Pro-Wrestling: Learning the Basics of Effective Storytelling

An essay about the medium of Professional Wrestling and its ability to teach the basic rules of narrative construction, character creation, and the three-act structure of storytelling.

Professional Wrestling, as long as I can recall, has been dubbed as an entertainment slur. It’s a medium of storytelling that has so often been given the boot by major media outlets or mass pop culture attitudes that it’s hard to imagine it’s near decade-long span of break-room status. At one time, it was one of the major industries in television, a reliable form of over-the-top, hyper-dramatic, and occasionally vexatious programming that eventually gave birth to the culture and craft of reality TV. I guess that’s a fair criticism to be had.

That said, wrestling has long been a form of Shakespearean-like storytelling in which characters are not merely men and women in trunks and tights but iconic, mythological creatures that dwell on either the side of good (face) or bad (heel). The words spoken by these characters are not merely dialogue but can act as layers to their presentation. How one speaks, the pace in which they deliver their message, the verbiage they use, and all of it play into a greater context of history, lore, and continuity that only rivals that of comic books.