X-Crown Classroom: What is Your Why + Other Char. Lessons
Jun 16, 2020 17:22:06 GMT -5
Mongo the Destroyer, Dave D-Flipz, and 5 more like this
Post by anthonycaffrey on Jun 16, 2020 17:22:06 GMT -5
X-Crown Classroom #1:
What Is Your Why? And Other Lessons in Character Making/Character Development
FOREWORD
Hi everyone. As a way of giving back to a community that gives so much in terms of entertainment, laughter, and good times, something I’d like to start is the X-Crown Classroom. The idea? Whoever holds the X-Crown writes an article sharing something about their RP/e-fedding mindset in an attempt to educate others and spread the wealth. I imagine every writer will have a different style and mindset as everyone has their own talents, so here’s some of mine and my thoughts.
__________________________
I have five characters I’ve handled in XHF. While we all love Bucky “Titanium” Knight, Sinister Sammy, and Nukillear, we’re going to focus on three characters specifically:
Anthony Caffrey (Heel)
Subject #42
Anthony Caffrey (Face)
(I’m aware that’s two, I can do math.)
_______________________
LESSON #1:
Be Yourself (Or Not)
Kuroi wrote in his article that the best characters come from something similar to you in real life. I think this is true, but the inverse of it can be even better. The majority of you have no wrestling experience. Most of you are wrestling nerds. That’s okay, I am too. My first character I ever thought of when I was like 13 was Anthony “The Geek” Johnson. It was going to be super close to me, glasses, love of nerdy shit, et cetera. My first ever e-fedding match was against Will O’The Wisps…
Neither of us were very creative, but this was like, eleven years ago...
...and I no-showed, because that character I created sucked and I knew it.
___________
1A: Side Lesson: Character vs. Caricature
You know what a character is -- what you might not know is a caricature. A caricature is a one-dimensional character lacking in depth. If what you’re working on can be described in one or two words, it’s a caricature. Anthony “The Geek” Johnson died because he could be described in one. There was never going to be anything interesting about the geek because it’s boring. If there is no growth to a character or room to grow, you’re making a caricature. You are going to be sick of RPing as your new creation by RP #6 because they are going to do the same things over and over.
Stereotypes are a good example of this. Look at paladins in Dungeons and Dragons.
They usually all have the sword and shield and are a part of a religious order. And like, cool-- but if that’s all your paladin has, he’s boring as fuck.
Overall, avoid making stereotypes. The easiest way to avoid making a stereotype is to not make a character you wouldn’t identify as in some way or another.
______________________
So with Anthony “The Geek” Johnson dead, the next character that came into being was “The Philadelphia Phighter” (shoutout to the Brooklyn Brawler).
I still have no idea why I was that into the Brooklyn Brawler as a young child.
This was still playing to myself-- I grew up just outside of Philly, and it was open because all that meant was that he was a wrestler from Philly. Right away I ran into something that was pissing me off: every RPer I fought kept making cheesesteak jokes.
________________
SIDE LESSON 1B: Mental Health and Telling Others’ Stories
If you’re going to introduce elements of mental health struggle to your character, please do it right and don’t butcher it. This is not a subtweet at anyone, just a thought I’ve had -- basically, if you’re not telling a story at least somewhat true to you, don’t do it. I’ve layered in themes of depression and anxiety for Caffrey without naming them directly and I know they’re coming from an honest place. If your story is not coming from an honest place, it will be very obvious. Be mindful of what perspective you and your character are bringing to the table -- and if it’s one you (the handler) should be bringing at all.
I don’t want to name names, but there was a white writer most of us knew who wrote a pair of black characters who smoked pot and were former convicts and were just a whole fuckin’ series of problems. Strive to be better than a stereotype/cariacture if you’re playing someone completely opposite you, but also realize that some opposites should be off limits. If you need to know your opposite is okay, a) think about what it means that you have to ask that, and b) ask someone who is the actual opposite, and don’t just take a polite answer.
I say all this as a 24-year old straight white cis-dude, for the record. I’m an ally to many causes but still don’t have perfect knowledge. I’m not saying you have to be perfect, just be a little fuckin’ mindful, it’s 2020 and other people e-fed who aren’t like you. Being a little considerate of others goes a long way.
________________________________________________________
LESSON #2:
What Is Your Why? (Set a Goal for Your Character)
Scrolling back a bit, the Philadelphia Phighter’s goal sounds simple enough: prove that you’re more than just some guy from Philly. But it’s an interesting contradiction-- here’s a guy wearing his identity so hard on his sleeve that it’s his name, but he rejects the notion that’s all he is and in part is rejecting a portion of his identity. There’s a lot of stuff to write off of that.
“Okay, my goal’s to win the world title or the X-Crown, hence why I’m reading this to get better.”
Props to you for reading to get better, but you can do better than this goal.
“Uh, better than winning the world or the Crown?”
Yes.
WHY does your character want to win the World Title or the X-Crown? Think about when you set a New Years Resolution at the end of the year (even though most people never follow through). Let’s look at a goal and go deeper.
