X*Crown Classroom: Ring Rust, Burnout, and Long Form Stories
Jul 12, 2020 11:10:11 GMT -5
Mongo the Destroyer, Robbie A, and 4 more like this
Post by Dave D-Flipz on Jul 12, 2020 11:10:11 GMT -5
Ok so I am going to preface this by saying a few things:
1) I don't actually expect everyone who holds the title to post one of these but if you have something unique to contribute please post it. That goes for PAST Champs too.
2) I don't consider myself a "good" writer or storyteller. My ideas come in fits and spurts and very few are polished enough to be fun. But that isn't a hindrance.
Ok so let's say you are a person who once dabbled in this whole business of e-fedding, roleplaying, and match writing. Maybe you even became known as one of the better match writers and roleplayers. Then the place you were in shut down for a decade. You are likely going to be wary about getting back into the game yes? Obviously. So somehow someone inspires you to get back into the game. Gonna be some ring rust on this bitch.
Ok so how did I personally shake off the ring rust and come back to a character I hadn't used or written for in 10 years? Well ... that's not entirely the situation we're in. The Death Trap you see me roleplaying as now is not the same one I was before the closure of XHF. That is to say he is the same character in character, the same story from start to finish. That character from old XHF is the past of this current character. But something happened BETWEEN the two runs in XHF. And to be honest I've been only off of DT as a character since 2015. So those of you who were in the old XHF probably remember Gravedigger, my best friend Rob Hill. Well me and him used to have our versions of our XHF guys in the WWE Smackdown series and such as Created Wrestlers. No biggie. Then there was a break. Legends of Wrestlemania came out and Rob got into it. So I was home for a year before going back to grad school and we would hang out and playthe game. SO Rob was keeping track of the matches he would do and basically managed a fed as if it was the old GM mode in those older smackdown games. It got us back into the games as we created stories and made the matches fit and kinda wrote down what we envisioned happening between the matches since that's all the game had.
Well then they introduced the create a story mode. Well now we could build shows with promos and intros so we made a fed. We used like 20 of our favorite on disc wrestlers and 20 of our CAWs to build a fed of our own. We would then trade off writing months for the fed and we'd collab on who would win titles, when they'd drop it, etc. Well writing entire months, 5 shows start to finish, means you really need to develop a voice and personality for the characters. And it was here DT stopped being just me trash talking back to whoever I was facing and him becoming a true character in his own right. I developed the arrogant attitude and mannerisms to inspire feuds. I developed his goody two shoes nature and the bad sense of humor. I developed the little quirks and such there. I had to so Rob could write for him effectively. *It's also where Aiden Merric was born and evolved from Aussie stereotype complete with Men At Work theme to the current version in AWF*.
So when the time came to come back to the XHF I never imagined bringing DT back because the DT in my head was no longer the DT on paper in those old RPs. So I used my tron characters, jokes for fun. And I found that my time off the boards and in the games had made me a better story teller. I was able to string together posts with a point ... the training montages, the Star Wars spoofs, etc. My stories were coherent, the posts were good with or without a match. And so I brought DT back for a one shot story. But now i had to suddenly account for his past in XHF and where he was in between. So my (still incomplete) XHF Dark Ages saga began. I showed where Primal was and how the world changing had changed him. I showed what Shogun and the trons had done after the Borgs vanished and why he was still here to compete at end of days. I brought back some ancillary characters as well. And then there was DT. Since this was meant as a piece of art for those who cared about a legend but not meant to be a comeback I leaned hard on the DT concussion and neck injury angle I used whenever DT had to go on break so I could get school work done in old XHF. I shook off the ring rust by just writing little blurbs about everyone and telling a story in pieces so none was so long as to train my creative senses.
Now this is going to be different for everyone but for me the rust wasn't there. I was never a skilled writer in the past and I'd been telling stories or at least imagining the next months in our fed for years hoping they'd bring back and fix the feature. All I really had to do was get into the swing of typing it up into a coherent format again. So sadly I don't have much for how to shake off ring rust. It just came as an evolution of going from board to game to paper and back to the board. But what I did do was incorporate everything into the character. I had a voice and a persona I wanted to show and I had to logically connect it to that old DT who was basically all comebacks and retorts in that era of call and response RPing as I deemed it.
