Roscar Feedback Thread

Hello there friend,

The Good: You have good ideas. Your instincts for creating a believable wrestling character are intact. Your role-plays are easy to read.

The Bad: Diction, or how your characters speak, is a hurdle to enjoying the read. For instance,

Read the sentence aloud. It helps if you read any of your work aloud because your natural need to breathe will help guide where periods and commas go, but also find sentences like this that trip up the reader in miniscule little ways.

You have some commas in weird places, and periods where there should be commas. Little details we all do.

No one escapes little gaffes, but in terms of simple things that might help put Roscar over:

Proofreading never hurts.

There are some problematic structural issues at play with your writing that might hamper your progress.


So the general idea behind a story is that there is a beginning; a middle; and an end. How I understand it, in e-fedding, your role-play functions as an episode within your character's overall story. Throughout nearly every story ever written is a protagonist, (in e-fedding that's typically your character in your role-plays,) and the general formula for that protagonist is that throughout the story that protagonist undergoes some form of journey that brings about some form of change. That journey can take place in their mind, over light years, through time, over the course of a relationship, or in the steps towards the refrigerator for a beverage.

How I understand e-fedding is your role-plays are the episodes of your character's overall life story. Like a television show: you have the setting the fixed characters and general themes and then each episode has a beginning, a middle, and an end in which those characters undergo some form of growth/change within their typical setting which somehow entertains the reader.

With me so far?

Here's how my simplified explanations relate to you in any way:

In your roleplay... there's a beginning... there's sort of a middle, maybe a little but not necessarily....  and KIND of an end.

There's Roscar's diary which provides quality insight into the mind of Roscar; what he's thinking about this new manager; what his companions think of this new manager.

Sweet. I'm interested. You've set me up to follow along with some guided expectations.

Then Roscar is in his manager's home drinking whiskey with Wilson.

Okay... I'm with you, these two must have something weighty to talk about...

Wilson explains how he sees potential in Roscar, and Wilson has identified the road blocks to Roscar's success.

Wilson tells us, "Roscar's good at fighting in the match... but he's not good at... Pinning(?!) in the match"

So this awesome manager has effectively told Roscar, "you're all right kid, you just suck at winning. Holding people down for three seconds is key."

Alllll right. That sounds like an assessment, sort of. It certainly hits the nail on the head but doesn't really break anything down in detail. This is either there to make me question the reliability of anything Wilson says, (kudos if that's the case,) or it's there because you're legitimately OOC speaking through this manager saying, "why isn't my guy winning?" 

So Roscar steps to the plate and speaks, and I'll be honest: your shoot felt sparse, and lacking in depth. It felt like you hadn't really done much reading into Spencer Thompson, (arguably there isn't much, but there's enough to pick at and form an argument).

Literally,

...really? Have you read her bio? I did when I wrote your match.

It says under wrestling/fighting style: Striker/Strong Style. No surprise there. And following that is a listing of her strengths and weaknesses, her favorite match types, her common moves, even what she'll be wearing down to the ring...

Technically, for shoots, everything you need is at your fingertips. You won't always hit the nail on the head, but its sloppy to speak vaguely about an opponent, and in a game like this it leaves you open for others to come in and point these flaws out.

You CAN explain details like this away, like, "my character was drunk." That's fine. Just don't do a cursory reading of your match listing and throw a bunch of random ideas at a person and hope some of it sticks. Do your research; read; oftentimes, THIS is what is OOC meant in an IC post when someone mentions they've been "watching an opponent's matches" in my opinion.

As a handler, all you gotta do is a little hustle and your character will magically learn to start pinning people. It's not a guarantee, but it's a good way to improve.

Real World example: I sat in my academic advisor's office trying to get into some writing courses, and he (at the time I deemed it arrogant and annoying,) told me in order to write I needed to read. He's right, though.

Watch what your peers do; see what makes their role-plays effective and apply some of those techniques to your own work.

Do you think Quentin Tarantino would have quite so unique a vision for his films if he hadn't watched an encyclopedia's worth of films and cobbled together his own style through trial and error to find what of past works worked for him?

"Good artists borrow, great artists steal"

That said, shoots are a unique experience. There's some really great examples of how to do them effectively on these boards. See: Johnny Raike, Nova Wonder, Strick Plissken, Press, to name a few.

Now we get to the ending of Roscar's speech! All those reasons behind reading this role-play are leading up to whatever grand conclusion you've drawn us into, and...
Aside from spelling discussing amusingly... the two men basically clink glasses and the camera fades to black.

Sweet. So I feel no payoff from this ending whatsoever. All the hype you built up in Roscar's diary about Wilson's intentions doesn't seem rationalized in any way. Is that coming later? Maybe it works? Maybe I'm off in my own part of the ball field and someone else can give you another perspective (crosses fingers)!

Again, having read the ending to your match, (match writers never get the ending, so congratulations on your win,) I can see that Wilson comes down, Roscar and Wilson hug and ta da... that's a suitable conclusion to your story in this role-play, and the next one could be more of the same, I guess.

And that can work.

For a little while.

The problem is the role-play is supposed to hype us for the match, not wait for the match conclusion to resolve itself before we feel any conclusion, (the match also could have ended up differently, making Wilson come out and, what... punch Roscar...? I suppose he could cleverly point out that Roscar failed to pin Spencer. Like the mechanic who points to a car with obviously no engine, "found your problem"...)

Bottom Line:

I like what you're trying to do. There is loads of potential story-telling to be done here that doesn't need to reach huge metaphysical conclusions about Roscar's state within the universe.

It's nice for a reader to feel rewarded, even just a little bit. An example that comes clearest to mind is one of the Nova Wonder role-plays where she pulls back the curtain and shows her life beyond the wrestling ring. It's not like earth-shaking, it lends depth and draws you in. You had that for a moment in Roscar's diary, but it felt hollow, I suppose.

My honest take-it-with-a-grain-of-salt opinion from this piece I read: I think that the amount of effort you're putting into your role-plays shows through. You cobbled together some typical shoot-style stuff, followed along with Roscar's overall aesthetic, and slapped together a role-play in an hour.

That's fine. Honestly, I'm not knocking time spent on your role-play, some great stuff has gone up that was written under an hour, I'm moreso pointing at the amount of thought that went into your role-play and encouraging you to be mindful of how you're presenting your character.

I'm not meaning any of this to sound brutal or condescending so I REALLLY hope it isn't taken that way. Some of the best advice I ever got felt like a punch to my gut, and it was always transparent and honest. And some of the best education I ever got in e-fedding were the big losses.

I want you to do well, I think the true point of this game is for all of us to get better as writers. It's fairly useless for anything else.

This is my two-cents and it's not worth much more than that, I'd wager.

~Hannah