[Mr. Incredible throws a log at Syndrome, who dodges it and traps Mr. Incredible with his zero-point energy ray]
Syndrome: Oh, ho ho! You sly dog! You got me monologuing! I can’t believe it…
Late last year BBC4 aired an excellent Charlie Brooker Screenwipe special in which Graham Linehan, Russell T Davies and others shared their secrets of writing for the small screen. Frustratingly, at the time of this post it’s not available for viewing on iPlayer, but a write-up by Neil Baker confirms my recollection of one particular gem of an idea from Davies:
He basically said that dialogue is when two monologues collide. In a conversation, you’re not really listening, you’re waiting to speak. Everyone wants to tell their story.
The other day a colleague Twittered a question about how people use Twitter, and it struck me that Russell T Davies’ description of dialogue is exactly right. In answer to the ultimate invitation to self-centredness, “what are you doing?” we spin our own narritive threads. The @ signs and # tags are the places where those threads tangle together, where monologues collide to make dialogue.
Maybe it’s this merging of monologue and dialogue in one service that makes microblogging (or whatever you call it) so powerful a communications tool? One for those of us who, most of the time, are not very good at listening?
Matt Edgar writes here 
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