But just as it is impossible for the human mind--untrained, let
us say, in the art of making bricks--to picture at a glance the
various processes through which the clay passes before it takes
brick form, so it is identically as impossible for the mind of the
novice to comprehend in a flash the various purposes and half-purposes
that precede the actual work of writing anything.

True as this is of writing in general, it seems to me particularly
true of writing the monologue, for the monologue is one of those
precise forms of the art of writing that may best be compared to
the miniature, where every stroke must be true and unhesitating
and where all combine unerringly to form the composite whole.

In preparing monologue material the writer usually is working in
the _sounds_ of spoken--and mis-spoken--words, and the humor that
lies in the twisting of ideas into surprising conclusions. He
seldom deliberately searches for a theme--more often some
laugh-provoking incident or sentence gives him an idea and he
builds it into a monologue with its subject for the theme.

1. Themes to Avoid

Anything at all in the whole range of subjects with which life
abounds will lend itself for a monologue theme--provided the writer
can without straining twist it to the angle of humor; but propriety
demands that nothing blatantly suggestive shall be treated, and
common sense dictates that no theme of merely local interest shall
be used, when the purpose of the monologue is to entertain the
whole country. Of course if a monologue is designed to entertain