...good God I thought we were done with this.

So today, I noticed on a couple of different Twitter accounts that once again people were having issues with members of the CWF.

At least one of those people has the patience of a saint to have been politely to that point dealing with and interacting with them.

To the handler of Shane Spencer should he read this or someone passes him the message:

You seem to be under the impression that the people in SCW are all "hypocrites".  Now I could get nasty and call you a flake and all the other names that I'm sure you've heard ad nauseum.  Because you lied about why you didn't show your booking when you joined SCW, but you know...hey, it's whatever.

But the thing is, the reason you're calling us all that across the board is that you are under the impression that we're responsible for that parody Joe Levinsky account "Lavinsky" or whatever it was, and we weren't.

Believe me, if we were we'd have told everyone so they could share the yuks.

I don't expect everyone to like us, you know?  But we do our best and we try to make sure our members have fun and you know ... aren't embarrassed to deal with us.

So I'm going to end this with a little thing I saw on someone else's page once.

If you have problems with one guy being a dick to you?  He's a dick.

You have the same problems with another guy too?  Well, he could be a dick.

If the same thing happens over and over with everyone you meet?  You're definitely the dick.

So I had promised a little helpful thing about how to shoot for eFedding roleplays, but I've been sick and busy and it got pushed back just a bit.  I should likely have this in better order than it's going to end up being, but I'm doing this in a tiny slice of free time so there's that.

Most of what people "know" about effective shoots is wrong.

Say wha.....?  Even that guy that wins all the time and he's so funny and and and...

Shh.

• Less is more.
• Be concise where you can be concise, save the impassioned for the wrap up.
• The devil is in the details.
• Sell.
• Sell some more.
• There is a difference between shit and smack talk.
• It isn't edgy just because you put an f-bomb or a c-bomb in your shoot.

Less is more.  Sincerely.  Save the flowery purple proses for your CD section, unless of course you're playing a character with a markedly Shakespearean theme.  Sometimes a table is just a table, sometimes curtains are just curtains.  Simple, concise words keep the readers engrossed in what your character is saying and if they are getting jarred out of the flow of the shoot because they are constantly encountering words they don't know and have to look up, you've lost your audience.

Be simple and direct where you can as you begin.  Save the longer phrases for the wrap up, it can help balance out your CD and shoot portions too, to the "eye" of the reader.

Details.  God love them.  If you are going to harp on a detail of your opponent's past MAKE SURE IT'S RIGHT.  Even in places where it isn't expected to have a back and forth RP battle, you can rest assured that most judges are going to have at least a rudimentary idea of what's what and what's bullshit.  If you claim for example that your opponent is a flash in the pan wrestler when he or she has held multiple titles and is a tenured member, you make your character look stupid and undercut any real points you might have had.  If you don't know something, it's just best not to guess either.  Because there will be someone that will call you on your crap.

Sell.  There's an art to it.  Face, heel, tweener, or undefinable, you can sell something.  It doesn't always have to be your opponent.  Selling yourself, the match, the company, the idea of a title, etc are all valid methods to a "sell".  You can sell without kissing ass too.  I've seen that be an excuse not to sell, that their character "wouldn't kiss ass like that".  But judges in many places look for sell as a part of match relevance and it will not hurt you to let your character show that they give a damn about what they're doing.

Shit talk:  This is something you see out of heels.  If your 'edgy face' is shit talking, you're talking like a heel, son.  Shit talk is usually unsupported by facts or truth, or may contain a tiny kernel of truth in a massive trough of cursing and demeaning speech.

Smack talk:  This is something any character can do.  Smack talk unlike shit talk is definitely something you want supported by facts.  For example, saying that someone hasn't won a match in months, and seems to be on a downward spiral with broken brakes, is a smack talk if they really haven't won - shit talk if they have, and your character is deliberately baiting them.

Cursing is something you used to see more out of just heels, especially back when most RPs were just shoots or exchanged back and forths.  The face was expected to be more heroic and of course you don't see Ricky Steamboat dropping f-bombs when he speaks.

Nowadays you see cursing from both faces and heels, but very little art to it.  If you have more than five f-bombs in a decent sized paragraph I'm going to start thinking your character has a case of Tourette's.  Cursing can be delightful, we all I imagine have sometimes had great glee in shocking someone with a unique combination or insult.  But as with everything less is more in this case.  Emphasizing a point with an f-bomb loses its power if you're using it in every sentence.

Ask yourself before you start a shoot - what do I know about this other character?  Why is it important?  Where do I see this going from start to finish?  How far is too far?

Make yourself bullet point anchor notes.  If your opponent is a close-minded misogynist, look up how many times he's lost to a woman and use it as an anchor point.

Most of this is just common sense, but hopefully there will be something in here that can help people having trouble.

Mina