Post by Ampersand on Jun 28, 2021 2:10:37 GMT
Hey, all! With our last few posts, we discussed character creation. I may touch on this sometime later if I feel there’s something I missed or I get some requests to address something specific. For now, we’re moving on to promo work!
Typically, an e-fed RP will consist of two sections - character development and promo work. Do they always? No. But usually this is what you’re going to see. Sometimes this means the piece is divided into two distinct parts, sometimes you see those two aspects interwoven throughout the piece, sometimes character development and promo are done simultaneously. What I’m presenting to you now is strictly promo work.
I’m going to talk about what a promo is, give you a boilerplate framework for creating one, and then show you some examples of effective or unusual promos real-life wrestlers have done.
First of all, what is a promo?
In wrestling, a promo is typically a video or on-air piece in which a wrestler talks about an upcoming match, someone they’re feuding with on the roster, or even just about themselves and how great they are. They are, in some way, promoting something or someone. They can take many forms, but the one you’re likely going to be most concerned about for RP purposes is promo work in which your character is talking about their opponent in an upcoming match and why they’re going to win. When you get down to it, basically what you’re doing is making an argument about why your character is going to come out on top.
I figure the easiest way to get folks started on promo writing is to systematize it and create a template that can be adjusted and customized to their character. This is by no means the only way to write a promo, and if you don’t use this format, don’t worry; it's not going to count against you. This is just a way to help folks who are new to the hobby.
My nerdy, academic ass thought, ‘Huh! Well, I remember having to write a thing where I was making an argument about something being true based on evidence--’
And then I had horrific flashbacks about presenting my thesis to my grad school committee.
After I stopped frothing at the mouth and picked myself back up off the floor, I realized the format used for research papers would likely work well here, too. So, for those of you who might be in school, this might be useful for you outside of e-fedding!
I’m going to give you a basic outline, and then do a mock-up promo to show you how it might look.
Here we go!
Opening statement
This can be a quote, a rhetorical question, or something to catch the reader’s attention that is pertinent to what you’re going to be discussing. This is your hook.
Point A. Point B. Point C.
These are the major tent poles of what you’re going to be discussing; you’re mentioning them here to set up a kind of foreshadowing for what’s going to be in your promo. Each point is a sentence in your opening paragraph. If you would prefer to keep your promo shorter, you could just go into your points in detail here. There don’t have to be three - you can have more or fewer. I’m just using that as the magic number for this particular outline.
Thesis statement/Assertion of Victory
This is the reason why your character is going to win, supported by the points you’ve just made.
Now! Like I said, you could stop here if you wanted to keep things like a honey-dipped gnome - short, sweet, and to the point. If you wanna Inception this bad boy and go deeper, though, keep reading.
Segue
This is a statement that takes you from your thesis statement into your second paragraph. You’ll use segues between each paragraph to create a smooth flow; this is how one thing connects to another and supports your overall thesis. The points you made in your opening paragraph will be gone into with more detail in the ones to follow.
Point A
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Segue to Point B
Point B
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Segue to Point C
Point C
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Segue to Final Paragraph
This is the meat of your promo. Every point you mentioned in your opening paragraph is going to be addressed in more detail here. Typically, what you would do is have an opening sentence that lets us know what this paragraph is going to be about and the point you want to make. The next two or three sentences will be facts (or opinions your character might hold) that support the point you’re making in the first sentence of the paragraph. The last sentence will be a segue into the point to follow. As far as arranging your points goes, it’s usually best to start with the weakest one, and end on the strongest one you have to support your thesis statement.
Final Paragraph/Summary
This is where you summarize what you’ve just discussed in your promo and make your final case for why your character is going to win.
Looking at the overall structure, this is basically how the set up goes:
Tell them about the thing you’re going to tell them about
Tell them about the thing
Tell them about the thing you told them about
Now let’s see what that looks like in action!
I tried coming up with a name that no one would have, but if there is a Balex Bachon reading this, I apologize.
