Paste a monologue and the drill splits it into beats and serves an acting-coach subtext question for each one — defensive, wanting, confessing, or memory register. Built to surface the colour underneath the line before you rehearse it.
48 words · 8 beats detected
A mixed prompt set across all four registers. Use this when you do not yet know what the speech is structurally doing.
I'm not angry.
Who specifically do they want to hear this?
I just thought you'd tell me first.
Which word are they avoiding inside this sentence?
You always tell Mark first.
If this line is a lie, what is the truth underneath it?
I noticed that a long time ago.
What does this line cost the character to say?
It's fine.
What does the character want from the listener in this moment?
Really, it's fine.
Are they convincing themselves or the listener?
I want you to be happy.
Which word are they avoiding inside this sentence?
I just wonder, sometimes, what it would feel like to be the one you call.
What does the character want from the listener in this moment?
How to use this drill. Read the speech aloud once, straight, before you look at the prompts. Then go through beat by beat: read the line, sit with the question, answer it for yourself in one sentence, and read the line again with the answer alive in your head. Do not act the subtext — let the answer shape the line underneath. The audience should never hear the question; they should only register the change in colour.
When the speech has been re-coloured by the questions, run the full monologue against our scene partner tool at performance speed. Subtext that survives a real-time run is the subtext that lands in an audition room.
Tip: re-shuffle the prompts a second time after one pass. The second set of questions surfaces choices the first set hid. Most speeches have at least three usable subtext layers; the drill is designed to keep finding them.
Run Lines Online reads the other characters aloud — 20 unique voices, no scene partner needed. Free.