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
Great. So do you and five million other people. What makes you special and worth reading vs. the others? Why do you want to the gym?
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
↓
WHY: I looked a little chubby around Christmas time this year.
Surface-level whys are good. But let me show you how much better something deep works:
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
↓
WHY: I looked a little chubby around Christmas time this year.
↓
WHY: Everyone at the corporate Christmas party had a partner at the dinner table except me.
So instead of just being a generic gym resolution-maker, you know that this person has a few extra pounds and went to a Christmas party last year. This is a good foundation-- people have written characters around less. Let’s go deeper and add emotions to the mix.
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
↓
WHY: I looked a little chubby around Christmas time this year.
EMOTION: Sad
WHY: Remembering I used to be in great shape when I was the star QB
↓
WHY: Everyone at the corporate Christmas party had a partner at the dinner table except me.
EMOTION: Lonely
WHY: This was not the first Christmas party that this occurred
Great! You’ve walked into motivations by thinking this way. You now know that what at first was a boring gym-goer is now an out-of-shape ex-star QB who’s lonely because he’s been single around the holidays for a few years. That’s a more dynamic character.
Every wrestling writer under the sun wants to write their character as a badass. And that’s absolutely fine! Most wrestlers are badasses. But if every wrestler wants the same thing for the same reason (I want to wrestle because I want to be world champion because I am the best), that’s not as exciting.
So let’s start with a question relevant to the wrestler you’re working with:
Why does your character want to be a champion?
Besides to swing a championship around.
There are so many ways to answer this question. If you answer this with “because they want to be the best” and walk away, that’s a fuckin’ cop-out. Here’s three answers:
Why does your character want to be a champion?
A) I’ve been trying for ten years.
B)Freedom from my current living situation.
C) The opportunity to be a role model and help others.
Let’s go deeper:
Why does your character want what you just answered?
A) This is my last chance.
B) I’m going to be stuck in my own personal hell otherwise.
C) Someone else helped me.
And finally, how does that make you feel?
A) Motivated
B) Desperate
C )Inspired
(Bonus: “they don’t” is also an answer, but you still have to go deeper and know why.)
Overall: set a goal for your new character, and work for it with every promo or work to explain the whys/hows/emotions behind everything. You’ll be setting up a riveting story that way, one that’s easy for others to get invested in. And when your character finally reaches that goal?
Great. Now you get to set a new one.
And when your character doesn’t reach that goal, or fails in what should have been their most triumphant moment-- what does that change? How do they respond emotionally? How does that interact with their why? Do they set a new goal?
Sometimes in our memories we become a federation of moments --- remembering and highlighting moments instead of the stories themselves. But those moments, the truly memorable ones, came during a great story that gave those writers the why they needed as ammunition to create those moments.
Your story and character’s gonna kick ass if this is the only thing you take away from this post.
___________________________
LESSON #3:
The Teddy Bear Problem
Father Lance Goodison was the first fed-head I remember from ten years ago and he wrote what I now refer to as the teddy bear problem, and the standard in which all characters should be judged:
What would your character do with a teddy bear?
Think about this for a few moments. Like actually think about it. You have to write a 2000 word RP as your character yet this teddy bear is the central prop. What are you going to do?
“What kind of teddy bear?”
Up to you.
“Is this one of my old teddy bears?”
Up to you.
“Where are they?”
Up to you.
“Who else is involved?”
Up to you.
I’m assuming you know the difference between heels and faces (and we’ll talk about that in a moment), so do you do good in this moment, or do you do bad?
Write down your answer. Like actually. Take out a piece of paper or open a word doc. Do it.
Do it now.
Thank you, Shia. Bonus points if you leave it in the replies to this article.
Bonus bonus points if you can reach back and have a why from our second lesson. We’ll get back to this later, let’s make a side lesson pitstop:
___________
3A Side Lesson: Heels vs. Faces
I don’t believe in tweeners. I know people are morally ambiguous, and if someone was just goody two shoes or pure evil it’s a little lacking. But if the crowd doesn’t know whether to cheer you or boo you, that sucks. Yes, one of my favorite XHF wrestlers right now is a tweener (looking at you, Tommy Strychnine), but I also root for them as if they were a full-on babyface. Pick a side.
Heels are universally easier to write for most people. It’s pretty easy to go “this person sucks, these people suck, and I’m the best”. It’s up to you to make a more interesting variant on that, because hey, it’s simply not as challenging to do convincingly. As the former XHF Kingpin of the Year (bad guy), I get the appeal of writing these characters, but so does everyone else.
This is this dude’s actual profile picture on Twitter.
Faces provide a special challenge: people want to win like John Cena (circa his unstoppable reign), but most people don’t want to be him. If you’re reading this, chances are high you’re a good person in real life. It can be seen as a little bit boring to be the same way in a fantasy wish-fulfillment writing game. Making your wrestler a good person can lack the sex appeal of a heel, and with heels being able to pull many more dastardly tricks and operating under less of a filter (faces shouldn’t do things crowds would boo), you may find yourself jealous of your counterpart. However, a well-written face beats the shit out of a well-written heel, well, because for every three great heels, there’s maybe one face. Check with your fedheads to verify -- most e-feds in existence suffer from too many heels vs. not enough faces.