So then there's the question Rob Arnold (apparently as a troll move ...) asked about how I keep getting ideas for DT. Well I'll shift that question into a very real concern other X*Crown champs have had. Burnout. Overlord Mongo demands the X*Crown be defended on the big 4 shows (and any global show on which it will appear) in unlimited format. No limit to word count or RP count. We've been able to get him to agree to allowing deadlines but that's only cuz it gives us time to read the storm of posts and judge more effectively. I guess. The first key to avoiding burn out is to NOT GIVE A SHIT if you lose. If you have no ideas or time ... don't force it. Come back next time. Sorry but that's just how i work. I will not ruin my desire to write or my free time with substandard shit with no reasoning. I want you to enjoy my posts so better to reduce my output a bit or find somethign else to write about until the ideas pop back so my brain doesn't just shut off and stop making this fun. RLCF right?
But ok so burnout is real. What do I do beyond that? Well doing an occasional just blind response RP is always easy. For one post just drop whatever you had going and just smacktalk someone. Or if you usually do that, do a character development post, put your person in a new situation to give him/her a new outlook and reason for saying shit. DT has had a few overarching narratives throughout the run he's on that provided me with a framework to use and when it got stale I'd switch it up. He started as a joke character, doing wacky shit cuz he was brain damaged. When that got boring he came back for real and was out to prove he still had what it takes, to overcome that block and step back up. I put him in MCCW cuz it looked real fun and required no actual input from me unless I wanted to. I'd post occasionally to build a (still simmering) feud with Eichi Yamaguchi and a little friendship/rivalry with Nelly. That carried me early on. Then when those went on the back burner I started telling a longer story with H2F and Mistress Discipline. The guide was for DT to be as clueless as possible as she tried to win his attention. They would never meet in the ring or in person and there would be a slow build as she intensified her antics to get noticed.
Then the End of Days 2019 happened and DT had to turn to putting out a LOT of content quick so it became the story of his now vaunted endurance and how even Fire Pro wouldn't let him tap out. Also the eviscerating of 2 of Duke's characters in just pure shit talk RPs with some real character motivation behind it. I blended DT's in character history of injuries and the brain damage he'd had that basically had him not being him and used it to ... ahem ... feel the burn.
Then we had the rumble and the building tag team relationship and the minifeud with SWAT through Zoran and Caff.
I make sure at any given moment to have several directions I can go for a post. I try to keep a list of good ideas for future roleplays so I can use them and develop them into promos as I need them. SO I had a note document in my phone with ideas for rumble topics, and songs to use as the basis. I knew before the rumble cycle I wanted DT to do the Jim Cramer spoof and the blog post and the church spot. The rest I let flow organically based on who posted and who I needed to worry about. I had fun with it and just told DT stories with promos in them. I had a singular angle of attack ready for Caffrey based around DT's moral character and the quick face turn. Meanwhile the daddy thing from Zoran he kept using in his posts so I just ran with it. But if I didn't WANT to write ... I didn't. I'd ask not to be booked, or I'd go play games. I've learned I can't force it. I am not a writer, I am not a creative type. I need to be in the mood to write. And that goes for other writing I've done for XHF, characters you may not have even noticed ... or you did ... and matches and shows I've written.
Look I'm no expert I'm just real good at taking an idea and making it into something I like which I hope you all enjoy. And occasionally I win.
My biggest change this time around that has kept things fresh for me has been telling longer form stories. I recently told a VERY long form story with another project of mine ... which I may reveal some day but there are a few of you who know what I'm referring to. I reinvigorated and COMPLETELY altered a few of my character ideas and made it into something real cool for me to write and a new attempt for myself at development. ANd I applied it to DT. I always look at his story through the current "arc" if you will. So right now he has finally crested the mountain again, he's paid off the arc of "can I still do this, am I still that good?" And now it becomes "Can I hold on?" Meanwhile there are all those mini stories I have percolating: mentoring/teaming with Mistress Discipline, rivalries with Zoran and Caff, the ever burning feud with Eichi, the rivalry with Justice. I find it helps me creatively to have 3 mindsets in every promo. The here and now: This is a post about this event against this person - what can I use about their character, their past, and what they are actively saying now? The mini story: What is the link between this chain of promos - DT mentoring MD, DT out for revenge against Zoran, DT in the rumble, DT being stalked, DT overcoming his mental blocks/handicaps. ANd What is the BIG Story?: DT returning to relevance, DT climbing the mountain to prove he still can, DT finally holding onto a title, the tag team build.
Look like I said I am not good at organizing my thoughts so this has turned rambly and I don't know if there was really any advice in there or if I just kind of stream of consciousnessed you all. So heres one legit tip before I sign off. BEWARE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONSCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS! They mean different things.
