The Character Guide

We Are Not Looking for Finished Products

The easiest mistake is to arrive with a completed legend: every accolade earned, every weakness solved, every relationship explained, every future victory already implied.

That gives the character nowhere to go.

SHOWTIME! is looking for potential.

Start With Someone

Start with a person. You do not need every answer on day one.

Find something interesting about how they see the world, what they want, what they fear, what they hide, or how they behave when pressure exposes them.

Find the Potential

Potential is not the same as perfection.

A character can be talented and still insecure. Confident and still terrified of failure. Charming and impossible to trust. Powerful and deeply dependent on someone else.

Contradiction gives a person somewhere to move.

Leave Them Somewhere to Go

Do not solve the character before the first episode.

Give them ambitions, blind spots, weaknesses, unanswered questions, or relationships that can change. The most useful application is not a museum plaque. It is a starting point.

Give Them Something to Want

Want creates direction. It can be status, validation, revenge, belonging, freedom, control, attention, money, approval, or something much stranger.

You do not need to know whether they will get it.

Strength Without Weakness Is Just a Wall

A flawless character is difficult to write because nothing can get inside.

Give us the places where pressure can matter. Weakness does not have to mean cowardice or incompetence. It can mean pride, obsession, denial, dependency, fear, overconfidence, or an inability to let go.

A Gimmick Is Not Automatically a Person

A look, profession, catchphrase, or aesthetic can be useful. It is not the entire character.

Ask what happens when the presentation stops being enough. Who is left?

Give Them a Voice

You will be writing this person. Know how they sound.

They do not need a catchphrase. They need a recognizable point of view.

You Do Not Need Their Entire Life Story

Backstory should support the person you are presenting now. It does not need to explain every year of their life.

Leave some things unknown until they become worth knowing.

They Do Not Have to Be Likeable

Interesting is more important than likeable.

The audience can dislike someone and still want to see them. They can love someone who makes terrible decisions. The question is whether there is something worth following.

Do Not Try to Be Everything

A character does not need to arrive as the best talker, best wrestler, funniest person, most mysterious figure, biggest threat, and deepest emotional study all at once.

Pick the things that matter. Let the rest develop.

Ask Why They Belong in SHOWTIME!

Why did this person end up here? What do they think this Network can give them? What does SHOWTIME! see in them?

Those answers do not have to be the same.

Expect Change

Characters can change, and they certainly will. Storylines, success, failure, chemistry, performance, and stagnation prevention can all move them in directions that were not obvious when the application was first submitted.

That is not a flaw in the original idea. That is the point of leaving room.

What Management Needs

The application does not need to prove that you have already written the greatest character in wrestling history.

Management needs enough to understand the person, recognize the potential, and see where the production might take them.

Bring us a person. Not a completed story.

Find someone. Find the potential. Leave them somewhere to go.