Screenwriting : Flashbacks and Monologues by Maurice Vaughan

Interesting helpful article. I especially like the way the author repeatedly uses "Casablanca", which is my favorite film.

I'd like to add several points regarding monologues:

1. Certain genres rely on monologues. The cynical private eye in a Film Noir usually talks to the audience more than other characters, and usually because what he is thinking would upset the other characters. To quote something I wrote, "That Dame with the Golden Hair. She had lips as red as the agency's books, eyes as blue as the ink in a bank pen, and so wild she should be chained to a desk. Or a table. Something big you can't move. You know what I mean." (That's a genre parody of Goldilocks, btw)

2. Monologues come with or without a broken fourth-wall. The cynical Film Noir private eye monologues with a simple voice-over, sweetheart. Or in the case of Walter Neff in "Double Indemnity," he talks on a Dictaphone.

3. However, a monologue with a broken fourth-wall is the Shakespearean aside. An aside, in film and theatre, involves the viewer as a co-conspirator with the character, whether they mean to do good or evil. We want the audience to feel like a witness to the events in the story, so why not have the characters speak to viewers and reveal their secrets? It isn't necessary to go full Moonlighting (or Pirandello) and let the characters reveal that they know they are imaginary beings in a made-up story, but that's also an option.

Thanks for the extra info, Hannah Miyamoto. I've written monologues before. I think I've gotten better at them. Like anything in screenwriting, monologues take practice.