Look if you want me to expand more or whatever reply here and I;ll do my best.
1) I don't actually expect everyone who holds the title to post one of these but if you have something unique to contribute please post it. That goes for PAST Champs too.
2) I don't consider myself a "good" writer or storyteller. My ideas come in fits and spurts and very few are polished enough to be fun. But that isn't a hindrance.
Ok so let's say you are a person who once dabbled in this whole business of e-fedding, roleplaying, and match writing. Maybe you even became known as one of the better match writers and roleplayers. Then the place you were in shut down for a decade. You are likely going to be wary about getting back into the game yes? Obviously. So somehow someone inspires you to get back into the game. Gonna be some ring rust on this bitch.
Ok so how did I personally shake off the ring rust and come back to a character I hadn't used or written for in 10 years? Well ... that's not entirely the situation we're in. The Death Trap you see me roleplaying as now is not the same one I was before the closure of XHF. That is to say he is the same character in character, the same story from start to finish. That character from old XHF is the past of this current character. But something happened BETWEEN the two runs in XHF. And to be honest I've been only off of DT as a character since 2015. So those of you who were in the old XHF probably remember Gravedigger, my best friend Rob Hill. Well me and him used to have our versions of our XHF guys in the WWE Smackdown series and such as Created Wrestlers. No biggie. Then there was a break. Legends of Wrestlemania came out and Rob got into it. So I was home for a year before going back to grad school and we would hang out and playthe game. SO Rob was keeping track of the matches he would do and basically managed a fed as if it was the old GM mode in those older smackdown games. It got us back into the games as we created stories and made the matches fit and kinda wrote down what we envisioned happening between the matches since that's all the game had.
Well then they introduced the create a story mode. Well now we could build shows with promos and intros so we made a fed. We used like 20 of our favorite on disc wrestlers and 20 of our CAWs to build a fed of our own. We would then trade off writing months for the fed and we'd collab on who would win titles, when they'd drop it, etc. Well writing entire months, 5 shows start to finish, means you really need to develop a voice and personality for the characters. And it was here DT stopped being just me trash talking back to whoever I was facing and him becoming a true character in his own right. I developed the arrogant attitude and mannerisms to inspire feuds. I developed his goody two shoes nature and the bad sense of humor. I developed the little quirks and such there. I had to so Rob could write for him effectively. *It's also where Aiden Merric was born and evolved from Aussie stereotype complete with Men At Work theme to the current version in AWF*.
So when the time came to come back to the XHF I never imagined bringing DT back because the DT in my head was no longer the DT on paper in those old RPs. So I used my tron characters, jokes for fun. And I found that my time off the boards and in the games had made me a better story teller. I was able to string together posts with a point ... the training montages, the Star Wars spoofs, etc. My stories were coherent, the posts were good with or without a match. And so I brought DT back for a one shot story. But now i had to suddenly account for his past in XHF and where he was in between. So my (still incomplete) XHF Dark Ages saga began. I showed where Primal was and how the world changing had changed him. I showed what Shogun and the trons had done after the Borgs vanished and why he was still here to compete at end of days. I brought back some ancillary characters as well. And then there was DT. Since this was meant as a piece of art for those who cared about a legend but not meant to be a comeback I leaned hard on the DT concussion and neck injury angle I used whenever DT had to go on break so I could get school work done in old XHF. I shook off the ring rust by just writing little blurbs about everyone and telling a story in pieces so none was so long as to train my creative senses.
Now this is going to be different for everyone but for me the rust wasn't there. I was never a skilled writer in the past and I'd been telling stories or at least imagining the next months in our fed for years hoping they'd bring back and fix the feature. All I really had to do was get into the swing of typing it up into a coherent format again. So sadly I don't have much for how to shake off ring rust. It just came as an evolution of going from board to game to paper and back to the board. But what I did do was incorporate everything into the character. I had a voice and a persona I wanted to show and I had to logically connect it to that old DT who was basically all comebacks and retorts in that era of call and response RPing as I deemed it.