____________________
3B: Side Side Lesson: Don’t Write a Cool Heel That Gets Cheered
(Preemptive: people will naturally gravitate to your heel character if you’re a good writer. That’s different. I’m talking from an IC-perspective: you’re writing the guy who’s clearly a heel on Monday nights, but hey everyone just loves him because he’s so special and cool).
If you are writing a “cool heel that gets cheered”, f*** you (not seriously, but still), you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’re writing a face, and probably a face that is missing out on their potential at that. I get that everyone wants to be heel Kevin Owens or heel Adam Cole because they’re cool and this is escapism and we’re not all that cool in real life even though we all wish we were.
KO, busy being awesome.
But both of those guys are shitty heels. Baron Corbin is the best heel in the WWE by far.
Heel turn!
Why? You want to see that guy get his ass kicked everytime he steps in the ring or gets on a microphone. I distinctly remember going to Extreme Rules last year and watching him hitting his finisher on Becky Lynch, and just how loud people were cheering and yelling for Seth Rollins to fuck him up. And Seth did -- and it was awesome!
As a heel, yes, your character’s goal is to be on top -- but as a collaborative storyteller (that’s what RPing is), your job as a writer is to write someone people hate/boo so when the inevitable triumphant babyface finally comes along the victory, and the overall story, is that much sweeter.
Just write a fucking face. Be that level of cool, but be a good guy! You get to be the triumphant hero at the end (if you RP well enough! Or just be that level of cool and a clear dickhead.
__________________________
3C: Side Side Side Lesson: Turns!
Your character may jump to/from the dark side. I’m going to write about going from a heel to a face as that’s what I’ve done recently, but there’s only one challenge you have as both alignments:
Your character CAN’T be the same thing +/- booing.
SAY IT AGAIN!
Your character CAN’T be the same thing +/- booing.
The thing about a turn is that if your character has been around long enough, people have established an expectation around them based on past circumstances and events. Your great writing in the past has now come back to bite you in the ass as you’re working against a wall of believability and people’s image (we’ll talk more about image in a bit) of you. Essentially, you have to be believably a good guy or a bad guy, rising above (or below!) what people know about your character.
A lot of people think this has to do with how your character responds to the fans, and this is true to an extent. A heel antagonizes them, a face rallies them. That’s fine. But the fans are supposed to be the audience to the story, not the story itself. What else does your character do to show their morality?
If your face turn is “I now say mean things about heels instead of faces”, that’s not good enough. Your character needs to do something in addition! A heel might beat down a wrestler one week and in the next week tell off their interviewer as inferior. They might spit in a technician’s lunch. These are asshole moves, these are moves that establish them as the bad guys.
Seriously, he got death threats for this!
A new face’s job is a little bit weirder here. People know you as the guy who spits in someone’s lunch --- maybe you’re now the guy stopping the bullying in the lunchroom, or you’re apologizing to that guy you spat on. You’ve begun talking about people other than you -- and in a positive light! Helping others is always a solid good guy thing to do. You don’t have to make every single promo “my wrestler saves a cat from a tree”, but remind us why your guy’s not just some asshole putting on an act.
Think about it-- when your loved one apologies for fucking up-- if they fuck up again in the same exact way, have they really changed and gotten better?
What Is Your Why? And Other Lessons in Character Making/Character Development
FOREWORD
Hi everyone. As a way of giving back to a community that gives so much in terms of entertainment, laughter, and good times, something I’d like to start is the X-Crown Classroom. The idea? Whoever holds the X-Crown writes an article sharing something about their RP/e-fedding mindset in an attempt to educate others and spread the wealth. I imagine every writer will have a different style and mindset as everyone has their own talents, so here’s some of mine and my thoughts.
__________________________
I have five characters I’ve handled in XHF. While we all love Bucky “Titanium” Knight, Sinister Sammy, and Nukillear, we’re going to focus on three characters specifically:
Anthony Caffrey (Heel)
Subject #42
Anthony Caffrey (Face)
(I’m aware that’s two, I can do math.)
_______________________
LESSON #1:
Be Yourself (Or Not)
Kuroi wrote in his article that the best characters come from something similar to you in real life. I think this is true, but the inverse of it can be even better. The majority of you have no wrestling experience. Most of you are wrestling nerds. That’s okay, I am too. My first character I ever thought of when I was like 13 was Anthony “The Geek” Johnson. It was going to be super close to me, glasses, love of nerdy shit, et cetera. My first ever e-fedding match was against Will O’The Wisps…
Neither of us were very creative, but this was like, eleven years ago...
...and I no-showed, because that character I created sucked and I knew it.
