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Post by fifthhorseman on Jun 11, 2020 17:30:54 GMT -5
Hey all,
Getting ready to start my second "season" of CWF, and I was wondering what you guys like to read, what you don't think is so important, your booking philosophies, and so on. Do you like long match descriptions, or the basics? Lengthy monologues and skits, or do you think they're nonsense? DO you prefer booking current wrestlers, matching 21st century wrestlers against each other, or mixing and matching guys from different eras? Do you like "theme" promotions and big cards? Do you find yourself writing for you, or for an audience? What motivates you to do this?
Just curious, hope some people respond.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jun 11, 2020 22:06:38 GMT -5
So my opinion is usually different than others. Cause I've done so many different versions of this game. I've ran my own timeline type game where we started in 1990 and went from there. It didn't work cause people got upset how others pushed future gimmicks on their guys. I've found the most fun a project can have is being able to change easily and have a group of people who don't horde talent and get along.
As for what I would like to see. I read everything but I find things like storyline development and things like that really fun to read. It depends on the theme I am either way on the matter but it honestly depends on the theme of the promotion.
As for motivation. I have found myself falling in and out which is why I make so many deals when I lose interest in some guys. I think the most important piece of advice I give any writer is that if you enjoy the product and work you put out then it doesn't matter what others say or anything. So that is the most important thing is just as long as you enjoy what you put out.
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Post by scottsteiner on Jun 11, 2020 23:29:54 GMT -5
Kind of echoing what King said, but I've learned that I have to enjoy what I'm writing or else I'll lose interest in whatever I'm doing. I enjoy writing promos more than matches, so I'm trying to use promos to build up feuds to the eventual match. I do my best to read everything on this forum but I really do enjoy everyones different writing styles. I think what it comes down to is just having fun with it.
As for your last question, I think just having a creative outlet to contribute to a "fantasy" wrestling landscape is what motivates me. I'm completely aware that my AEW looks way different than the AEW that exists in real life. That used to bother me when I first joined. But, I've learned (and am still learning) to move past that and write what entertains me, and hopefully as a result of that, entertains others as well.
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Post by fifthhorseman on Jun 12, 2020 1:07:38 GMT -5
I'm completely aware that my AEW looks way different than the AEW that exists in real life. That used to bother me when I first joined. But, I've learned (and am still learning) to move past that and write what entertains me, and hopefully as a result of that, entertains others as well. And I'm glad you do, and I think we all should. If you're gonna fantasy book, go for it. Make faces heels, and heels faces. Give us stories and matchups that we'll never see in real life, not the same old ones that we've seen already in AEW - or wherever. Pro wrestling has been around for over a century, we all have plenty of material to draw from.
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Post by wwefan on Jun 12, 2020 13:36:43 GMT -5
I usually keep it simple in my writing with the match results for TV and the interviews in a brief sentence so that the reader can us their imagination to fill in the rest. As far as the arena shows in the smaller towns, I do 6 to 7 matches and then 9 matches for the bigger cities like Atlanta, Dover and Charlotte. I focus on a couple of angles and fill in the rest with good match-ups and using the roster to its full maximum effort and effect.
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Joe
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Post by Joe on Jun 12, 2020 15:01:50 GMT -5
I just try to work to my strengths, at this point. I can do weekly shows, but I find letting my ideas incubate and just focus on putting on a decent big show works best and I am most satisfied with it. I feel like if a match up is really important, it warrants a bigger write up; other than that, I try to keep it a little more brief. Jim Ross has talked about that aspect in his commentary, where it's good to know the moves and call them but what is more important to convey is the overall story.
I am very influenced by Japanese style booking and long arcing stories that are a little more sports based, as I can and do sometimes try to dabble in soap opera/crash TV type stuff, but I am just more interested in the long story. The history and the bitterness and desperation and meaning behind all of that. I find a lot of inspiration from UFC or boxing in that regard, as guys have these feuds that go on for a long time, have rematches and trilogies, and in wrestling you can call back to spots and moments from old matches and build on them to create greater drama. That gives the product and match a sense of gravitas I really appreciate.
Anyway, I try to keep up with what is going on, I don't get a lot of feedback these days but I imagine it would all sound kind of samey anyway, so I don't worry about it. I think Year End Awards a lot, and how to make guys look strong and matches have meaning and historical value so that I can feel confident I did something worthwhile at the end of the year.
I have been fantasy writing and booking since the summer of 2001 and I find myself a lot more steady these days in what I like, who I like to write with and what I enjoy reading. My previous group only allowed you to use contemporary, living stars who were active. I've come to grow into and enjoy this variation on the craft. I am looking at a guy on my roster like Davey Boy Smith, for instance, and saying to myself, "What would his style look like with today's standards of work rate, displays of athleticism and general presentation?" It is fun to have a guy with potential like that and give him an update. I see how a guy like PCO changed himself in real life and I just wonder how some of these other guys could have evolved with these times.