So then there's the question Rob Arnold (apparently as a troll move ...) asked about how I keep getting ideas for DT. Well I'll shift that question into a very real concern other X*Crown champs have had. Burnout. Overlord Mongo demands the X*Crown be defended on the big 4 shows (and any global show on which it will appear) in unlimited format. No limit to word count or RP count. We've been able to get him to agree to allowing deadlines but that's only cuz it gives us time to read the storm of posts and judge more effectively. I guess. The first key to avoiding burn out is to NOT GIVE A SHIT if you lose. If you have no ideas or time ... don't force it. Come back next time. Sorry but that's just how i work. I will not ruin my desire to write or my free time with substandard shit with no reasoning. I want you to enjoy my posts so better to reduce my output a bit or find somethign else to write about until the ideas pop back so my brain doesn't just shut off and stop making this fun. RLCF right?
But ok so burnout is real. What do I do beyond that? Well doing an occasional just blind response RP is always easy. For one post just drop whatever you had going and just smacktalk someone. Or if you usually do that, do a character development post, put your person in a new situation to give him/her a new outlook and reason for saying shit. DT has had a few overarching narratives throughout the run he's on that provided me with a framework to use and when it got stale I'd switch it up. He started as a joke character, doing wacky shit cuz he was brain damaged. When that got boring he came back for real and was out to prove he still had what it takes, to overcome that block and step back up. I put him in MCCW cuz it looked real fun and required no actual input from me unless I wanted to. I'd post occasionally to build a (still simmering) feud with Eichi Yamaguchi and a little friendship/rivalry with Nelly. That carried me early on. Then when those went on the back burner I started telling a longer story with H2F and Mistress Discipline. The guide was for DT to be as clueless as possible as she tried to win his attention. They would never meet in the ring or in person and there would be a slow build as she intensified her antics to get noticed.
Then the End of Days 2019 happened and DT had to turn to putting out a LOT of content quick so it became the story of his now vaunted endurance and how even Fire Pro wouldn't let him tap out. Also the eviscerating of 2 of Duke's characters in just pure shit talk RPs with some real character motivation behind it. I blended DT's in character history of injuries and the brain damage he'd had that basically had him not being him and used it to ... ahem ... feel the burn.
Then we had the rumble and the building tag team relationship and the minifeud with SWAT through Zoran and Caff.
I make sure at any given moment to have several directions I can go for a post. I try to keep a list of good ideas for future roleplays so I can use them and develop them into promos as I need them. SO I had a note document in my phone with ideas for rumble topics, and songs to use as the basis. I knew before the rumble cycle I wanted DT to do the Jim Cramer spoof and the blog post and the church spot. The rest I let flow organically based on who posted and who I needed to worry about. I had fun with it and just told DT stories with promos in them. I had a singular angle of attack ready for Caffrey based around DT's moral character and the quick face turn. Meanwhile the daddy thing from Zoran he kept using in his posts so I just ran with it. But if I didn't WANT to write ... I didn't. I'd ask not to be booked, or I'd go play games. I've learned I can't force it. I am not a writer, I am not a creative type. I need to be in the mood to write. And that goes for other writing I've done for XHF, characters you may not have even noticed ... or you did ... and matches and shows I've written.
Look I'm no expert I'm just real good at taking an idea and making it into something I like which I hope you all enjoy. And occasionally I win.
My biggest change this time around that has kept things fresh for me has been telling longer form stories. I recently told a VERY long form story with another project of mine ... which I may reveal some day but there are a few of you who know what I'm referring to. I reinvigorated and COMPLETELY altered a few of my character ideas and made it into something real cool for me to write and a new attempt for myself at development. ANd I applied it to DT. I always look at his story through the current "arc" if you will. So right now he has finally crested the mountain again, he's paid off the arc of "can I still do this, am I still that good?" And now it becomes "Can I hold on?" Meanwhile there are all those mini stories I have percolating: mentoring/teaming with Mistress Discipline, rivalries with Zoran and Caff, the ever burning feud with Eichi, the rivalry with Justice. I find it helps me creatively to have 3 mindsets in every promo. The here and now: This is a post about this event against this person - what can I use about their character, their past, and what they are actively saying now? The mini story: What is the link between this chain of promos - DT mentoring MD, DT out for revenge against Zoran, DT in the rumble, DT being stalked, DT overcoming his mental blocks/handicaps. ANd What is the BIG Story?: DT returning to relevance, DT climbing the mountain to prove he still can, DT finally holding onto a title, the tag team build.
Look like I said I am not good at organizing my thoughts so this has turned rambly and I don't know if there was really any advice in there or if I just kind of stream of consciousnessed you all. So heres one legit tip before I sign off. BEWARE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONSCIENCE AND CONSCIOUSNESS! They mean different things.
Look if you want me to expand more or whatever reply here and I;ll do my best.
