What is a Monologue?

What is a Monologue?
“A monologue is a moment in a play, film, or novel, where a character speaks without being interrupted by any other characters.
These speeches can be addressed to someone, or spoken to the actor’s self or to the audience, in which case they are called soliloquies.
Another type of this speech, especially in novels, is the interior monologue, where a character has a long bout of thinking personal thoughts that aren’t interrupted by speech or actions” (www.wisegeek.org/what-is-a-monologue.htm#didyouknowout).
Like a story, a monologue includes a story arc: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. The ability to ignite the audience’s emotions and interest must happen fairly quickly in a monologue. This happens through exploring a range of emotions from the beginning, middle, and end of the story being told with the monologue, very similar to what we try to achieve in our poems, memoirs, and short stories.