Some Articles

[Jimmy Chisel]

A while ago in G-2 I did these little things called Words of Genius (Jimmy Chisel's moniker being 'The Genius'), it was a sort of irregular column that I did they're on the old G-2 forums now  but I won't link just in case. There was about four of them "Booking 101", "Character Development", "Roleplay and Realism" and "Babyfaces".

I know there is a place here were someone does stuff like this,  and I'm not trying to step on any toes just wanted to share some of this stuff with a wider audience. Maybe even some of it's previous audience too.!

I thought it would be a nice thing to do if I laid out to people just how I see things in terms of how to book wrestling feuds. Which I think is something very simple yet at the same time complicated. You see wrestling, is a drama so to get technical it conforms to the same Aristotelian format as any play or any film you will ever see. Now I don't want to get into those because that is pretty heavy going and I can only explain it my own unique way.

1) The setting - that is the world of the wrestling promotion. Be it G-2, or whatever.
2) The characters, be they Logan Gable, Creed, Duros whoever.
3) A disruption in the natural order of how things should be. Babyface cheated out of the World title by a heel who now has the title wrongfully and is proud in the fact that he has.
4) We feel sorry for the babyface because the babyface has been cheated, the babyface has been wronged and it's being rubbed in his face and all our faces by the heel and we want to see the heel get beaten up. But does the babyface do this right away - No.

And I'll tell you why. Once the initial storyline has started. Where the babyface has looked good and like he's going to win the strap and gets cheated. He can't just go "REMATCH NEXT TV" because that builds zero drama. The babyface has to get what he wants kept just out of his reach for just the right amount of time so people can sense it coming, but they don't know when. They know that there is going to be the chance of the face getting that match, but the babyfae must over come more obsticles.

Like what?
He lost the title match, therefore he's not number one contender for the belt anymore. Champions cannot grant title matches (though I have seen them do it, it should not be the case as the Champion does not own the title he just carries it. It's not his do with as he pleases - hence why an authority figure if he is strong and useful wouldn't let this happen). Plus it is not how things work in sport - and after all we are emulating a sport.

So what does the baby do? He goes out and he wrestles guys, to get himself up the ladder. Now I don't think personally that that should just take one match. I think it should take two or three at least. Because the babyfaces main feud is with the champion, but we've got a few weeks to fill and we don't want to give that away every week and see it get boring. So we keep the heat alive between the two by having them interact, have them promo against each other but we have smaller feuds, with lesser guys. The heel is then free (now this goes off the R4GE way of booking, for the guys who don't know about R4GE it doesn't matter but all you need to know is that we booked with a big event every 6 weeks so it wasn't once a month stuff), the heel is then free to wrestle another guy other than the face he's going to meet at the big show and help that guy get over and give them both something to do whilst the babyface wrestles another heel in the hopes that they'll do good together and the heel will be able to work with another babyface, maybe the one that worked with the heel champion for example for the big programme for the big show.

When the babyface meets heel #2, they meet for the #1 contendership and heel #1 the champion can wrestle for the title with babyface #2. This would ideally be nearing the midway point between big shows. So they're not major feuds but they work enough to give the guys breaks, especially if they're going to be feuding a while. So the babyface wins the contendership and can go on to wrestling the heel at the big show.

So when the big show comes about, the heel and face are justified in meeting each other in terms of kayfabe and logic. Depending on how you want it to go, the heel can either drop the belt or win by cheating but this is really a gauge to how you see it working in the long term, if it can last push it but if you're booking on that six week scale it may not.

Now that's pretty formulaic and simple, but thats all I intended to to be and frankly thats what all the best angles are. You don't need carbombs or stealing babies or you don't need to kill people or anything major. Because if you do that - where can you go? Besides people are going to laugh at you and you want them to take you seriously and not talk about just one thing you did that wasn't the pay off to the angle but infact what was the payoff to the angle or what was the major turning point in the angle which I'm not going to get into here because I've gone on long enough and really my sample angle was just a bit too simple to justify having one.


So that was Booking 101 with Professor Chiz.

Any questions? Comments? Go head.

Characters:

Yesterday, we discussed booking a championship feud or well I did. Since none of the 12 people who read it replied (c'mon people how am I supposed to know how you feel if you don't tell me!!!). This time I'm going to talk about developing a character... It is tricky and it takes trial and error but I'll give you my opinions on just how that should be done.