The human personification of tinnitus. Now, if that were a person, who could it be? I think they’d definitely be the type to leave a mouthful of orange juice or milk in the carton and put it back in the fridge. And you know they’d be the sort of person whose hygiene is questionable at best. But maybe the worst thing is cultivating a new ecosphere in the kitchen sink. Who distills all of these qualities that inspire one to keep their earpods in at all times? None other than Balex Bachon, my soon-to-be former roommate. As someone who has spent the past two years enduring this toilet lord, I have both the constitution and know-how required to put them away for good. God knows they’ve tried to hobble me with their inconsiderate behavior in the kitchen, but their attempts to starve me into submission will never succeed.
There’s little worse than going to make yourself a meal and realizing that while you may have the ingredients you need, you don’t have enough of them. You know who facilitates that particular annoyance with alacrity? That jack wagon Balex Bachon. A jar with maybe a teaspoon’s worth of peanut butter in it put back in the pantry? They’ve done that. Everything but a dribble of apple juice left in the bottle? Score one for Balex. A paper bag for sugar without even enough in it to sweeten a cup of coffee? Yeah, they did that, too. So many dinner preparations were interrupted because I had to take an impromptu trip to the store to pick up some ingredients I thought I had enough of due to the nearly empty container still left in the kitchen! Oh, but that’s not all, folks. Because while my stomach might have been empty, my olfactory senses were always full.
‘Buy Speedstick! It’s not expensive!’ This gospel, preached by Bomani Armah, has clearly never graced the ears of Balex, who seems to think the personal hygiene industry is trying to personally con them, and is having none of it. I only wish they’d wear a tin foil hat to spare me the sight and smell of their hair. The gullible rube fell into that whole celebrity lifestyle thing where you never wash your hair. I can solidly confirm that yes, humans do need to wash their hair. At least if their name is Balex Bachon. This is the kind of person who apparently thinks bathing is how the devil gets inside of you, and their revolting personal habits extend to the environment around them.
Do you have any idea what a hassle it is when the department of fish and wildlife discovers a new, endangered species located smack dab in the middle of your kitchen sink? Apparently weird, fungal anomalies have rights that need to be protected! Who knew! And if you can’t adequately prove that you’re going to ensure those rights are preserved, they get to step in and kick you right out! So, yeah, because of my dipshit roommate’s refusal to wash dishes while I was out on a business trip, we’re getting evicted from our apartment so they can set up some kind of preserve. How disgusting can you get?! But the straw that broke the camel’s back? This putrid pustule of a person - and I do use that last descriptor loosely - had the gall to demand their share of the damage deposit! Clearly, the only course of action that remained was to tear them a structurally superfluous new behind.
I’ve endured a war of attrition in the kitchen, armed myself with Febreze in at least five different forms, and was finally undone by the semi-sentient slime that slid out of a stack of stomach-turning silverware. Folks, I’ve taken all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more. Saturday night, 8PM, parking lot behind the Ralph’s, your’s truly vs. the human personification of tinnitus, Balex Bachon. And Balex? By the time I’m done with you? The only ringing that’s going to be left in anyone’s ears will be a flatline.
There you go! That’s one way you could write a promo, but it’s by no means the only one. Experiment! See what works for you.
Now, I’m going to show you some promos that are exceptional, significant, or unusual. These aren’t necessarily the, ‘best of,’ or my personal favorites, but I think they all offer something special or different, and demonstrate there is no one definitive mold for promo work.
Remember back in the Character Creation 102 post when we were discussing different archetypes characters can fall under? Dusty Rhodes is the epitome of the Ordinary Person/Everyperson, and his Hard Times promo is one of the greatest of all time. Why is that?
Dusty had a culturally diverse background. His father had Indigenous heritage and he grew up in areas with Black and Latinx populations. Dusty went from what was essentially poverty to fame and fortune as a wrestling star. The promo works because it comes from a genuine place of growing up in a blue-collar household and spending time with people who are systematically discriminated against. He understood the struggles because he’d lived them or been close to people who had. Nothing about this feels fake or scripted. Which would follow because per Dusty? It wasn’t. Apparently he went out there with a general idea of what he wanted to say, and just went from there. Dusty’s wrestling persona was really just an exaggeration of his own personality. While he does talk about bigger societal issues for the working class in the promo, he also brings things back down to earth with some self-deprecation about his own appearance. This helps foster a sense of empathy and the feeling that no matter who you are or what you look like, you can achieve your dreams just like Rhodes did. When he says, ‘My hand is touching your hand,’ it’s hard not to feel that they’re one and the same.
