monologues create a bond—we feel like trusted confidantes, drawn into private corners of their emotional lives.
That intimacy makes the eventual emotional blows hit harder. Without those monologue-driven connections, Ishiguro’s quiet tragedies wouldn’t land as deeply.
How to Craft Monologues That Actually Work
Knowing when to use a monologue is only half the battle. Crafting one that sings—and serves the story—is the real test. Here are the principles I’ve found most useful, both in my own writing and in studying masters of the form.
Keep It Dynamic, Not Static
A great monologue reveals movement. If a character simply repeats an opinion or emotion without shifting, you’ve written filler.
Virginia Woolf knew this. In Mrs Dalloway, Clarissa’s internal monologues always evolve. They loop and wander, but they arrive somewhere new—a realization about life, about death, about her past.
Monologue as emotional or intellectual motion—that’s the goal.
Mind Your Pacing
A poorly timed monologue can kill narrative momentum. A well-timed one can become a keystone moment.
Master storytellers usually place major monologues after a scene of high tension, or before a major event. It’s a breath—an invitation to process, to deepen stakes.
If you drop a monologue mid-action scene, expect your readers to skip. But if you place it on the cusp of transformation, it can resonate for pages afterward.
Honor the Voice
The voice of a monologue must be utterly authentic to the character—not to you.
This is where syntax and rhythm matter. Molly Bloom’s monologue in Ulysses works because it sounds like her, unfiltered and flowing. Stevens’ monologue in The Remains of the Day works because it’s restrained, formal, painfully indirect—exactly what we expect of him.
If your monologue sounds like the author stepping in, you’ve broken the spell.
Resist the Urge to Explain
It’s tempting to use a monologue to clarify plot or backstory. Don’t.
Monologues should reveal character—not tidy up the reader’s understanding. If you catch yourself using a monologue to “fill in gaps,” ask: what emotion, conflict, or internal transformation is really happening here? If the answer is “none,” cut it.
Know When Not to Use One
This is perhaps the hardest lesson: some moments are stronger without monologue.
If a character can express something more powerfully through silence, gesture, or a single line of dialogue—use that instead. Think of Chekhov’s stories: the most powerful emotions often remain unsaid.
In fact, the absence of a monologue can sometimes create more tension than the presence of one. Use the technique selectively—and it will feel like a privilege when readers get to hear a character’s private voice.
Before You Leave…
Monologues aren’t some old-fashioned relic from Victorian novels. They’re one of the most flexible, powerful storytelling techniques we have—when used with intention.
Whether you’re writing modern realism, speculative fiction, crime, or literary work, knowing when and how to deploy a monologue can elevate your story from good to unforgettable.
I hope this gave you a few new ways to think about it—even if you’ve been living with these techniques for years. If you’ve got favorite examples, tricks, or even failed experiments you’ve learned from, I’d love to hear them.
Because like everything in storytelling, monologues thrive when we keep pushing how we use them—and how we understand them.