Noelle Smith Feedback

[Noelle Smith]

I almost never do this (other than a trade off with someone who wants me to feedback on their RP) but Noelle is a character I'm still in the process of fleshing out and I'm curious to see how she's coming across to folks.


fgawrestling.proboards.com/thread/4384/oughta  - that's her latest, and I'm aware of the rough edges in the opening CD section, but really it's pretty good considering the Great Flood of Mina's Kitchen 2015 thanks to a plastic cup my daughter shoved into the disposal...lol.

Anyway, any helpful notes you all could give me would be great thank you

[Vinny]

So I've definitely owed you feedback for some time (in addition to many, many other people).

The Winter Carnival
This is a nice "slice-of-life" piece. It does a good job of capturing aspects of Noelle's personality. I also got to learn a new ethnic slur, which is always fun. But I get what you mean with rough edges. It seems like you're trying to wedge as much as possible into this segment. The last paragraph felt like you trying to make sure that anyone reading had absolutely every pertinent detail about Noelle's life and I think it was just too much.

I think where a lot of the roughness comes from is when you try to shoehorn in extra information. Here's an example:

Noelle had gotten them both hand warmer packs once they were there to add a layer of protection, and after an hour or two she was pretty sure that they had walked up and down at least three times just to make sure that the bundles of energy that were her brother Baz's youngest kids could be certain they had seen everything before they chose what games they wanted to try their hands at.

The hand warmers are a nice detail, but ultimately unnecessary when you already established that Noelle has gone out of her way to bundle up these kids. And within this one sentence we also learn they've traversed the carnival 3 times, these are her brother's kids, her brother's name is Baz (implying there are other brothers), that these are his youngest kids (implying there are more) and wow, this was only one sentence? What I'm driving at is look at what details are relevant for the immediate story and focus on those. 

Currently they were standing before the ring toss booth, plush toys of various animals real and imagined clustered thickly attached to the ceiling of the booth. Even though Madeira wasn't having much luck actually getting the rings over the bottles she was laughing with delight and for Noelle that was more than enough to get her smiling too, watching the clouds of laughter made 'cold fog' breath rising up into the sky.

Remove the word "currently" from your narrator's vocabulary. Here's why: if you're writing in the present tense everything is happening currently. It's redundant and it has the same effect as using "suddenly," which I always find jarring. Here you're using the past tense (or technically the past perfect, I think) so currently doesn't even make sense since call of this has already happened. This is the kind of comment where people call me a pedantic asshole, but small adjustments like this have major payoffs in your writing.

I love the detail work here. And I love the way the warmth of scene is juxtaposed with the coldness of world around them (which becomes even better in a moment), but again there's way too much going on in these two sentences. That last dependent clause could and probably should be its own sentence.

Tyler Kahil was much like the rest of his family – they were of North African descent, with lovely light skin because of their Grandpa. Being a racially-mixed family, they ran into their share of this sort of behavior all the time. Noelle and her sisters got a bigger dose sometimes because they were so lovely. It's not that everyone that they encountered acted this way, but ignorance was occasionally on display and it made Noelle mad that her darling niece and nephew would have to deal with this sort of thing. That was life though, like it or not and you worked with the cards you were dealt.

This is tightly written, and it's powerful territory to tread. The only ways I'd adjust it would be instead of comparing Noelle and her sisters experience to rest of their family (i.e. getting a bigger dose), I'd rephrase to make it clear they detail with the racial ignorance as well as sexism and misogyny. I think that's what you're going for here, but I'm a white male so what do I know? I don't think you need the quasi-apologetic "It's not that everyone that they encountered acted this way, but..." line in there. It's racism and it's shitty and if the purpose of this segment is to put that at foreground, don't undercut it. Ditto to the closing sentence. I'm not saying you should remove them, but definitely don't feel like you need to sugarcoat the fact that racist shitheads exist because someone on Fox News will say "not all white people!"

“He's not Arabic, educate yourself - if you're going to insult someone you better understand everything there is about them first... and you better understand the consequences of what you say. You're just a kid, it's not too late for you.”

I get what she's trying to do here and I really like the last line. The rest just seems kinda hokey. There's something about it that seems very "after-school special." Again, I'm not really in a place to criticize since the worst thing someone can call me is "hipster," but yeah.

Noelle took him by the collar and yanked him right to the nearby carnival security man, stationed near the “gate” on that section of the parking area. She batted her eyelashes at the slightly older man, winking at him and then putting on a distressed air.



“Hi honey, I found this little boy wandering around without his parents and he's just so lost and alone. Can you take care of him until his Mommy and Daddy show up? Thank you, you're such a sweetheart! Bye bye dear, hopefully they come claim you soon!”

Glorious. Perfect little microcosm of Noelle's personality.