That's the beauty of the game. That, and I have always wanted to build a champion. I believe anybody, any wrestler in this game, can and should be a viable candidate to become the World Champion if booked properly. A guy that comes to mind is Brian Pullman and you are doing a great job with him. Talk about a guy who should have had everything in real life and was cut short. The way you are booking him, he should be able to reach that trajectory if the voters were not to succumb to any recency bias or what have you. I have considered dining a guy like Austin Idol, who should have been a bigger star but his career was hindered after a plane crash.
But even a guy like, say, Christopher Daniels or something. Or a Sean O'Haire, who you are once again pushing in any awesome way. Why couldn't he be World Champion? It'd be a much more exciting prospect if everybody really had that mindset and ran with it. I like seeing that a lot.
I don't really watch any current products, at least not with true regularity, I mostly watch old stuff or clips of modern stuff on YouTube, so that's probably why I think that way. I don't really care for a thousand superkicks a show or all of these false finishes and kicking out of finishers routinely, all of that stuff, so I try to take a more modern product but apply some old school, realistic, common sense sort of sensibilities to things, as I think it's all kind of jumped the shark in real life. When you've got guys kicking out of Canadian Destroyers, or using them every match, I think that's a big problem, so I try to avoid that kind of crap in my writing and do things more intelligently.
I also like to look at my roster each month and ask myself sincerely what match I would like to see and allow myself to book it and write it, and not feel pressured by anything but what I am going to enjoy laboring over. If I don't feel motivated to do something that maybe I was thinking about doing, I probably shouldn't be doing it.
I hope that answers your questions or gives somebody food for thought and it's not just coming off as rambling. lol
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Post by fifthhorseman on Jun 13, 2020 17:43:09 GMT -5
Really interesting stuff so far.
I try to present a broad range of characters - timelines, promotions, styles - though I think it's obvious what era I prefer, or at least when I started watching. I actually wish I did more with the legends and pioneers of the sport, because we can probably do a lot with them, in that they're relatively blank slates based on how little video footage of them they is out there.
I'm trying to get more "sports-entertainy", with more descriptive scenes between matches; I just have a tough time reconciling it to what the realist in me screams - namely, that you wouldn't broadcast a live (sports) show without knowing exactly what matches and wrestlers are supposed to appear. But that's just a me thing... I try not to get too ridiculous, but I could probably do a few more stipulation matches, too. I also try to match opponents off that didn't interact that much in the real world. I've seen Flair vs. Sting already; give me Sting vs. Sammartino, or Flair tagging with Killer Kowalski against the Briscoe Brothers. MSD was great at that.
I try to keep my total word/page count to about four Word pages per TV card; I'll go longer on a PPV. I don't worry about match descriptions all that much, except for maybe the finishes - this is the wrong medium to try to describe an AEW Stadium Stampede. I'd just as soon let you imagine what it looks like, because, chances are, you'll imagine something better than I can write. As for the non-wrestling scenes, I still don't know whether I should write with a passive voice, with no real dialogue, or script it as if that character is actually talking.
The only other thing I can think of right now is that I have to get better at putting better matches on my TV. I'm too old-school, in that I want to save the blow-offs and other good stuff for the bigger cards... meanwhile, in the real world, you can see a PPV-quality match nearly every night. I don't want to "one-off" a five-star match, but I worry that the build for the high-profile matches takes too long, and the TV isn't as good as it could be.
Lastly, I do write this for me, to keep my brain stimulated (I used to do Marvel fanfic years ago)... but I won't lie, I also like the feedback. Anything, whether it's a simple "Good job!", to a question about why I booked a certain thing, or on a character's motivation... it's all good to me.
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Slade
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Post by Slade on Jun 14, 2020 6:42:30 GMT -5
Fifth, this was a good idea for a topic of conversation. Thanks for starting it.
I think it's easy to conceive notions of how everyone likes to book their product. Even so, it's neat to see what people have said because there are still some things to learn from this discuss about the booking styles and philosophies of different individuals in the game. You think you have everyone all figured out, but the truth is that you might have a good read on them from reading their stuff, but you don't really know what they're thinking or how they see themselves. It is fascinating.
That said, I wonder if anything I will say will really surprise anyone. I think not, but I don't know.
My style has evolved over time. When I started out with Atlantic Grand Prix Wrestling, I wrote big descriptive matches. Even when it was a short match on free weekly TV, something like Samoa Joe vs. Al Snow - I don't know if I ever booked that, but it's something that might have happened 5-6 years ago - I would write an account of how that match played out move-for-move so that even something I intended to be a quick 3-minute match would take 300+ words to write. I liked imagining how to put together a wrestling match so I wrote that. However, I came to realize that doesn't really tell you anything about the stories I was trying to tell. It told the story of that match in full detail, but that would have been a throw-away match, the purpose of which was to establish that Samoa Joe is awesome. That message can be told a lot easier with a sentence or two. Over time, I started to adapt my style, cutting back on word counts, focusing more on the outcomes of matches, but always writing out the full matches at my PPVs. I was trying not to burden the reader with too much unnecessary text and cut down the amount of time it took to write my shows.
