You might be inspired to write about a political or social theme. Download one of the fact sheets below and use it as a stimulus for this exercise. Read through the information in the fact sheet.

You have two minutes to decide if your character is:

• A defender
• A perpetrator
• Neutral/caught in the middle
• The accuser/victim

Once you have made your decision, you have ten minutes to answer the following questions to help you to start writing your monologue.

1. How has your character been affected by the event?
2. What does your character know about the event and what do they reveal in their monologue?
3. Is there anything your character doesn’t know?
4. To whom is your character speaking?
5. What does your character want to achieve? What do they want from the person to whom they are speaking, or from the audience? For example; sympathy, forgiveness, punishment, for the person to know they have won or lost…?
6. Does your character lie or tell the truth? When are they lying or telling the truth and why?
7. Decide if your character uses – and how they use – persuasion, comedy or emotion.

Once you have answered each of these questions, try free-writing your monologue to see what you come up with. Read over your work and consider how your monologue might have turned out differently if you had chosen a different perspective on the event.