For as long as I can remember, I’ve loved books and professional wrestling. Fiction, non-fic, memoir, poetry, graphic novels. World Wrestling Federation/Entertainment (WWF/E), Total Non-stop Action (TNA), Extreme Championship Wrestling (ECW), All Elite Wrestling (AEW), Revolution Pro-Wrestling (RevPro), Progress Wrestling, NXT, New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW). I love it all.
Professional wrestling is a sport that combines combat and drama to tell stories through ‘kayfabe’, the art of presenting a staged performance as reality. Wrestlers can be placed into one of two brackets: ‘baby faces’ or ‘heels’.
What?
Exactly.
A baby face, or face wrestler, is a goodie. A heel is a baddie. That simple. Phrases such as ‘heel turn’ and ‘turned baby face’ are often used to describe a wrestler changing their character’s attitude and ambitions. A common way of displaying this is in a tag team of two goodies. At the end of a match, one turns on the other, beats them down, the crowd turn on them for doing so and the wrestler has officially completed a heel turn. You can guarantee the next time you see that wrestler they’ll consolidate their heel turn by doing something like attacking their old partner again or ‘cutting a promo’ (a promotional interview through dialogue or monologue) insulting the crowd and justifying why they betrayed their friend.
If you don’t know anything about pro-wrestling, I’ve just bombarded you with jargon and information that is likely to be useless to you. You might still be thinking ‘Isn’t wrestling for children?’ Or you might already notice the similarities between writing fiction and pro-wrestling.
Wrestling is pre-determined by people known as ‘creative’. Depending on the company and talent involved depends on how heavily it is scripted. A young wrestler at the start of their career in NXT (WWE’s developmental brand), for example, will have almost everything presented to them. This will include their character traits. Someone with a lot of experience (CM Punk, Cody Rhodes, Seth Rollins, Becky Lynch, Bayley, for example) will work with creative and other talent to form the story they want to tell and be trusted to perform well in the ring, cut interesting promos and get fan support or heat depending on if they’re baby face or heel. The exact same as the contrast between a debut novelist and Stephen King.
Despite what many non-wrestling fans think, wrestling isn’t people pretending to fight. It’s athletes engaging in storylines and feuds to entertain a live and online/television audience. And, after all, no one disregards theatre by saying, ‘well, they’re just pretending’.
With technology allowing a cool segment to be broadcast worldwide through short clips on social media, wrestling creatives are under amounting pressure to get it right. Similarly, writing is massively contested, despite not appearing as competitive on the surface. When you submit anything to a publisher/journal/newspaper/magazine, you are fighting for attention against other writers.
Pro-wrestling relies on:
characters
point of view
plot
dialogue
‘show, don’t tell’
inciting incidents
conflict
Sounds familiar.
Recently, long-term storytelling has become a popular feature of pro-wrestling that many fans have enjoyed. This involves continuing feuds for several months and building tension between wrestlers to conclude at pay-per-view events. Think of a series of books that lead fans to beg for the final instalment.
WWE has been putting on wrestling shows several nights a week for over forty years. Currently, they have 3 weekly televised shows. AEW, a newer company and the first to offer significant challenge to WWE as the biggest organisation in wrestling, also hosts 3 televised shows a week. For this to work without reaching a cliff edge, they must be committed and successful storytellers. Every decision is meticulous. Every character, every act, every spoken word, is driven by a broader outcome, a final act.
Have they always done it well?
Definitely not.
Do they always have the final act planned?
Nope.
Have WWE always been an obelisk of storytelling to admire as a symbol of a greater being?
You only need to have heard the dark accusations WWE-founder, ex-chairman, and billionaire Vince McMahon currently faces to know to be critical of their history.
However, when it comes to telling stories and characterisation, wrestling creatives have much to offer a fiction writer. In your current and future projects, think about your characters and plot. Characters and plotlines may operate separately, but do you steer them towards a significant and suitable outcome? Does dialogue drive the story forward and add something to the plot or your characters? This is especially pertinent in short fiction. Do your characters slowly reveal themselves through their acts, even if it includes a ‘heel turn’ later in the story? Do you reveal the past through actions and dialogue rather than having a ring announcer (narrator) stand in the centre of the ring and tell the crowd every minor detail before the show starts?
Professional wrestling has told some of the greatest stories I’ve ever engaged with. Most recently, Cody Rhodes vs Roman Reigns for the WWE Championship. Roman Reigns, a champion for almost 4 years fought Cody Rhodes at Wrestlemania 39 in 2023. Cody Rhodes had returned to WWE only a year before, after leaving to travel the world on indie shows, ‘find himself’, and help launch AEW. Cody returned to WWE as baby face, and against all odds was favourite to end Reigns’ championship run. Creative, however, though it had been teased and Cody, at the height of his popularity, was almost guaranteed to beat Reigns, pulled the rug. Reigns retained the title. Many people thought that was it. They’d ruined the time they’d invested in Cody as the ultimate baby face against the ultimate heel. He could never reach the same height of crowd support again. Nevertheless, with meticulous and beautiful storytelling, Cody earned a title shot against Reigns a year later at Wrestlemania 40, the biggest Wrestlemania ever, and ended one of the longest championship runs in wrestling history. All because creative and talent invested in their characters and plots to the finest detail and believed in their process.
Tune in to a wrestling show when you get the chance and watch it as a writer. Think about what it would look like on the page, and what you can take from it and apply to your own writing. I would love to hear what you discover and if you have more to add than what I’ve offered.