___________
1A: Side Lesson: Character vs. Caricature
You know what a character is -- what you might not know is a caricature. A caricature is a one-dimensional character lacking in depth. If what you’re working on can be described in one or two words, it’s a caricature. Anthony “The Geek” Johnson died because he could be described in one. There was never going to be anything interesting about the geek because it’s boring. If there is no growth to a character or room to grow, you’re making a caricature. You are going to be sick of RPing as your new creation by RP #6 because they are going to do the same things over and over.
Stereotypes are a good example of this. Look at paladins in Dungeons and Dragons.
They usually all have the sword and shield and are a part of a religious order. And like, cool-- but if that’s all your paladin has, he’s boring as fuck.
Overall, avoid making stereotypes. The easiest way to avoid making a stereotype is to not make a character you wouldn’t identify as in some way or another.
______________________
So with Anthony “The Geek” Johnson dead, the next character that came into being was “The Philadelphia Phighter” (shoutout to the Brooklyn Brawler).
I still have no idea why I was that into the Brooklyn Brawler as a young child.
This was still playing to myself-- I grew up just outside of Philly, and it was open because all that meant was that he was a wrestler from Philly. Right away I ran into something that was pissing me off: every RPer I fought kept making cheesesteak jokes.
________________
SIDE LESSON 1B: Mental Health and Telling Others’ Stories
If you’re going to introduce elements of mental health struggle to your character, please do it right and don’t butcher it. This is not a subtweet at anyone, just a thought I’ve had -- basically, if you’re not telling a story at least somewhat true to you, don’t do it. I’ve layered in themes of depression and anxiety for Caffrey without naming them directly and I know they’re coming from an honest place. If your story is not coming from an honest place, it will be very obvious. Be mindful of what perspective you and your character are bringing to the table -- and if it’s one you (the handler) should be bringing at all.
I don’t want to name names, but there was a white writer most of us knew who wrote a pair of black characters who smoked pot and were former convicts and were just a whole fuckin’ series of problems. Strive to be better than a stereotype/cariacture if you’re playing someone completely opposite you, but also realize that some opposites should be off limits. If you need to know your opposite is okay, a) think about what it means that you have to ask that, and b) ask someone who is the actual opposite, and don’t just take a polite answer.
I say all this as a 24-year old straight white cis-dude, for the record. I’m an ally to many causes but still don’t have perfect knowledge. I’m not saying you have to be perfect, just be a little fuckin’ mindful, it’s 2020 and other people e-fed who aren’t like you. Being a little considerate of others goes a long way.
________________________________________________________
LESSON #2:
What Is Your Why? (Set a Goal for Your Character)
Scrolling back a bit, the Philadelphia Phighter’s goal sounds simple enough: prove that you’re more than just some guy from Philly. But it’s an interesting contradiction-- here’s a guy wearing his identity so hard on his sleeve that it’s his name, but he rejects the notion that’s all he is and in part is rejecting a portion of his identity. There’s a lot of stuff to write off of that.
“Okay, my goal’s to win the world title or the X-Crown, hence why I’m reading this to get better.”
Props to you for reading to get better, but you can do better than this goal.
“Uh, better than winning the world or the Crown?”
Yes.
WHY does your character want to win the World Title or the X-Crown? Think about when you set a New Years Resolution at the end of the year (even though most people never follow through). Let’s look at a goal and go deeper.
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
Great. So do you and five million other people. What makes you special and worth reading vs. the others? Why do you want to the gym?
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
↓
WHY: I looked a little chubby around Christmas time this year.
Surface-level whys are good. But let me show you how much better something deep works:
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
↓
WHY: I looked a little chubby around Christmas time this year.
↓
WHY: Everyone at the corporate Christmas party had a partner at the dinner table except me.
So instead of just being a generic gym resolution-maker, you know that this person has a few extra pounds and went to a Christmas party last year. This is a good foundation-- people have written characters around less. Let’s go deeper and add emotions to the mix.
GOAL: I want to join a gym and become an active member.
↓
WHY: I looked a little chubby around Christmas time this year.
EMOTION: Sad
WHY: Remembering I used to be in great shape when I was the star QB
↓
WHY: Everyone at the corporate Christmas party had a partner at the dinner table except me.
EMOTION: Lonely
WHY: This was not the first Christmas party that this occurred
Great! You’ve walked into motivations by thinking this way. You now know that what at first was a boring gym-goer is now an out-of-shape ex-star QB who’s lonely because he’s been single around the holidays for a few years. That’s a more dynamic character.
Every wrestling writer under the sun wants to write their character as a badass. And that’s absolutely fine! Most wrestlers are badasses. But if every wrestler wants the same thing for the same reason (I want to wrestle because I want to be world champion because I am the best), that’s not as exciting.
So let’s start with a question relevant to the wrestler you’re working with:
Why does your character want to be a champion?
Besides to swing a championship around.
There are so many ways to answer this question. If you answer this with “because they want to be the best” and walk away, that’s a fuckin’ cop-out. Here’s three answers:
Why does your character want to be a champion?
A) I’ve been trying for ten years.
B)Freedom from my current living situation.
C) The opportunity to be a role model and help others.