CM Punk, as his name would suggest, fits the Outlaw archetype perfectly in this promo. Part of what was so fascinating about this promo was that it was difficult to tell if what Punk was doing was scripted. Was this Punk the character, or the man behind the character venting about his treatment in the WWE? If the latter, why wasn’t he cut off earlier? He breaks the fourth wall, mentions other promotions, airs his grievances about the treatment of himself and friends like Colt Cabana, calls other wrestlers ass-kissers, and it’s only when he starts making things personal about McMahon and his family that the mic is finally cut.
This promo got heads turning and people talking. Pro-wrestling is not real, but how not-real is it? This felt genuine, and when you get an audience feeling something strongly enough, reality becomes a secondary concern. When you make suspension of disbelief easier for your audience, they’re going to find your performance more engaging. This promo was successful because it so skillfully blurs the line between the real and imaginary, and puts a crack in the mask of the company, showing tantalizing glimpses of its inner workings and politics as interpreted by a man who is no longer interested in playing by anyone else’s rules.
It’s funny how much musical theatre and pro-wrestling have in common. Intricate choreography, a heightened sense of reality, outrageous outfits, and extreme personalities. But when things reach their emotional zenith, instead of breaking out into song, pro-wrestlers break out into suplexes.
As far as archetypes go, Jericho and MJF at this time both fall into something with elements of both the Jester and the Ruler. They both want power and control, but they’re also interested in being entertaining, reveling in play and spectacle. In fact, not just reveling, but trying to one-up each other to prove who was the best at it. So you have two wrestlers vying for status with the audience, their peers, and each other. Furthermore, this demonstrates a resourcefulness from these wrestlers. Jericho is the lead singer of Fozzy, a metal band, and MJF is a trained singer. They use those non-wrestling tools to deepen their characters, offer something new that could attract could-be wrestling fans into the fold, and are clearly having a lot of fun the entire time. Expanding your character and your audience and having a blast doing it makes for an effective promo for not just your wrestlers and the story they’re building, but the company they work for.
And there we have it! If you have any other question about promos, please don't hesitate to reach out. See you around the forum, folks!
Post Credits
PWG One Hundred: Paul London & Bryan Danielson
Typically, an e-fed RP will consist of two sections - character development and promo work. Do they always? No. But usually this is what you’re going to see. Sometimes this means the piece is divided into two distinct parts, sometimes you see those two aspects interwoven throughout the piece, sometimes character development and promo are done simultaneously. What I’m presenting to you now is strictly promo work.
I’m going to talk about what a promo is, give you a boilerplate framework for creating one, and then show you some examples of effective or unusual promos real-life wrestlers have done.
First of all, what is a promo?
In wrestling, a promo is typically a video or on-air piece in which a wrestler talks about an upcoming match, someone they’re feuding with on the roster, or even just about themselves and how great they are. They are, in some way, promoting something or someone. They can take many forms, but the one you’re likely going to be most concerned about for RP purposes is promo work in which your character is talking about their opponent in an upcoming match and why they’re going to win. When you get down to it, basically what you’re doing is making an argument about why your character is going to come out on top.
I figure the easiest way to get folks started on promo writing is to systematize it and create a template that can be adjusted and customized to their character. This is by no means the only way to write a promo, and if you don’t use this format, don’t worry; it's not going to count against you. This is just a way to help folks who are new to the hobby.
My nerdy, academic ass thought, ‘Huh! Well, I remember having to write a thing where I was making an argument about something being true based on evidence--’
And then I had horrific flashbacks about presenting my thesis to my grad school committee.
After I stopped frothing at the mouth and picked myself back up off the floor, I realized the format used for research papers would likely work well here, too. So, for those of you who might be in school, this might be useful for you outside of e-fedding!
I’m going to give you a basic outline, and then do a mock-up promo to show you how it might look.
Here we go!
