Boots Martin Archive & Feedback Thread

Jan 24, 2018 23:46:09 GMT -8 Azurine Vebbins said:

Reasons I Like "Maybe"

- Entertained me while re-reading multiple times. For example, when capitalizing the two words "HATED. ME." Chuckled since most people experience having one individual who refused to be copacetic. It also drew my eyes immediately since it added emphasis. Ash's treatment of Boots/pursuit of career over marriage provides incentive/motivation as to why Boots and Kyle would engage in an extramarital affair.

- Gave enough of a glimpse into the character where I could visualize how she'd square up against other Elysium wrestlers. Martin has a gut-wrenching backstory and is looking for one last shot at redemption. Another wrestler who shares a similar balance of desperation mixed with an unflinching penchant for destruction? Lexi Sheckler. Of course, that's the first parallel I could think of. Whomever faces Boots at Frontline VIII will have their work cut out for them.

- Even though I'm sure she's a heel for being a homewrecker, there's plenty of reasons to empathize with your character. She's consistently trying to better herself by getting trained, becoming a well-rounded technical wrestler, and still looking for employment. Plus, she's optimistic by viewing Elysium as a light at the end of the tunnel.

Thanks for that. And you've tapped into something as well. Though I'm known for mostly playing face characters, all of the heels I have played have been heels of their own making. When I was originally fleshing out the story elements that make up Boots' history, I was thinking about The Joker's premise in The Killing Joke... the idea that any of us is simply one bad day away from snapping. For Boots, that day was the day the story about her and Kyle went public. I want her to always have that element... almost Anikin-esque, where the reader can see who she would have been had all of her carefully laid plans not been snatched away from her that day and if she hadn't allowed herself to be consumed by the anger that came with that happening.

We'll see where it takes her.

Thanks again for the feedback.

Feb 28, 2018 18:50:41 GMT -8 Alyssa Daniels said:

I'll lead off by saying that you're always on point in your shoots. You know how to take apart your opposition with words and doing it in different ways with each character I've seen you write with. Then when your opponent responds, you can tear down their argument with relative ease. It's impressive.

What I would say your promos lack is structure. The promos are great shoots but when I read them, I just feel like that's all they are. I don't get too much in the way of character development, match hype, or creative presentation. It's all shoot, though you're definitely one of my favorites as far as pure shoot goes.

I also enjoy the fact that, when I read your promos, it the writing sounds like how someone would talk. Boots has a clear voice and it doesn't just sound like someone writing a thesis or something like that. She's very natural and sounds organic.

Just a thought on the character presentation, sorta like Azzy was saying, I don't really see her as a heel. I view her as a character that wants to be good but has been beaten down by her past and convinced she's a bad person because of it. She feels like she could be lifted from her misery, motivated to seize the day as it were and not let her past define her, making a face turn. It could create for great story to try to do better and have Ash show up and play the role of antagonist against the woman that's trying to be better than she was. Just my two cents though!

Thanks for the feedback.

The decision to write straight-shoot is a completely conscious one, and one that I realize after 20 years in this game does not cater to everyone's tastes. I've long argued that a lot of what gets labeled as 'Character Development' in e-fedding, that being any 3rd person structured prose outlining scenes outside a character's direct life as a professional wrestler, does not, in fact, develop character. In fact, it's my (sometimes unpopular) opinion that the obligatory 50/50 CD/Shoot style RP that has become the norm in the game is largely more responsible for less developed characters than any other style... but again, that's just my opinion.

My goal when writing an RP is simple: Write something that's easy to read, that provides some insight to the match-writer how the character intends to approach the match and the opponent, to 'put asses in seats' and develop interest in the match, and give my opponent something to work with while hopefully steering them towards talking about whatever I want to make the match about. I also have long maintained that if one is good at writing straight-shoot, that it can be a more effective tool for character development, and a more authentic one, than 3rd person scene-writing.

Example? Well, we didn't know that Ric Flair was a jet-flying, kiss-stealing wheeler-dealer because the NWA showed a 30-second clip of him getting off a Lear jet and into a limo... we knew because he told us that he was. We didn't know that Dusty Rhodes was a working class man of the people because of any vignette that may have aired, we knew because he told us he was. We didn't understand Mankind's pain because he spoke from the shadows of a boiler room, we felt it because his words carried the weight of his pain.

My point is that after 20 years of writing naked shoots, I'd say that Kyle Cross, Chris Legion, Torin Justice, Ash Scion... all were pretty well-developed, or at the very least that none of them were flat, cut-out characters. Some of that has to do with my RPs, a lot of it has to do with the way fed-heads like Eʟʏsɪᴜᴍ Pʀᴏ have written them in the results over the years. But I must be doing something right, because, after just a small handful of all naked-shoot RPs here in Elysium, you seem to have a pretty good grasp of who Boots is as a character, even possibly anticipating some of my future plans for the character.



In any case, sorry for the rant, and thanks for the feedback, all of which will be taken into consideration.

Updated and done for the week. Thanks for a fun one, El.