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[Hazzy]

Ok, i've put together this guide from a couple different sources and based on what I look for in a good roleplay, and how I try and write mine. You aint need to use it, but it might help. Don't hurt to read it anyway. And this aint exactly conclusive and objective, this is just kinda a general guide.


TYPES OF ROLEPLAY:

There are a few different ways you can write a roleplay for your wrestler. All of them can be as awesome as the other, and all of them can suck as much as the other. So it won't really help you writing the actual roleplays, but just so you know what each one is.

In-Ring (Promo):
This is by far the most popular way to deliver a role-play. Quite simply, you place your eWrestler inside a wrestling ring during a house event or show and basically "trash talk" your opponent. This can easily be compared to the 20-minute segments on WWE RAW or Smackdown. Stone Cold, HHH, Vince McMahon all use this as a means to "psyche" out their opponent. But, these CAN be boring if you just type 2 pages of non-stop dialogue. It can work, like if you're the HBK, HHH, The Rock etc. of the e-fed world, you could probably just type dialogue and keep everyone entertained. But even then, if you did that every week you'd prolly run dry of things to say.


Interview:
Simply, this is where you have your eWrestler act out a pre-match interview and you'll use an "official" federation interviewer to ask your eWrestler questions about the match at hand. Not much more simple than that.


Character Development:
Seasoned Veterans live by this method. It can open your creativity to an addictive level. You can do anything, go anywhere and have your eWrestler in any situation that tells the story of what your character is all about. They develop the wrestler as a realistic being. But it can be harder to hype a match in this type of roleplay, so try and remember that hype is one of the judging criteria at HPW. It's not hard, just harder.



GENERAL TIPS:

SPELLING AND PUNCTUATION:
Make sure you spell all of the words you use right. Go back and double check if needed, or just try to catch the spelling errors and typos as you write. Make sure you leave spaces between words, so DON'T write like these examples...

Bad Examples.

"youre dead!ill bete you in the ring!big dammy!"
"Your dead, I'll beat you in the ring on monday"

In the first example, the problems are there are no capital letters, and no spaces. In the second, it was good except for two things: they spelt "Your" wrong; it should've been "You're" in that use of it, and at the end there was no period.  If you write your roleplays in Word, all these mistakes will be corrected for you and you can just copy/paste it onto the forum.


KNOW YOUR WRESTLER:
If your wrestler sounds like a 13 year old, he'll have as much of a chance of winning as a 13 year old. Watch the WWE or TNA sometime, the wrestlers don't swear and if they do, it's edited out - so if you're doing an in-ring promo or something that'll be shown on screen, bear that in mind. Also, how many 25 year old wrestlers say "pussy" or "dick?" Not too many. Bad Examples: "Hey shitface pussy breath!" That just sounded stupid. Grown ups don't talk like that, so your wrestler shouldn't either.


DON'T BREAK KAYFABE:
If you watch the WWE or TNA, they don't say "jobber" or "push." These are backstage technical terms that wouldn't appear on the actual show...so again, if your roleplay is written like it's going to be shown on TV, keep that in mind.

Bad Example:

    "I'm going to kick your ass, you jobber!"


WRITE IN PARAGRAPHS:
Don't jumble everything together in one big 5K paragraph. It's a little bit harder to read and doesn't look very good. Write in multiple paragraphs, it will definitely help you out.


QUALITY > QUANTITY:
Don't feel like you need to write an 11K roleplay. It can be boring for you and the reader and obvious that you were just trying to get it to be really long. Just make your roleplays interesting and make sure they have quality, that's more important. Basically, quality will be judged over quantity, whether the roleplay is 1k words or 20k.


BE DESCRIPTIVE:
I don't think it's important to describe every little detail in a roleplay. Description can sometimes come across as pointless filler there to just fill out the length of a story. It's a good idea to read any description you've written in your roleplay and strip it down to only what you need, so you're left with description that enhances the story in some way or tells something about your character.

Bad Example: (kinda)

"Idolizer" Trace Michaels sits back on a black chair, reclining. He's wearing all green and red today. Some of the clothes he's featuring are a green t-shirt that says "Moo Krew" on it, green sweat pants with a red bandanna tied loosely around the left knee, and a red bandanna on his head, covering his long blonde hair. He looks towards the camera, stares at it for a second, then begins speaking.

If I was reading this roleplay, and maybe it's just me, I wouldn't be able to picture the wrestler because theres too much description about exactly what he's wearing. It puts me off even trying to imagine it. That could've been shortened to "Trace Michaels sits back on a chair, reclining. He looks towards the camera, stares at it for a second, then begins speaking." and I would still know the same amount about the character and situation. Does it really matter that he's wearing green and red? Not unless they're his gang colours or those colours have some kind of special meaning. Try and make all description mean something.


DON'T OVERUSE CAMERAS
This is kinda like using too much description. There's no need to describe every movement a camera makes in a roleplay.

Example:

NOT GOOD: The camera moves down an empty street, and stops by a bright red postbox on the left. It pivots around this postbox and zooms down a pathway into a house.

GOOD: We move down an empty street, stopping just past a bright red postbox on the left. We turn around this postbox and move down a pathway into a house.

AWESOME: A street sits still in the dead of night. No one is taking a late stroll in the warm Summer breeze or taking their dog for the last walk of the day; no one would risk it in this neighbourhood. The street is grey and bleak, just like the lives of its inhabitants; the only shred of real colour, even on this dark night, is a bright red postbox. The postbox that sends letters to better streets, to family and friends; that receives postcards from exotic destinations, bringing small rays of light and happiness into an otherwise miserable pit. The houses are made up of crumbling, colourless bricks. Graffiti is scrawled across many, and overflowing garbage cans decorate the small front gardens. Inside one such house, bla bla bla....

(I wrote that example )

So yeah, you don't need to use camera movements all the time. Not using them usually results in more imaginative and creative roleplays.


DON'T OVERUSE COLOUR:
Books don't have colour, results on the internet don't have colour, film scripts don't have colour etc. It's not really needed in roleplays. It can be used for special purposes, if you have a specific reason for it, but just using it to distinguish between two people talking isn't really the most creative way of writing roleplays.


DON'T USE ENDLESS PAUSING:
Don't use a ton of ..........ing to indicate the pace of your roleplay. Like if you're character speaks like the Undertaker, with drawn out words and pauses, it doesn't mean you have to write those in. You could just say before he starts talking, "He draws out his speech and pauses a lot", or something better. But you get the idea.

Bad Examples:

I......................am................. ..........coming............................. .................for......................... you.

Five words that took up two lines and looked really stupid. Use 3 periods when indicating a pause. That's how Hollywood script writers do it...and so do I.