Let’s go deeper:
Why does your character want what you just answered?
A) This is my last chance.
B) I’m going to be stuck in my own personal hell otherwise.
C) Someone else helped me.
And finally, how does that make you feel?
A) Motivated
B) Desperate
C )Inspired
(Bonus: “they don’t” is also an answer, but you still have to go deeper and know why.)
Overall: set a goal for your new character, and work for it with every promo or work to explain the whys/hows/emotions behind everything. You’ll be setting up a riveting story that way, one that’s easy for others to get invested in. And when your character finally reaches that goal?
Great. Now you get to set a new one.
And when your character doesn’t reach that goal, or fails in what should have been their most triumphant moment-- what does that change? How do they respond emotionally? How does that interact with their why? Do they set a new goal?
Sometimes in our memories we become a federation of moments --- remembering and highlighting moments instead of the stories themselves. But those moments, the truly memorable ones, came during a great story that gave those writers the why they needed as ammunition to create those moments.
Your story and character’s gonna kick ass if this is the only thing you take away from this post.
___________________________
LESSON #3:
The Teddy Bear Problem
Father Lance Goodison was the first fed-head I remember from ten years ago and he wrote what I now refer to as the teddy bear problem, and the standard in which all characters should be judged:
What would your character do with a teddy bear?
Think about this for a few moments. Like actually think about it. You have to write a 2000 word RP as your character yet this teddy bear is the central prop. What are you going to do?
“What kind of teddy bear?”
Up to you.
“Is this one of my old teddy bears?”
Up to you.
“Where are they?”
Up to you.
“Who else is involved?”
Up to you.
I’m assuming you know the difference between heels and faces (and we’ll talk about that in a moment), so do you do good in this moment, or do you do bad?
Write down your answer. Like actually. Take out a piece of paper or open a word doc. Do it.
Do it now.
Thank you, Shia. Bonus points if you leave it in the replies to this article.
Bonus bonus points if you can reach back and have a why from our second lesson. We’ll get back to this later, let’s make a side lesson pitstop:
___________
3A Side Lesson: Heels vs. Faces
I don’t believe in tweeners. I know people are morally ambiguous, and if someone was just goody two shoes or pure evil it’s a little lacking. But if the crowd doesn’t know whether to cheer you or boo you, that sucks. Yes, one of my favorite XHF wrestlers right now is a tweener (looking at you, Tommy Strychnine), but I also root for them as if they were a full-on babyface. Pick a side.
Heels are universally easier to write for most people. It’s pretty easy to go “this person sucks, these people suck, and I’m the best”. It’s up to you to make a more interesting variant on that, because hey, it’s simply not as challenging to do convincingly. As the former XHF Kingpin of the Year (bad guy), I get the appeal of writing these characters, but so does everyone else.
This is this dude’s actual profile picture on Twitter.
Faces provide a special challenge: people want to win like John Cena (circa his unstoppable reign), but most people don’t want to be him. If you’re reading this, chances are high you’re a good person in real life. It can be seen as a little bit boring to be the same way in a fantasy wish-fulfillment writing game. Making your wrestler a good person can lack the sex appeal of a heel, and with heels being able to pull many more dastardly tricks and operating under less of a filter (faces shouldn’t do things crowds would boo), you may find yourself jealous of your counterpart. However, a well-written face beats the shit out of a well-written heel, well, because for every three great heels, there’s maybe one face. Check with your fedheads to verify -- most e-feds in existence suffer from too many heels vs. not enough faces.
____________________
3B: Side Side Lesson: Don’t Write a Cool Heel That Gets Cheered
(Preemptive: people will naturally gravitate to your heel character if you’re a good writer. That’s different. I’m talking from an IC-perspective: you’re writing the guy who’s clearly a heel on Monday nights, but hey everyone just loves him because he’s so special and cool).
If you are writing a “cool heel that gets cheered”, f*** you (not seriously, but still), you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You’re writing a face, and probably a face that is missing out on their potential at that. I get that everyone wants to be heel Kevin Owens or heel Adam Cole because they’re cool and this is escapism and we’re not all that cool in real life even though we all wish we were.
KO, busy being awesome.
But both of those guys are shitty heels. Baron Corbin is the best heel in the WWE by far.
Heel turn!
Why? You want to see that guy get his ass kicked everytime he steps in the ring or gets on a microphone. I distinctly remember going to Extreme Rules last year and watching him hitting his finisher on Becky Lynch, and just how loud people were cheering and yelling for Seth Rollins to fuck him up. And Seth did -- and it was awesome!
As a heel, yes, your character’s goal is to be on top -- but as a collaborative storyteller (that’s what RPing is), your job as a writer is to write someone people hate/boo so when the inevitable triumphant babyface finally comes along the victory, and the overall story, is that much sweeter.
Just write a fucking face. Be that level of cool, but be a good guy! You get to be the triumphant hero at the end (if you RP well enough! Or just be that level of cool and a clear dickhead.
__________________________
3C: Side Side Side Lesson: Turns!
