One Fall 10.02.11: Author’s Afterward

Welcome to the author’s afterward for the serial version of One Fall, where I’ll respond to some comments that came up during the posting of the novel, leave you with some thoughts, and be on my way.

Who’s Who?
One of the comments after Chapter 31:
after you finish serializing the story here, can we get some sort of “behind the scenes” guide to explain who everyone is based on?

Following is my best attempt to answer that most frequently asked question about One Fall.

The novel is meant to evoke the Monday Night Wars era without exactly imitating it. I wanted there to be familiar tropes from that time in wrestling history, but enough distinction between my fictional world and the real wrestling world that the tropes didn’t get in the way of the story.

As such, the two warring promotions are meant to evoke the WWF and WCW without either being an exact mirror of one or the other. The GWA is a promotion that in some ways resembles the Attitude Era WWF (smut, smut, and more smut), but in other ways is more like the WWF in the mid nineties, when Ted Turner was picking off the biggest stars one at a time.

Similarly, Revolution is like WCW in the NWO era in that the owner isn’t afraid to throw around big money and the writers aren’t afraid to do something different. But Revolution’s booking is more like the early nineties WCW, when epic, 5-star matches ruled the day.

This was all done for convenience of the story. In the real Monday Night Wars, McMahon won because he was better at managing the business. I wanted to rewrite it where the upstart promotion won, not because of anything legit, but because they were willing to cheat.

The Promoters
I wanted Duke Corelli to remind readers of Vince McMahon without being Vince McMahon. I wanted there to be a shout-out to the know-it-all writers like Vince Russo, and have their presence be a motivating factor for Lucifer’s actions in the climax, so I put Vicky Archuleta in there. Max Zeffer is some unholy combo of Eric Bischoff with Ted Turner’s bank account. Gene Harold and Larry Jenkins were going to be an awful lot like Crockett and Cornette when they first appeared, but then Gene ended up taking on a life of his own as the story progressed.

Minor Characters
The minor characters were meant to create settings to match the worlds outlined above. In the GWA, the background characters are the remains of a once colorful comic book. In Revolution, the minor characters are less gimmicky and more about workrate, matching my memories of WCW just as it was beginning to overtake WWF in the ratings. Of those minor characters, the ones who most directly corresponded to real wrestlers are:

Deep Six = Undertaker, of course.
Crusader = Scott Hall and any other wrestler who hit his prime in the early nineties when no one cared.
Shane Walker = Ric Flair with a little less personality.
Red Jackson = Terry Funk.

Major Characters

Jade
While Jade isn’t anyone in particular, the plight of Trish Stratus was on my mind as I wrote out Jade’s backstory. Trish turned out to be a good wrestler, but there wasn’t much she could do with her skills, because the women’s division wasn’t designed for good wrestling. Jade got stuck in the same predicament. Jumbo’s desecration of Jade’s gym bag was inspired by some incident I vaguely remember involving Sable. I forgot the details,but isn’t it interesting that since then there have been other gym bag incidents – there’s just something about a girl’s gym bag on the pro wrestling circuit, isn’t there?

Jumbo
Jumbo also isn’t based on anyone, but his bitter, angry attitude is one I imagine befalls many pro wrestlers. You spend your youth doing some ridiculous gimmick (in Jumbo’s case, he was walked to the ring by a circus trainer), you destroy your body, and when it’s your turn to be on top, the crowd will never have you because they always remember who you were. Val Venis is someone I think of on this. Not that he’s a bitter villain like Jumbo, but there was a dude who should have been champion. Unfortunately, there was no amount of charisma and skill on his part that could overcome the absurdity of his past. Jumbo is someone who was equally screwed, and took it very personally.

Lucifer
Lucifer is my favorite character in the novel. I think there’s something romantic about the drama of pro wrestling, and Lucifer was my attempt to insert a romantic character. I’m saying romantic here not as in romance novel, but as in Romantic Era epic by someone like Victor Hugo or Dostoyevsky. Those authors had antagonists so driven by a moral code (think Javert from Les Mis) that they became less a person and more a symbol. Lucifer, insofar as he works, is meant to be like that. He’s a character so into the moral righteousness of his calling that he’d rather destroy his company than watch it behave with dishonor.

While we’re talking about Lucifer, there were two questions from Nervosa after the last chapter.

Were you tempted to add in more scenes with him in order to build towards the end?
I actually had more scenes with Lucifer in an early draft, but all were consolidated into what became the chapter telling his history. To make him work the way I wanted him to, I had to keep a distance from him. Whereas the reader is meant to identify with Joey and Jade, with Lucifer, the reader is only meant to look on from afar. I feared that he would lose some of his aura if I spent too much time inside his head.

In general, how did you plan out the purpose for the character?
Lucifer was someone I dropped in the novel one morning without any idea where he would go or what he would do. I just needed more conflict, so I decided the big star of Revolution should be someone whose nature was such that he would eventually collide with Max Zeffer. As the novel progressed and I started to get some idea about the shoot fight at the end, Lucifer’s role was clear.

Joey Mayhem
Joey isn’t based on anyone. As so many of you have told me so many times over the past few months, his rapid rise to the top is unlike anything that’s ever happened in the real world. That’s the point. He’s fictional. He’s what would happen if some newcomer from the farm leagues stumbled onto the right gimmick at the right time, giving the audience exactly what they wanted to see and instantly becoming everybody’s favorite.

