The Difficulty of Telling Someone's Story

When first discussing monologue development in the early days of this semester, I was completely terrified. Although I knew that writing and performing one's story was something I desired to do, I was frightened to write someone else's story. What if they didn't like it? What if I was completely out of touch with what they were feeling? My ultimate goal was to provide a clear understanding of the life of the person I was interviewing. But how? How can I crawl into someone's mind and tell you exactly what they were thinking or emoting? The first draft was the most difficult for me. I struggled to find the right words to capture the person's emotions. After looking over six different pages of notes several times, I realized that each quote that my interviewee said was in three words. That's it. So, I decided to lead with it and let those quotes be the building blocks of my monologue. After this, I could build off of each quote, expanding new questions and emotions through each section. After a few weeks of revision, I finally had a monologue. My ultimate hope though is that my monologue has done justice to such a remarkable story.