Opening statement
This can be a quote, a rhetorical question, or something to catch the reader’s attention that is pertinent to what you’re going to be discussing. This is your hook.
Point A. Point B. Point C.
These are the major tent poles of what you’re going to be discussing; you’re mentioning them here to set up a kind of foreshadowing for what’s going to be in your promo. Each point is a sentence in your opening paragraph. If you would prefer to keep your promo shorter, you could just go into your points in detail here. There don’t have to be three - you can have more or fewer. I’m just using that as the magic number for this particular outline.
Thesis statement/Assertion of Victory
This is the reason why your character is going to win, supported by the points you’ve just made.
Now! Like I said, you could stop here if you wanted to keep things like a honey-dipped gnome - short, sweet, and to the point. If you wanna Inception this bad boy and go deeper, though, keep reading.
Segue
This is a statement that takes you from your thesis statement into your second paragraph. You’ll use segues between each paragraph to create a smooth flow; this is how one thing connects to another and supports your overall thesis. The points you made in your opening paragraph will be gone into with more detail in the ones to follow.
Point A
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Segue to Point B
Point B
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Segue to Point C
Point C
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Supporting fact
Segue to Final Paragraph
This is the meat of your promo. Every point you mentioned in your opening paragraph is going to be addressed in more detail here. Typically, what you would do is have an opening sentence that lets us know what this paragraph is going to be about and the point you want to make. The next two or three sentences will be facts (or opinions your character might hold) that support the point you’re making in the first sentence of the paragraph. The last sentence will be a segue into the point to follow. As far as arranging your points goes, it’s usually best to start with the weakest one, and end on the strongest one you have to support your thesis statement.
Final Paragraph/Summary
This is where you summarize what you’ve just discussed in your promo and make your final case for why your character is going to win.
Looking at the overall structure, this is basically how the set up goes:
Tell them about the thing you’re going to tell them about
Tell them about the thing
Tell them about the thing you told them about
Now let’s see what that looks like in action!
I tried coming up with a name that no one would have, but if there is a Balex Bachon reading this, I apologize.
The human personification of tinnitus. Now, if that were a person, who could it be? I think they’d definitely be the type to leave a mouthful of orange juice or milk in the carton and put it back in the fridge. And you know they’d be the sort of person whose hygiene is questionable at best. But maybe the worst thing is cultivating a new ecosphere in the kitchen sink. Who distills all of these qualities that inspire one to keep their earpods in at all times? None other than Balex Bachon, my soon-to-be former roommate. As someone who has spent the past two years enduring this toilet lord, I have both the constitution and know-how required to put them away for good. God knows they’ve tried to hobble me with their inconsiderate behavior in the kitchen, but their attempts to starve me into submission will never succeed.
There’s little worse than going to make yourself a meal and realizing that while you may have the ingredients you need, you don’t have enough of them. You know who facilitates that particular annoyance with alacrity? That jack wagon Balex Bachon. A jar with maybe a teaspoon’s worth of peanut butter in it put back in the pantry? They’ve done that. Everything but a dribble of apple juice left in the bottle? Score one for Balex. A paper bag for sugar without even enough in it to sweeten a cup of coffee? Yeah, they did that, too. So many dinner preparations were interrupted because I had to take an impromptu trip to the store to pick up some ingredients I thought I had enough of due to the nearly empty container still left in the kitchen! Oh, but that’s not all, folks. Because while my stomach might have been empty, my olfactory senses were always full.
‘Buy Speedstick! It’s not expensive!’ This gospel, preached by Bomani Armah, has clearly never graced the ears of Balex, who seems to think the personal hygiene industry is trying to personally con them, and is having none of it. I only wish they’d wear a tin foil hat to spare me the sight and smell of their hair. The gullible rube fell into that whole celebrity lifestyle thing where you never wash your hair. I can solidly confirm that yes, humans do need to wash their hair. At least if their name is Balex Bachon. This is the kind of person who apparently thinks bathing is how the devil gets inside of you, and their revolting personal habits extend to the environment around them.