Your character may jump to/from the dark side. I’m going to write about going from a heel to a face as that’s what I’ve done recently, but there’s only one challenge you have as both alignments:
Your character CAN’T be the same thing +/- booing.
SAY IT AGAIN!
Your character CAN’T be the same thing +/- booing.
The thing about a turn is that if your character has been around long enough, people have established an expectation around them based on past circumstances and events. Your great writing in the past has now come back to bite you in the ass as you’re working against a wall of believability and people’s image (we’ll talk more about image in a bit) of you. Essentially, you have to be believably a good guy or a bad guy, rising above (or below!) what people know about your character.
A lot of people think this has to do with how your character responds to the fans, and this is true to an extent. A heel antagonizes them, a face rallies them. That’s fine. But the fans are supposed to be the audience to the story, not the story itself. What else does your character do to show their morality?
If your face turn is “I now say mean things about heels instead of faces”, that’s not good enough. Your character needs to do something in addition! A heel might beat down a wrestler one week and in the next week tell off their interviewer as inferior. They might spit in a technician’s lunch. These are asshole moves, these are moves that establish them as the bad guys.
Seriously, he got death threats for this!
A new face’s job is a little bit weirder here. People know you as the guy who spits in someone’s lunch --- maybe you’re now the guy stopping the bullying in the lunchroom, or you’re apologizing to that guy you spat on. You’ve begun talking about people other than you -- and in a positive light! Helping others is always a solid good guy thing to do. You don’t have to make every single promo “my wrestler saves a cat from a tree”, but remind us why your guy’s not just some asshole putting on an act.
Think about it-- when your loved one apologies for fucking up-- if they fuck up again in the same exact way, have they really changed and gotten better?
Your wrestler has to actually change during a turn in some tangible way, otherwise, your opposition can accuse you of not changing and being that same asshole underneath, and that’s a hell of a dagger to come back from (because they’re right, and your turn sucks).
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Back to the teddy bear…
If you’ve got an answer for what your character would do with a teddy bear, great! You decided something. Like I said, reply underneath with it. Now, to build further…
...why is your character doing that?
Still struggling? Here’s my answers:
Anthony Caffrey (heel) would be holding it up as a symbol of the past and explaining that wrestlers stuck in the past are doomed to fade away.
Subject #42 would probably have that bear be a part of its secretive backstory, eliciting a fierce and potentially terrifying reaction upon seeing it again for the first time in years.
Anthony Caffrey (face) would be donating the bear to a Make a Wish kid.
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Lesson 4: Build Your Lore
Everytime you wrestle a match, you add to your character’s history and backstory. You are fighting for these wins, so once you have them, build off ‘em! Last week you won with a dramatic come-from-behind underdog victory. Lean into it. Build on your scrappiness and fight. Or, go the other way, that your character wants to avoid being embarrassed and can’t believe they almost lost.
When you start capturing signature wins(™), don’t let people forget ‘em. There’s a line to how much you can reference one thing (and I do cross it often), but your in-ring feats are what build your credibility as a character and even as a writer. People thought I was alright because I was the champ in AXW, but because Chris Card was (and still is) an amazing RPer, beating him put me on the map. Now a year later I still remind people of it.
You can also use your character’s history to establish your character’s present. What was your character like growing up? Why are they a dickhead now? What motivated them to get in a wrestling ring? What made them want to sign with the company they’re a part of? Have they been a part of past companies, and if so, why did they leave?
Go away, Elmo.
Flesh out something random about your character that you never thought of before and see where it goes. Not everything has to be a big traumatic experience -- I am of the “no dead grandmothers” school of RPing, which, we should talk about for a second…
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Side Lesson 4A: Stop Killing Grandma
“Oh, I know what I’ll do, I’ll add a traumatic past to my character, where X/Y/Z thing occurred…”
And traumatic thing, 9 out of 10 times, is actually an old dead grandma. And look, I love my grandma. Mom Mom smokes cigarettes and will burn them out in your face. Some of you love yours and losing her would suck. But it doesn’t work in wrestling RPing nearly as much as people write it. Why?
A) It doesn’t relate to the match.
Not all character development has to relate to the match. In fact, most doesn’t. But if you give me a 2000 word sob-story and pay no attention to the match itself, and the other guy writes about the match, the other guy’s taking home the win ¾ times. Most writers here know how to go “that stuff’s sad, but it’s not going to stop me from kicking your ass”. At the end of the day you are writing a wrestling promo that will go on a wrestling show. If you are going down this road, take the wisdom of Lucky Linda from SWAT and have the dying figure convey advice or some kind of motto to take forward into the ring. That’s a more powerful way to bridge the gap back into wrestling.
B) You don’t invest heavily enough into the trauma.
I don’t write about my RL dead dad or make it part of my character development for any of my characters because the trauma is still very real and I’m feeling it years later. Great, grandma died, and that made you real sad? Where is that sadness two promos later? How about four? If this event was so traumatic to shape your character, why do they seem to have completely forgotten it? Seth Dillinger right now is writing some lights out work where he’s taking the traumatic elements and a break-up and folding them into building a strong character, but they are all measured reactions that aren’t suddenly forgotten about and don’t feel pigeonholed into a wrestling match. The seven stages of grief can produce some powerful RPs.
