Writing prompt #8: MONOLOGUES

Hi Everyone,

I’ve been working in theater these past few years and have learned a great deal about what embodied language and conflict can offer a story onstage, and off. Monologues can be particularly magical and intimate, giving us a chance to hear characters think aloud, to reveal their true selves often in stark contrast to their surroundings.

Please read Aura Estrada’s monologue from the theatrical adaptation of my novel THE LADY MATADOR’S HOTEL.* Aura is an ex-guerrilla fighter now working as a waitress at a luxury hotel in an unnamed Central American capital (see 2nd photo above). In this scene, she’s racing around serving lunch to hotel guests:

“Every year, I doubt that spring will come and then it comes--as if no horror, no history can touch the blooming jacarandas, the optimism of the sparrows. It’s hideous and beautiful all at once. A forgetting and a renewal ...Yes, of course. Pinto beans on the side. Tostones, extra crisp ... I live my life between these extremes, forgetting and renewal. Not living my life really, but surviving it. Like the explosion near the cathedral last night. I’m not alone, though I often feel desperately alone ... A skirt steak with onions. Got it ... A collective amnesia has seized my country, a denial of what was and continues to be. On the worst days, a red rage flares inside me and I want to scream--

(Breaks into furious martial arts sequence)

DIE, SONS OF BITCHES! DIE!

(Resumes waitress self)

A Coca-Cola, no ice. Three chicken tamales. A sus órdenes ... Then I hear the jays chattering in the flamboyán trees and for a moment, or even an hour, my tenderness returns. Until I remember that the children aren’t safe. That criminals are still free to attack us. That the best of us, the kindest, the most innocent and hard-working die first ... Sí, we have a cactus salad special today, very delicious. Extra dressing? Certainly ... Sometimes I imagine my body floating in the air like a leaf, free to fly or land, free from thought, from decision. Then I catch a glimpse of my shadow. How I drag it around like stone, like marble, a mausoleum of a shadow ... For dessert? Tres leches, a coconut flan, and guayaba cheesecake ... What keeps propelling me forward?”

YOUR PROMPT: Write a monologue for one of your characters. Have them address readers directly, giving us an intimate look at their interior lives. Read the monologue aloud until it sings. (Optional: have the character simultaneously perform another task.)

Abrazos,

Cristina

*https://www.cristinagarcianovelist.com/books/the-lady-matadors-hotel