Do you have any idea what a hassle it is when the department of fish and wildlife discovers a new, endangered species located smack dab in the middle of your kitchen sink? Apparently weird, fungal anomalies have rights that need to be protected! Who knew! And if you can’t adequately prove that you’re going to ensure those rights are preserved, they get to step in and kick you right out! So, yeah, because of my dipshit roommate’s refusal to wash dishes while I was out on a business trip, we’re getting evicted from our apartment so they can set up some kind of preserve. How disgusting can you get?! But the straw that broke the camel’s back? This putrid pustule of a person - and I do use that last descriptor loosely - had the gall to demand their share of the damage deposit! Clearly, the only course of action that remained was to tear them a structurally superfluous new behind.
I’ve endured a war of attrition in the kitchen, armed myself with Febreze in at least five different forms, and was finally undone by the semi-sentient slime that slid out of a stack of stomach-turning silverware. Folks, I’ve taken all I can stands, and I can’t stands no more. Saturday night, 8PM, parking lot behind the Ralph’s, your’s truly vs. the human personification of tinnitus, Balex Bachon. And Balex? By the time I’m done with you? The only ringing that’s going to be left in anyone’s ears will be a flatline.
There you go! That’s one way you could write a promo, but it’s by no means the only one. Experiment! See what works for you.
Now, I’m going to show you some promos that are exceptional, significant, or unusual. These aren’t necessarily the, ‘best of,’ or my personal favorites, but I think they all offer something special or different, and demonstrate there is no one definitive mold for promo work.
Dusty Rhodes: Hard Times
Remember back in the Character Creation 102 post when we were discussing different archetypes characters can fall under? Dusty Rhodes is the epitome of the Ordinary Person/Everyperson, and his Hard Times promo is one of the greatest of all time. Why is that?
Dusty had a culturally diverse background. His father had Indigenous heritage and he grew up in areas with Black and Latinx populations. Dusty went from what was essentially poverty to fame and fortune as a wrestling star. The promo works because it comes from a genuine place of growing up in a blue-collar household and spending time with people who are systematically discriminated against. He understood the struggles because he’d lived them or been close to people who had. Nothing about this feels fake or scripted. Which would follow because per Dusty? It wasn’t. Apparently he went out there with a general idea of what he wanted to say, and just went from there. Dusty’s wrestling persona was really just an exaggeration of his own personality. While he does talk about bigger societal issues for the working class in the promo, he also brings things back down to earth with some self-deprecation about his own appearance. This helps foster a sense of empathy and the feeling that no matter who you are or what you look like, you can achieve your dreams just like Rhodes did. When he says, ‘My hand is touching your hand,’ it’s hard not to feel that they’re one and the same.
CM Punk: Pipe Bomb
This promo got heads turning and people talking. Pro-wrestling is not real, but how not-real is it? This felt genuine, and when you get an audience feeling something strongly enough, reality becomes a secondary concern. When you make suspension of disbelief easier for your audience, they’re going to find your performance more engaging. This promo was successful because it so skillfully blurs the line between the real and imaginary, and puts a crack in the mask of the company, showing tantalizing glimpses of its inner workings and politics as interpreted by a man who is no longer interested in playing by anyone else’s rules.
Chris Jericho and MJF: Me and My Shadow
As far as archetypes go, Jericho and MJF at this time both fall into something with elements of both the Jester and the Ruler. They both want power and control, but they’re also interested in being entertaining, reveling in play and spectacle. In fact, not just reveling, but trying to one-up each other to prove who was the best at it. So you have two wrestlers vying for status with the audience, their peers, and each other. Furthermore, this demonstrates a resourcefulness from these wrestlers. Jericho is the lead singer of Fozzy, a metal band, and MJF is a trained singer. They use those non-wrestling tools to deepen their characters, offer something new that could attract could-be wrestling fans into the fold, and are clearly having a lot of fun the entire time. Expanding your character and your audience and having a blast doing it makes for an effective promo for not just your wrestlers and the story they’re building, but the company they work for.
And there we have it! If you have any other question about promos, please don't hesitate to reach out. See you around the forum, folks!
Post Credits
PWG One Hundred: Paul London & Bryan Danielson
Anyway, please enjoy a completely baked Paul London and Bryan Danielson.