One more pay per view has passed and that means a whole slew of roleplays have been reviewed by yours truly over the last month. And I can notice two things:
1) You guys have a lot of potential. This is good.
2) A lot of you are masochists because you like to shoot yourself in the foot; some more than others.
I read a lot….and I mean A LOT…of roleplays in a month. Think about it. So certain things should not be hard to figure out what will make me want to throw myself out of a window, on fire and into a tank of gasoline. However, a number of people don’t either catch it and they do some things that just hurt them more than help and I think a lot of it is based out of their own ignorance of how to do something properly or their own ignorance that they are doing it. So here are a few problem areas and hopefully people can learn to recognize them.
A. First reactions and beyond
This….everyone knows how to do. Something happens. How do you react? The safe bet is, show the person’s emotions. This IS a safe bet. VERY safe bet and it rarely blows up in your face. Are they angry? Sad? Distraught? Suicidal? Etc. If something big happens to your character, their reaction should matter and make it clear.
But…it’s the beyond part. Apparently a number of people don’t know what to do there. They try to milk the emotions part too much. They keep telling me the same things they’ve already told me. After a few roleplays, I know they are sad or angry or whatever. Feel free to mention it, but stop hanging your entire roleplay from it. Move on. Starting thinking of other things. If you can’t think of anything immediately, worst case-scenario, you give yourself a week to rest and think up and try something the following week.
But to figure this out, ask basic questions. Would this person try to find out why? Would this person have any links to the person? Would they do something about it? If there is a close bond, are they any periphery issues that haven’t come into play? All of these things are valid questions (and are not the only ones). But the key is to keep the story progressing. The worst thing you can do is push down on the gas and the wheels just spin, especially in a close match, skill-wise.
B. So, the weather outside is….LOOK AT THE KITTY…..What the hell was I talking about…oh yeah…..so GM is laying people off again…..
I don’t know if people have A.D.D., but I think some people do. Again, nothing against them, but try to focus in your roleplays. Re-read them after if you are susceptible to this. I’ve read a few roleplays where people will start in on one person and tear them apart before then suddenly switching gears because someone roleplayed while they were writing it and they feel the need to immediately respond…only to then conclude on the first topic.
Rule of thumb: If you’re going to focus on one person, just focus on the one person.
It sounds like it may work against you. But really, it doesn’t. It gives you focus. Some people use the strategy to split their roleplays amongst their opponents. Some people cover everyone in one roleplay. Some people ignore some and pick some. But either way, stay consistent. Consistency can lead to flow and in the end of it all, I’d rather read a promo that flows well, than one that covers all of the bases. In fact, most of the time they are better because they are more thought out in terms of the strategy of the attack.
People try to jump around and all it does is abruptly cut things off for people. Stick with one topic. Go from the beginning to the end and then move on. Don’t go on a random aside halfway during your promo unless it has a legitimate reason (for example, one reason would be to show your opponent no respect and frustrate them, but rarely do these go on for several paragraphs.). These random sides take away from the flow. They often compound a promo’s effectiveness and by the time you return, you practically lose the momentum you had going in your earlier paragraphs. The best way to look at a promo is to pretend you’re writing an essay, but much more fun. You have your message, your backup and then clarify everything and end strong. The only big difference is that footnotes are completely useless in a promo.
C. I can only stand listening to Britney Spears once a day.
When I listen to the radio, don’t you hate it when within like an hour, you hear the same time twelve times? I do. I don’t like it when reading roleplays too. First roleplays are good. You can get in, get out, make your point. The problem is….the second and third ones. I guess people have this nervous twitch that makes them thing: “SWEET JESUS! I NEED A PROMO. I have nothing new to say so I’m going to say the same thing over again with different words.”
Rule of thumb: You’re not Simple Plan. Put the Thesaurus down and stop looking up different words for “teenage angst.”
If you have nothing new, don’t say anything. Why would I want to hear the same thing twice? The best thing about script….I can re-read it. Now, this is different from repetition for effect. That’s a completely different thing. This is people literally not knowing what else to write,feeling compelled to write a promo and voila, say the same thing again and move the words around.
Remember, I read all of your work as a whole. Just because you don’t have a promo in the second roleplay doesn’t mean you’ll lose. If your promo in your first roleplay (or match relevance of whatever so) is great, I’ll see it as that. But just because your second roleplay is all character development doesn’t mean you’ll lose. Also, you don’t need a promo. Show his/her mind set for the match, how is it effecting his/her day to day life, how is his/her day to day life effecting his/her mindset for the match, etc. All of these things are match relevance. You don’t explicitly need to have a promo. It’s just the most direct form.
D. I like watching The Hills.
I will apologize to The Hills. I’ve never watched them and I’m merely assuming this is true of them given the significant population of bleached blondes I see on that show. Also, I apologize to any bleached blondes for that remark. The stereotype, however, reinforces my point and gives an easy visual.
With that said….FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, USE A F****** PERIOD.
Some of you, I swear forget that button is there on the keyboard. It’s a wonderful button. Press it with me.
.
Isn’t it wonderful? It’s life affirming. It gives an ending. Do it again.
.
. <- See that dot…..that’s a period. It’s your friend. It ends a sentence. It’s also a very important rhetorical tool.
Most people here don’t know how to use rhetoric. So do yourself a favour if you’re bored and feel like entering my realm of interest, history. This year, I worked heavily with the speeches of Abraham Lincoln and William Seward. Pick up a Seward speech. That is the typical promo sentence in SCW. I hate to say it. It has a point. It makes its point. It has the evidence. But the sentences go on forever and you want to fall asleep. Pick up a Lincoln speech. It’s poignant. There’s rhythm and cadence. You want to read it again. The Second Inaugural is a great example of this.
Now, I’m not expecting everyone to go out and turn into Lincoln. But if you don’t want to go there, go to the April 9th Breakdown. A lot of people said they loved the CHBK intro segment. Then read it. Take away the fact I know the character well. What I do is after I write something, I say it out loud and how I want it to sound. I don’t say long winded sentences. It just jumbles up the message. I have short, sweet sentences that make their point and if I have longer sentences, I set them up to have maximum effect. I make the message become infectious with how I write it. If I wrote it like some of the promo’s I heard, it would’ve just been some random promo on the show that established he wanted to come after Angel. Instead, I have a very solid promo to reignite a feud that is memorable and people immediately gravitate to. In closer matches, this is significant. Furthermore, those who can do it well can get away with writing less. YES. I said that. There are some promos that are one or two paragraphs and they are incredibly effective because they use rhetoric well. These one or two paragraphs often are just as good, if not better, than some of the rambling 3 to 4 page promos I read.
Now I don’t expect people to become masters of rhetoric overnight, nor do it in every roleplay. I can’t even do that, even though I’m able to pick out rhetoric thanks to reading speeches and training myself to do it over time. But it is something to look into to help improve the effectiveness of your work.
Hopefully this will all help you out. My next cynical view will likely be on creating an effective heel. It has been suggested to me by another fed owner to do this and so I’m going to try and see what I can come up with and may even collaborate with him to do it.