C) You invest too heavily into the trauma.
Doesn’t happen too much, but if it’s the seventh RP about your trauma or it’s at least mentioned and your character doesn’t develop in a direction from it, that’s bad too. If you kill grandma and your character mourns about her for three months worth of RPing, that’s not building, that’s boring. Sending your character down the seven stages of grief would be a better way to handle it. You are writing a story -- if grandma dying is the exposition or rising action, your character has to hit a climax or begin some falling action or go literally anywhere or else your RP and character falls victim to “this is repetitive”. You can only drink from the well so much before it runs dry unless you replenish it.
D) Overall, it’s kind of cheap
In college, I knew people who would use ‘dead grandma’ to get out of homework. That’s fine if it was true, but you can’t go back to that well for the same professor. It’s not believable if it happens more than once. Just take a different part of your character’s story and run with it.
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Lesson 4B: Just Don’t Kill People in E-Fedding, Period
Yeah? Yeah. Sorry not sorry, DW folks. Love you guys, it’s just too extreme any way it’s written. Death might have a place in e-fedding somewhere and/or in some way, but I’m personally not a fan.
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Back to building your lore…
If you’re looking for the best place to build out your lore outside of RPing, put it in your bio. It makes your opponent’s RP’s better because they actually know your character better (unless they don’t read bios -- and honestly if you got this far into this advice and you’re not reading your opponent’s bio before RPing against them, what the fuck is wrong with you), and helps both of you tell a better story overall. This is a collaborative game, after all. Plus if they’re shouting out your stats and your history, you’ve made something pretty fuckin’ memorable, in which case you’re doing a good job.
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4C: The Unreliable Narrator vs. The Truth
Most heels already do the first half of this, but if you spin a character’s history or the result of a match while building your character, you can go back in later when your character has had an epiphany or grown and tell the truth. Telling the same story twice from different perspectives from the same character (‘he fell out of the tree’ vs. ‘I pushed him’) can greatly reward people who have to read your stuff over the long haul if done correctly.
Still the best unreliable narrator in film.
Overall, the truth is a powerful tool to use in building your character. Figure out when it’s best for your character to accept reality vs. ignore it. A heel that brags about being the best can only be so interesting, especially if they keep bragging after losing eight matches in a row. Leaning into a loss can make your character more powerful.
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Final Lesson: Look for Inspiration in Everything Around You
Let’s do something light and fun to end this session...
Take out a piece of paper or open a word doc. You can even write it wherever you wrote down the teddy bear bit.
Think about things and people you like. We’re gonna keep this real vague. Here’s my quick list. See if you can rattle off ten different things:
Chase Utley (baseball player)
Jimmy Butler (basketball player)
Joel Embiid (basketball player)
Philadelphia (city)
The Miz (wrestler)
Kurt Angle (wrestler)
Fallout New Vegas (video game)
The Church of Blow (Parody Youtube channel)
Good Mythical Morning (YouTube channel)
Spider-Man (superhero)
John Cena (wrestler)
I’m convinced I’m the only one who’s ever watched this series.
All of these things, in one way or another, shape my characters. Chase Utley and Jimmy Butler are famously hard-nosed, strong work-ethic athletes that form the inspiration for Caffrey’s dedication (and my work ethic is surprisingly garbage in RL, so playing opposites here). Joel Embiid and the Miz love to clown people while being at the top of their game. Kurt Angle’s ankle lock is THE all-time submission finisher IMO. FNV’s Vault Tec and the Church of Blow shape Subject through a constant debate I have about whether it’s manmade or a lizard monster/alien type. GMM is where I took my picbase for Caffrey, and these days Cena and Spider-Man are two of my biggest face inspirations because they’re fucking great.
Insert the XHF Discord’s games chat here, and our obsession with Spider-Man PS4.
Think about why you like something so much, and shape it into your character. Taking these aspects and your own personality together to make a more amplified version of yourself is an easy way to build a strong characters. Dylan Black does this with a love of pop culture references. Ryan Young’s character seems to be a die-hard wrestling nerd at his core.
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5A Side Note: Your Picbase
I can hear Mongo screaming at his keyboard about how I’m a snobby elitist and shouldn’t include this section (we’ve debated it, but this is my article, so here’s my thoughts, he’s entitled to his in the replies.)
Me, knowing I’m about to draw Mongo’s criticism.
Me, doing it anyway.
I don’t believe in using wrestlers for picbases. At least if you can help it, don’t. If someone knows who your wrestler is, they still know your wrestler, and you have to constantly work to fight people’s mental image of that character. Jack Diamond is the exception to the rule -- he’s done enough great work that when IRL I saw Finn Balor I shouted Jack Diamond at him for a moment. Chances are the wrestler you want to use as your picbase is popular for a reason-- so remember you’ll be fighting that uphill battle for as long as that wrestler is relevant.
