RP Help. **READ THIS BEFORE YOU ASK QUESTIONS**

That's right, you're here for the Malice school of hard knocks to earn your stripes in the world of competitive professional wrestling. Let's start with the most basic need of most federations: interesting stories, and the means to tell them.

Role playing is important because it tells the story of your character in and out of the ring. If you don't RP, all the skills in the world will get you no where fast. Let's look at a similar real world comparison to Shelton Benjamin. He has all the in ring skills in the world, and could very well be the best pure wrestler on the WWE's roster. However, he has all the personality of a cardboard cutout. And until lately, was never given much of a true spotlight.

The Basics

The fundamentals of Role Playing are simple. You want to tell a story, in a somewhat concise manner, and yet convey enough details to keep the audience reading. There are several important ingredients to every RP.

First is the story itself: what message are you sending with your RP? Are you challenging someone? Are you setting up a character alignment turn? Are you just providing comic relief? Make sure you never lose sight of your intended story. It is often useful to write down a rough draft or outline before you start your actual RP.

Second is the environment. Where is the story taking place? Who is there? What kind of sounds can we hear? While normal writing indicates this is exceptionally important, we want to limit it to significant things. Location, and maybe some atmosphere and participants. We aren't writing a novel, but we still have to tell the story.

Third is creativity. It doesn't matter how good a story teller you are if you tell the same lame story everyone else does. Jump out and be creative. If you are working on a big story, run it through all the participants you would like to have involved before hand. Communication is a huge key to successful RPing when dealing with others.

5Questions of RP

This is all great, but how do we apply it, you ask? Well, we look at the 5 questions.

1. Where is the story taking place?

2. Who is involved?

3. What actions are taking place?

4. Does my Flash tell the whole story?

5. If I were a stranger reading this, would I understand everything that is happening?

If you ask those questions about every RP you write, you'll notice them getting longer and fuller, because you'll answer those questions, and find what is lacking. Good RP takes time and effort to create, and you'll find that even simple almost pointless interviews will take a new shape when you answer all five questions.

Role Play Organization

Organizing your Role plays is very crucial to having it be effective. No one wants to read a giant block o' text© pasted in the middle of a show. Breaking the Role Play down into types of statements works well. Actions should be one font (I use italicized) and are easier to decipher as actions if they have dividers on them (I use italics to set my actions apart, some people use "*"s, and others still use nothing).

I use a different color for each person's dialogue to make it easier to determine who is speaking. I also bold the names of any wrestler or significant NPC (Non-Player-Character) in the role play (i.e. William). It is imperative to preface every dialogue with the speaker's name in case you forget to format the color. Otherwise the reader may become confused.

When Role Playing, you need to always speak in the present tense for shows, except when referring to something that actually isn't happening as the reader reads it (Flash backs, etc). Remember, when a show airs, the viewer is seeing it live as it happens.

Tips to Help You Write a Better Role Play

KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid. Don't go too over the top, especially out of nowhere. Start with simple stories and build them into cooperative masterpieces.

Patience. Don't rush your Flashes. Write them down, and flesh them out later. Don't get in such a hurry to reveal your big secret that you forgo a proper build. The anticipation of a great event is a tremendously powerful tool. Don't pull the trigger too soon on a great match without teasing it and giving a good back story to it. This should happen over the course of multiple shows, and should have a big pay off at the end. This doesn't mean every RP should be this huge epic build to a monster blow off at a PPV, but there should be some. No one wants to watch show after show of everyone screaming "open challenge".

That brings me to creativity. You can't fake this or manufacture it. Unfortunately, making something completely original is really tough a lot of the time. There's good news for you though borrowing different aspects of stories you like can work to make a good story when put together. Just remember, try not to copy any story line exactly as much as you just use it for inspiration.

Conclusion

There are some great RPers out there. Some have clashing styles and others have excellent adaptation skills. Many RPers spit out garbage with 2 seconds of thought, without ever striving for more. While that may be the bare minimum and actually cut it, you should always try to make your stories the best they can be. A captivating story with an excellent interaction can make up for a poor match any day. A great match won't mean much without a good story to back it though.

You should always try to tell the best story you can, and stay true to the characters in the story (particularly if some of them aren't your own characters). I can't stress enough the value of taking 20 minutes to read over and edit your RP just once before you post it as a final. This can take a drab, simple 4 line interview segment and turn it into a colorful, emotional interview that has others responding. After all, Role playing is about interacting with others. While there are solo RPs, the best ones come when two or more people get together and really work on a message to send to the reader. Make your RPs the one they want to join.