Names: What is in name? Pretty much every bit of believably your character can have is what. I mean if your name is pretty awfully generic like The Crusher, The Punisher, The Brusier then you're just going to the well really and it's not going to catch peoples attention or if you take a name that doesn't sound real a name or that just sounds silly or pun-based. I don't know any pun based names that have gotten mega-over anywhere ever. Names are so important that if they are the wrong name, a perfectly good character will go nowhere because no one will care.

Character: How do you come up with a character? You can't. At least not instantly, you can sketch out a rough idea of what you want the character to be but it's a constantly evolving thing. Just like a real person, a character is born a tabula rasa, a blank slate and they fill it up over time with how they are used. If you have a character that you don't develop that you don't dig your claws into you won't get anywhere with it and it won't be believable to you and if you don't believe it no one else will.

Don't try and be everything at once, don't go out spouting that your character is a bad ass comedy spouting ladiesman. Because that doesn't come out all at once. Plus if your a bad ass, you shouldn't be a comedy guy. It's all about perfecting aspects of the character and moving with time. The Jimmy Chisel character that you all know started off as a well dressed, fast living wrestler and moved on to a still fast living, still well dressed manager who was a student of the game and understood how to make stars to a heel announcer who hated announcing. Then back to the manager again. Then he became an Authority figure, who happened to befriend a crazy midget just for comedy relief but it was an organic thing. I never planned any of it it was just a mix of the characters development over time combined with the real character of the guy behind it coming through more and more.

The major determining factor of a character is usually whether they are a heel or a face. You don't always have to change your character to be a face and then be a heel. Some characters need to work that way, others don't. You can be an arrogant heel and an arrogant face but as a face your arrogance is not what people notice about you, because you highlight some other quality like the fact that you're funny. You can be a feel who was totally insane and beat the crap out of people, but you can be the same guy as face just by beating up heels instead of faces and not doing it quite as much and playing by the rules a bit more. Character traits don't have to vanish just because you turn, you just have to play up some different aspects depending on whether you want to get booed or cheered.

One thing you should never do is constantly mess with your character. Constantly changing things like having valets or your name or your nickname because then you just tell everyone by doing that that "I have no idea what I want to do with my character".

Never invent catchphrases. It is humanly impossible to do so. They just evolve out over time. Invented catchphrases never stick and they never really sound right either.

And here is a final word, and a big one.

Try as much as possible to use the whole dead person in your characters backstory. I have not covered backstory much thusfar and I think I will give it a little mention here. What happens in your backstory is flavoring for what happens during your character development. It doesn't dictate character development and it doesn't have to be the catalyst for your character. I have yet to see anyone with a character that was based off of some fictional death of a girlfriend or a family member go anywhere, I've seen others who have had it as a garnish and they succeeded but it was never at the expense of trying to put their backstory over as actual character development. Because no one cares about backstory, except you. Backstory is for you to build off, not to for you to come up with and then tell everyone about how something happened 20 years ago happened. You work off it and go forward, standing still gets boring.

Any questions?


Prof. Chiz

I wont post them all, that'd be too much.

[MitchMMA]

You suck

I have read these before, they are good articles. Chiz really knows what he is talking about, I wish he would write another one of these soon.

[Duckman]

Chiz, could you PM these to Marc over on the Efed Guides Forum? 

I think they'd be good as part of our ever growing and evolving Efedding Guide we've got going here.

Once you've done that I'll shut this topic and direct people to them in the Efed Guides.

Also, if you want to do more of this kind of thing feel free, a very good read.

Peace

Duckman

[Jimmy Chisel]

Yeah sure. Aside from Booking 101, Character Development, theres Babyfaces and Realism in Roleplays already written. I could and have meant to write more but when we moved forums I never moved it over.

[Duckman]

Well if you could do an new article on babyfaces that would be cool cause we've only got one article on there at the moment.

Thanks man.

Peace

Sambo

[Jimmy Chisel]

I've PM'd all of them to Marq. The babyface one I've written is a bit shorter than I thought it was, it bleeds into character development slightly but I'll expand it if needed and I've got a few more ideas on things I could write on.

[Duckman]

Awesome, I'm sure Marc will be in touch directly with you to get any more you feel like doing.

Cheers mate.

Peace

Duckman

[Logan Gable]

Looks as though we meet again Jimmy Chisel!  Excellent articles mate!

[Jimmy Chisel]

You of all people need my experience Gaybull.