"Walls" (Extreme Tournament)

[Evan De Parker]

Hola! I'll probably be asking guys for your feedback again every now and again when it comes to these, just to make sure I'm not slipping up because it's not APW.

www.efedknights.com/boards/index.php?topic=15174.0

Mine will be the last post in the thread.

Be brutally honest... What was good? What was bad? What could've been done differently? I'm not used to the 2,000 RP limit and even in my older feds my RPs usually ranged from 2500-3000 words. So it was a little different for the amount of character development I wanted to incorporate in there. Hopefully after the first few weeks I won't have to worry so much about character development and will be able to solely focus on the match.

[Jules]

Okay, here's my thoughts as a non-participant. Like with others I've used EFK's judging criteria. My first piece of advice is to make sure every RP you wrote for ET is written with this in mind. If you did that, well done, if you didn't, make sure you refer to this before writing EVERY future RP in ET.

Selling (20) - Ability to sell the opponents, surroundings, tournament, match etc. See the EFK guides on selling.

- I didn't see any burying that made me think you weren't selling. There was a foil in the cousin to counterpoise Evan's arrogance.

- You could have sold the ET more. You did do this to some extent, and I understand sometimes it's difficult to find a connection to a tourney you're not associated or acclimatized with, but your angle could be to sell ET as a way for Evan to show he isn't the guy who runs APW's third show, but is a wrestler on a par with APW's big hitters. Again, you did sell some, but not quite what I would be looking for.

- However, you sell the week 1 context well enough. That was good, you gave me the sense that for Evan every match will be a cup final, or a championship match.



Pacing/Story (15) - Is your RP structured well enough to follow clearly? Does it drag on, or does it hit the perfect rhythm? Have you got some substance in your roleplay, or is it just the wrestler droning on at the camera? If you've done a promo, is it snappy and exciting?

- Good opening. That first paragraph tells me immediately what type of character I'm dealing with here. However, you have 2k, every word must count. The last paragraph in the first section is filler and could be reduced to a single sentence (do I need to know that Evan is being followed by a film crew and that he doesn't know their names, or even what they think about anything?)

- I'll be honest, I didn't understand why Evan's roleplay centered on his meeting his cousin in prison. I thought I knew why, but the 'Walls' theme didn't really materialise for me. I was expecting that to be a big metaphor, this tourney was Evan's chance to break-out from the 'walls' that imprisoned him. You touched on it, but didn't really give me that big pay-off I was wanting or expecting.

- Don't see a problem with pace or structure. As far as substance, see the point above. I just didn't get the feeling this RP made the punchy impact you want to create in week 1. I think Noble said elsewhere about making sure you do something that is memorable. This doesn't mean it has to be whacky or super creative, a great theme can do that. I think you had the idea for a really great theme based on a nice metaphor grounded in an event in Evan's life.

- I'd recommend you read Johnny Rebel's week 1 RP, especially his first part, which is an exceptional way of setting up layers of themes and giving a real sense of a character's purpose in this tournament. Okay, Rebel has Experts history so he has a lot to work with, but it's worth a read nonetheless.



Character (10) - Does the character really come across in the roleplay and provide their own spin to everything etc.

- I get the sense that Evan is heel, and a cocky one at that. But I knew this from your excellent opening paragraph. For me you didn't do much that extended beyond that.

- Ask yourself, what the NPCs are doing for your character? For me they are there to provide a foil and accentuate or show the aspects of Evan's character. Make sure your NPCs are not just filler for dialogue, make sure they are drawing out some aspect of Evan's character, or to develop a theme. You had the idea here, like I said, I just didn't feel you quite pulled it off as well as you can.

- What I did like was that little snippet of where Evan looks uncomfortably at the other prisoners; that was nice because it hinted at the character not simply being a cardboard cut-out cocky heel. There was some insight there into the man behind the wrestler. That was good.



Spelling/Punctuation (5) - Not as important, but generally good spelling/punctuation is necessary.

- The only problem I identified is that you mix up your tenses a lot within the same sections of your RP, even shifting from past to present tense in the same sentence. If you're writing in past tense, maintain that continuity; the same applies to present tense. It might seem like a small thing, but if the judge is a stickler it may cost you a point or two which could be the difference between winning and losing.

*

Overall, it might sound like I'm saying this was not a good RP. That's not what I am saying at all; this was potentially a really good RP. I think it was okay, but when there are a stupid amount of people RPing this doesn't feel to me like one that will really stand out from the crowd.

I think you have a good character, you're doing great work here, you just need to find a way to get that over and make Evan stand out and make him memorable in such a large field.

[Evan De Parker]

Thanks for the feedback !

I noticed (not just here, but during many RPs) that my past-tense/present-tense gets switched around sometimes. I try to use the past-tense for scenes where an extended period of time is being covered, or the past in general, then use present-tense for the "action" scenes where the dialogue and the problem is mainly taking place. However, it doesn't always end up that way in writing, and I'll have to work on it.

The "Walls" title wasn't necessarily trying to hint that "walls" was the huge metaphor to search for in the RP. I just wanted to slap a title on it, so I chose that.

I also tried to get over Evan's persona as much as I could, which probably didn't come off well with the 2k limit that I'll quickly need to adjust to. There were a few opportunities to come off as the cocky/brash young heel in the dialogue and then as you said "snippets" with Evan's minor interactions with those around him. I'll have to try to make this imagery stick in the future.

But thanks a bunch, and I'll definitely consider any and all criticism to incorporate it into future RPs.