There were some people that if they knew what Noelle had done, would point fingers at her and call her a bad person and that would crow about that they 'knew' she wasn't as nice as she 'pretended' to be. But the thing was, not a single one of those people knew what it was like to be her, to get things yelled at them like 'hey baby I'm down with the swirl too!' and making rude remarks about her ethnicity, her femininity, the fact her parents were rich (even though they'd earned it all). All things considered, the fact Noelle was so nice was why that kid wasn't knocked on his ass with a red mark from a slap across his snotty face. She hoped that his ruined day would get him to thinking about what got him in trouble, and he'd learn to change his ways rather than deal with other ruined days. Of course it was more likely that he'd just end up being a bigger racist until he got his butt kicked right into an ICU, but Noelle really truly was a Silver Lining kind of girl.

This is what I was talking about earlier with trying to cram in too much. You've already established that Noelle has to deal with racism and misogyny, so I don't think it's necessary to revisit it here. I also think adding in the rich parents makes this seem like the narrator is protesting too much on Noelle's behalf. This entire paragraph feels like a defense against something that I - as the reader - have no problem with. I don't think any of this detail is necessarily bad or extraneous, but I think the way it is presented in such a straight-forward manner makes it seem that way. All of this information - especially after an emotionally charged encounter - becomes more powerful if it's internalized. For example,

Noelle smiled serenely as the security guard took the protesting little punk to the waiting area catching him way, "What a nice lady, you should be glad she helped you out." She smiled to herself, trying not think about the people who might criticize her for what she'd done; who would point fingers, call her a bad person, two-faced, a hypocrite. She tried not think about the times she was in her nephew's place. Cat-calls of "Hey, baby, I'm down with the swirl, too!" The racial slurs, the remarks on her body, "princess," "bitch," and others too countless to name. She focused on the hope. The hope that this boy's ruined afternoon might cause some introspection; hope that he'd change his ways - if not his mind - to avoid any more ruined days. She tried not to think about the likelihood that he'd just end up as just another bigot. Instead she focused her energy, and her smile, on her niece and nephew.

I tried to keep all the relevant details still in there, but you see how it has a little more emotional "umph" when you internalize it? When you make it about Noelle and not the world around her? This is her story.



The Shoot
Ah, the camera. Scourge of e-wrestling promos... So for anyone who read my Riley Owens feedback, this is going to seem like a 180. BUT I don't mind the use of the camera in this instance. The reason being is the camera is a prop here, not meant to be the perspective. Noelle is playing to the camera, and the fact that we see this from a different perspective, i.e. not through the viewpoint of the camera, is a subtle tip-off that Noelle is playing a part. It's very smart writing. It says - without saying - the person in front of the camera is not what they appear to be. This is punctuated by the line "If she had any nerves about talking to Johnny Karma it certainly didn't show as she smiled with her pink frosted lips and she had an air of confidence as she began to speak." Not how it doesn't say she isn't nervous or that she is confident. It was she's not showing nervousness and she has an air of confidence. Incredibly subtle detail.

Hey FGA fans, Noelle Smith here again and this week I get the pleasure of facing someone that isn't out to try and kill me in the ring or end my career!

I lol'd. Rest of the shoot is just good, old-fashioned babyface shine. I can't knock it. The pacing is good, there's a distinct voice that's different from the narrator's. So yeah I have no major critiques.


Poughkeepsie
This is good stuff, it does feel a bit forced (the argument that is), but I like the ending with the implied looming threat of IE. So all told, I'm positive on this segment.



Closing Thoughts

What would happen if she really did get targeted by the Infinite Empire for her bold words to Tomoko last show? Noelle bit her lip and shook her head, then smiled. She'd keep her disquiet to herself at the moment, and just do her best when it came to facing Johnny Karma.

More of this. More internalizing of Noelle's story. Just because you're writing third person doesn't mean you can't dip into the character's thoughts and use them to draw emotion from your reader. This is an excellent juxtaposition to the appearance of confidence in Noelle's promo. She's clearly worried, clearly has doubts, but she refuses to show them. She keeps pushing them aside, trying to focus on the positive.

It's a good character trait, both a virtue and a flaw. I'd work with that dichotomy. There's pluses and minuses to being optimistic, so don't be afraid to have Noelle's optimism get her in trouble. I think she's too trusting of her jealous boyfriend, for instance.

Overall it's a solid RP with some really bright spots and a few spots that could use tightening. [Jim Duggan thumbs up]

[Noelle Smith]

A quick "thank you" for the so far! This is a problem I have, in trying to pack too much in a small space *especially* when I'm trying to do something in a hurry. I KNOW I do this, and yet here we are lol. I don't find your observation pedantic , that's actually very helpful

[Vinny]

Glad they're helpful. I've updated with my full thoughts.

[Noelle Smith]

Thank you so much! The insight on her shady boyfriend is SO spot on, the most brutal match Noelle was ever in during her short stint with PDW was against a woman that Evan actually cheated on her with when they first started dating, good old Neon lol. There are a lot of things from that match that I still have to work to sell given Noelle's character as a nice person (like she put Neon's head through a windshield O.O) but it also gave me so much to build on and grow with, which is always wonderful.