Goliath
Goliath, on the other hand, is more closely based on a real character than anyone else in the book. A real ‘character’ mind you, not necessarily a real person. Starting in about 2000 and continuing for the next two or three years, the venom towards HHH on sites like 411 was hotter than anything I’ve ever seen before or since. The sense that he was politicking his way right into a long title run, a spot in the McMahon family, and an eventual place in the board room, just made everyone so, so furious. I wanted to create a character who was every bit as sinister as the IWC thought HHH really was, and when I wrote Goliath, I was imagining Hunter Hearst Helmsley circa 2000. Not Paul Levesque, who I imagine to be just another company man, but that evil, dastardly HHH we hated so much in those days, who would do anything to get to the top.

Steve Garcia
Steve Garcia is every wrestling writer during the Monday Night Wars. Looking back, it really was a crazy time. The Web as we know it came about in 1994, but didn’t really hit its stride until 96 or 97, which is right when the Monday Night Wars heated up. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Pro wrestling in the nineties was a form of entertainment uniquely suited for the Internet. The major promotions still thought it was in their best interest to maintain kayfabe at all times. They didn’t really understand how the Internet would change that. They were like parents telling their children not to look in the cookie jar. We were so damned curious about what really went on behind the scenes, and the Internet allowed us to work together to find out. Then, as wrestling’s popularity exploded, so did that of web sites like 411. All of a sudden, people who once simply posted their thoughts on message boards had millions of readers, book contracts, and, in a few cases (remember Wrestleline?) professional gigs.

Steve Garcia was meant to be one of those writers, riding the wave from nobody to somebody, simply because he was such a passionate fan. It was my hope that his character would spark some nostalgia for that time, when we all felt like we were important because we knew what was happening behind the scenes.

Of course, with all of the above, these were just my aims with the characters. What actually comes about in the reader’s mind is more important. When the novel first came out, everyone thought Goliath was Kevin Nash, and I said nothing to the contrary. If the reader thinks Goliath is Kevin Nash, then he is.

The Comments

Ah….the comments. Here’s one – remember this one?

“This is so bad. I love how no negative comments are ever posted about this IWC whack off material.”
Posted By: Greg after Chapter 6.

That comment was one of my favorites of the entire experience. I mean…really, Greg? No negative comments? WTF were you reading?

Did you miss this one, Greg?

“you should change ur last name from baum to bum.”
Posted By zzzzz

Or how about this one?

“i have a lot of sympathy for the main character…for having to be in this book! i’m embarrassed for all concerned. this is probably the lamest thing 411 has ever published”
Posted By: Guest#9154

Or maybe this one, posted by Romany Riley after CHAPTER ONE.

“Fucking hell, and this shit got published? Fuck me, this is appalling, self-indulgent shit of the highest order. Utter shit.”

I wish I could release every novel as a 411 serial before committing it to print. You guys are a lot more helpful than my ‘critique group.’

Not that the comments above were particularly useful (other than to keep me humble), but many of you had criticisms that I am taking to heart. Here’s what I took from your comments:
a) The novel would have been better if Joey’s story were more plausible.
b) Steve Garcia’s columns, particularly his first one in Chapter 3, interrupt the flow too much.
c) Most of you would have liked the story better if I had taken more time to explore the histories of the main characters, as I did with Lucifer in Chapter 5.

If there’s anything else you’d like to add to the list above, I’d love to hear it in the comments. Although I have no intention of ever re-writing One Fall, I am keeping your criticisms in mind as I work on my current novel, and for that, I thank you.

I also thank these commenters who made me smile.

“Hopefully this means Joey will achieve his TRUE lifelong dream, being named WOTW!”

“He wondered where he could go from here. The best wrestling promotion in the world baby! TNA! CROSS THE LINE!”

“This is the greatest book ever written, Spencer Baum (no relation) is one of the most talented writers ever, with fans like Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, Shaquille O’Neal and Walt Disney.”
Posted By: Momma Baum (Guest) on May 22, 2011 at 05:19 AM

“reads like a creative writing assignment from a teenage Vince Russo “

“Reminds me of the time I put Joey over at MSG. Did that a bunch of times.”
Posted By: Paul Roma (Guest) on June 12, 2011 at 01:36 PM

“Way too much pussy in Chapter 33. Thisis a PG website! “
Posted after the description of the Florida Keys being overrun by cats.

More gratitude
There are many of you who sent me emails during the course of the novel. Thank you. There are many others who wrote kind words or even came to my defense in the comments. Thank you to you as well.

I’ve been a 411 reader since the Clinton administration, and the opportunity to go to the other side for a time has been quite a privilege.

What’s Next?
I tried writing an actual wrestling column for 411 once, a long time ago. That column, titled The Greatest Match of All-Time took me longer than a week to write and left me with nothing to say when it was over. I’m in the same boat now. I have tremendous admiration for the 411 columnists who come back week after week with new material. It’s so much harder than it looks to come up with new interesting things to say week after week. They write a lot faster than I do.

One Fall was about a year’s worth of writing for me. After One Fall were two attempts at novels that failed and one that succeeded (at least to the point of publication). That novel, The Demon Queen and The Locksmith, is free right now on the major retailers if you have an eReader. Check it out if you’d like. Or don’t. It’s aimed at a younger crowd than One Fall.

What I would recommend to you if you enjoyed One Fall is a relatively new book by Ernest Cline called Ready Player One. If you were a kid during the first go-round of Hulkamania, you won’t want to miss this one.

As for me, the next time I come up with something that I think is worthy of your time, I’ll ask Larry if I can come back and share it with you. Until then (as Steve Garcia might say)…Peace!

Spencer Baum
October 2, 2011