Personally? I work backwards. If I know I’m looking for “obnoxious white guy with glasses”, “albino monster man”, “mad scientist”, “rich smug prick”, a Google Image search will provide a lot of inspiration until it truly clicks on who you’re looking for. I’ve used David Wright, Robert Downey Jr (pre Iron Man), Matt Bomer, and now Link Neal as picbases for Caffrey before. What you’re trading off for in not having cool wrestling videos, you’re gaining in having a picbase that is totally you and yours, giving you the opportunity to create an ultimate icon with a lasting image.
Like for example: anyone know who Bobby Barratt’s picbase actually is? Some guy from Supernatural, right, but few knows the actor’s name. When I see the guy, I see Bobby fuckin’ Barratt.
This guy’s name is Jensen Ackles. Holy shit, what a bad wrestling name.
My point here is that if you build your picbase around your wrestler instead of your wrestler around a picbase, overall you’re going to have a picbase you can deeply incorporate into all elements of your story. I’ve been knocking DT’s dumb hat for a week now in my promos, but that hat has become a part of the character and his overall narrative.
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Now let’s do it again. Five things you hate. Ready? Go!
Assholes
The News
The 1%
Loneliness
My constant mental pressure to do something great
Enjoy this GIF of an ass as I cover up how real this just got.
Now if you’re a heel, these are things you can incorporate into your character, but if you’re a face, you can be an anti-version of any of these. But running down the chart, Caffrey was known as The Chief Asshole and an Angry Violent Asshole-- though asshole is such a generic term that you’d have to soulsearch for what type you find the most despicable and why those people get that label. Is someone an asshole because you didn’t hold the door, or because they won’t shut up about how much better they are than anyone else?
With the sale of the Diamond Lounge, I strongly considered making Caffrey more of a 1-Percenter gimmick, but Card/Cross handle that avenue pretty well and as a somewhat broke college student I can’t relate it to at all. If you take every piece of advice I’ve given you as gospel, that’s cool -- but if you find it doesn’t work for you, stop doing it. Realizing what’s a no and what’s a yes for you is super helpful.
The last two things are rather personal but they play largely into Caffrey -- he’s always been painted as more of a loner at his core, probably because of how much of an asshole he is making it hard for him to make friends (jeez, hard truth about my life). And if you’ve read any of my promos, that core concept of becoming the best makes its way into my work for a variety of reasons. I can’t turn that feeling off, so I lean into it. (To be fair, when I do something that I feel is the best it could be, it’s an adrenaline high, sooo.)
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Lesson 6: Complete Your Character by Adding Flaws
My favorite thing about SWAT’s bios are that for every iconic trait/advantage you want to give yourself, you have to give yourself a flaw. Your character is BORING if they’re perfect or the greatest at everything. That’s a Mary/Gary Sue/Stu. Don’t do it.
These don’t have to be things that cost you a match, though they definitely can. Maybe your hard-nosed heel has a secret they can’t afford getting out, or your underdog babyface cares too much about his reputation rather than winning. If your character’s strength can be flipped into a weakness, that works too, but the more flaws you add to your character, the more readers are invested in watching other people exploit your flaws and watching you overcome them.
Subject can’t talk. That’s a huge flaw for a character, especially in competitive e-fedding. But the workarounds and overcoming that barrier helped me take home the X-Crown with him.
Heel Caffrey was overly-obsessed with winning to the point that he had no friends. Face Caffrey has his own flaws that I’m working on in time.
Your character throws the worst dropkicks in the world. She has a gambling problem. He trusts people too easily. They’re running away from their past and it still hurts them to this day. Sit down with your character and add a few things that you know you’ll have to overcome, because flawed characters rule.
This is Egbert. He’s a paladin in my favorite Dungeons and Dragons YouTube series, the Oxventure. In addition to being a dragonborn, he’s known as Egbert the Careless -- and has a backstory no one really knows of, but it got kicked him out of his paladin order. He’s also on a constant search for atonement, but he likes explosives and having fun a little too much to ever get there. He’s seen his cow god in visions and looks to him for guidance, but no one ever believes him. He also has -1 on all of his perception rolls because he’s dumb as a rock.
See how much more interesting that is than a standard paladin (wrestler)?
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Class dismissed. Your TL;DR:
1) The best characters are built around yourself (or the opposite of yourself) but be mindful of which stories you should be telling.
2) Give your character a why + reasons to be who they are other than “I want to win”. A wrestler with motivations is an exciting one.
That being said, a wrestler with motivations + a backstory/lore is one that works the best. Flesh out random pieces of your lore in RPs/through match results to build a stronger overall character.
3) If you can figure out what your character would do with a teddy bear in a promo, you know your character.
4) Write a face or a heel -- not both.
5) Stop killing Grandma to build your character unless you’re willing to commit.
6) Look for inspiration everywhere -- including in non-wrestler picbases.
7) A flawed character is the best kind.
Hope this helps!
--Caffrey
