DISCLAIMER: This feedback represents my opinion only, and should by no means be taken as gospel. E-fedding is a game - play how you see fit.1://All Bets Are Off
Before I get into the promo itself, a quick stylistic note: people put a lot of emphasis on things like font color and text alignment with regard to how easy or difficult they make a promo to read, but something that isn’t given as much attention is font face. To that end, I recommend changing the one you use. I can’t recall the name of it off the top of my head – Garamond, or Georgia, or something – but a combination of condensed letter spacing and serif-style make it a pain to read, especially when dealing with longer paragraphs (which this promo in particular has a lot of). Again, this is a purely aesthetic note that has no bearing on the content of the promo; just something to consider going forward.
Now, on to the promo itself: pretty damn good, in my opinion. There are a few technical/mechanical hiccups that I’ll elaborate on later, but I want to start with what I liked about it.
In the promo’s first act (the hospital scene), what stood out to me most was your dialogue. It has a sort of off-the-cuff candidness to it that can be really difficult for some people to nail down, and it goes a long way toward making your interactions more authentic and believable. There were a few lines here and there that felt a little wooden (parts of JD’s monologue near the end came across like he was reading from cue cards, for example) but overall, the dialogue and general character interactions here were a definite high point for me.
In the second act (the shoot monologue), you did an excellent job of addressing each of JD’s opponents in the Meltdown Chamber before zeroing in on the rivalry between he and Thor that seems to be reaching its peak. Your takedowns of Creed and Kostan were particularly effective, and you did well to draw parallels between JD and Aubree before establishing his current and recent preeminence over her. Generally speaking, you do a really good job of writing in the first person – any time JD speaks, be it in an interactive setting or more straightforward shoot, comes across as real and authentic in a way that very few writers are ever able to achieve, much less those in e-fedding.
Now, for what I wasn’t terribly high on: to start, the first act’s setup – that of JD’s loved ones surrounding him in a hospital bed, which he’s suddenly ready to leave at the end despite being in what you describe as rather dire condition in the beginning – strikes me as something straight out of a sitcom. The post-show hospital scene, as a concept, isn’t necessarily bad in and of itself, and this one certainly started strong; the interaction between JD and Scott, playing up their mutual desire for the championship and the fact that it changed hands between them, was legitimately fantastic. But then everyone gathers around to listen as JD cuts a promo while lying prone (including Scott, who despite being fresh out of a coma and unable to walk properly is treated as an afterthought), and that sense of authenticity vanishes. I’d still call the first act a win based on the strength of the dialogue and character interactions (I keep going back to JD/Scott – god
damn, that bit was well-written), but the surreal nature of the ending did take me out of it a little.
As for the second act, I can’t really point to a single spot or instance that I didn’t like. I did, however, find it a bit of a slog to get through, just in terms of sheer length. To put it bluntly, writing an uninterrupted shoot like that is hard. You need to convey not only a point or message, but also a sense of character without the benefit of things like action, facial expressions/body language, or other characters to interact with or play off of. Because of this, I’ve found in the past that unless you’re a bonafide master with an ironclad grip on your character, it’s almost impossible to keep the average reader engaged with an uninterrupted shoot longer than 1,000-1,200 words… and dude, this one was pushing
twice that. Again, there’s not really a single spot I can point to that was bad or even subpar – it’s just that there’s a lot, and these sorts of segments tend to land better if they’ve had some of the fat trimmed away.
Anyway, that’s about it. Overall, a very solid promo – definitely World Championship caliber. Your grasp of character and dialogue are definite strengths, and in terms of takeaway advice, I would recommend focusing on improving your scenebuilding (this is something best-addressed before actually sitting down to write), and working on being more concise with your shoots.
2://Savages
Feedback for this one won’t be as long, simply because there isn’t as much to it in terms of content.
First and foremost, I want to say that I appreciate this style of promo. You have JD speaking from atop the Meltdown Chamber itself, addressing the match and his opponents in a straightforward fashion, with plenty of emphasis placed on the championship and the chamber structure throughout. It’s simple, elegant, and timeless – a true stylistic classic.
Something else I want to draw attention to is the fact that, despite this promo being very similar to the second act of your previous one in terms of structure and content (in a broad sense), you were for the most part able to avoid recycling any material from that shoot into this one. Something a lot of people struggle with (as well as an inherent byproduct of a multi-promo system like the one EHWF has) is that they sometimes fall into the trap of throwing out everything they have with the first promo they post, thereby leaving themselves running on fumes when it comes time to produce a second. The ability to avoid that pitfall signifies both restraint and creative depth, and is something you ought to take pride in.
Overall, a very strong shoot; really, the only things about it I take any issue with are minor and mechanical in nature. As I stated in feedback for your previous promo, it can be and often is difficult to keep shoots of this length from becoming repetitive and/or formulaic. That is, unfortunately, something that happens again here, though the brief breaks for physical exposition do help alleviate it somewhat. Something else that I forgot to mention when feedbacking your first promo, but appears in both, is that you should take care to mind your verb tenses – I noticed in both your Meltdown promos that you have a tendency to slip from past to present tense and back again. This can be jarring for a reader, especially when it happens more than once or twice (which it does here), so I advise you to take extra care going forward to pick a tense and stick with it.
That’s really all I have for this one. Another solid effort. It sounds like you had a rough couple shows prior to this one – I can’t say for certain because I wasn’t back yet – but if that was indeed the case, then you rallied masterfully for the pay-per-view. Well done.