When Lucha Underground became a thing, it was the most innovative presentation of professional wrestling I had seen in a long-time. I quickly became a huge fan and it didn't take me long to decide that writing my own version of Lucha Underground, with the benefit of mixing in tons of wrestlers from different eras and celebrities playing characters rather than showing up as cameos, was something I wanted to try. Now, I probably spend 100-200 words on most matches. A lot attention gets placed on how the match ends. Sometimes I don't need to say a lot to get there. Sometimes, I think a sequence of moves building to the finish does the trick. Of course, if anyone interferes, the description of the match will go longer. Some matches get bigger write-ups. The ones that do are the ones that I think deserve it. They either really capture my imagination and they're something I'd love to see and/or the story I have been telling demands that I treat the match as a bigger deal than most others.
With Lucha Underground, I like to try to think way in advance about what I see at Ultima Lucha and how I can get there. I may be able to put together better cards with more must-see fantasy matches independent of the context in which they occur. However, being influenced by Lucha Underground and choosing to write that product, I have found that my writing has flipped from the traditional way of presenting a pro-wresting product. I think that in wrestling you come up with matches and then write a story to get to them. I guess I still do this to some degree, but I feel like I now write matches that serve the telling of the stories. The storytelling is more important that the individual matches themselves. The matches are only important if they play a key role in telling a story, whether that is as the culmination of a feud, to signal a championship title change, or to write someone out of the show.
That's why I think you'll find that there are often times when what happens outside of the ring, and even outside of the Temple, is more important than what happens in it. In that sense, the scenes I feature at the beginning and end of my shows, before and after the matches have occurred have often be more important than what happens in the ring. This isn't accidental. It is deliberate. Anyone who has watched Lucha Underground with regularity would know that. The things I do are in keeping with the spirit of that show. And I love doing it. It expands the possibilities for how I can tell wrestling stories. However, there is a limit to what one can do with it. Unlike traditional professional wrestling storytelling, where you can tell the same stories over and over with different wrestlers, I don't think that Lucha Underground has an unlimited shelf life. Yes, I can always recycle tag team partners becoming enemies - but this is a typical wrestling plot - but I can't recycle gods turning a wrestler into an omnipotent killing machine (at least not with great regularity) or a father killing his son, and the son coming back from the dead as part of his hero's journey.
On the question of whether I write for myself or an audience, I think the answer a bit of both. I don't know how big the audience. I don't know how many people are actually engaged with the material, but I try to write it to please those who do take the time to read it. First, I write the stories that I think would be good. Second, I look for feedback to see if people like them. I'm very open to constructive criticism. I don't think I get much of it. I don't know if that's because readers generally like my ideas or they are being too polite. But I really like feedback, which is also why I give a lot of it. If there came a time when no one bothered to comment on my shows, I would stop writing. I wouldn't see the point in putting the time and energy into something that I don't think anyone is reading, and feedback is the surest way of knowing that there are readers. I suppose that's my way of saying that I also write for an audience.
Another point about my writing style that some of you know, but maybe not all of you do, is that I write in large batches. It's easier to tell stories that way. There are moments when I have more time to dedicate to it and my creative juices are flowing, and those are the times when I try to produce everything I can. For example, it was in the middle of the winter when I began working on Lucha Underground 4. I did this during my "off-season." I wrote the first 8 episodes and parts of E9 back then. The few shows after that, leading up to and including Aztec Warfare were produced and published week-by-week. But normally, I make everything in advance and sit on them, releasing an episode per week. This past week, I've completed 4 episodes (could be 5 depending on if I break my tournament round of 16 matches up into two shows or not). Because I'm releasing the first two shows as 8-match cards, I've done as much work as I usually would do for 7 shows. I plan on cranking out four more by this time next week, and that'll be everything leading up to Ultima Lucha Cuatro.
I have a tendency to write all the weekly shows leading up to the big one in batches but then leaving the big one alone until right before it's time for it. I do this because I think it takes a slightly different mindset to write the big show. This is an event where I do like to write bigger match descriptions. Whereas each match is the culmination of many weeks and months worth of storytelling, I think they properly deserve to be treated like a big deal and I want you to see my vision for them. I also wait until later because it gives me the opportunity to pivot away from the outcomes I had in mind many months earlier when I started writing the stories leading up to those matches. When the end of the season is upon me, I start thinking about which characters may have run their course, which ones still have something interesting to do in the Temple, etc. Take for example, at Ultima Lucha Tres, I booked Jake Roberts vs. Chris Jericho. It was a match with a big backstory. In this one, Roberts was the villain and Jericho, who had been a villain, was suddenly positioned as the hero. It made sense to have Jericho win it, but I thought giving Roberts the win - having him thwart the hero's journey in its tracks - would make him a stronger villain. I also thought there was more for me to do with him as the leader of the Reptile Tribe. Plus, I've had Jericho on my rosters for something like 5 years. I was ready to move on from him so I booked him to lose. In the off-season, I was going to look to trade him, but then his reinvention as Le Champion and leader of the Inner Circle, which was happening at the same time, was so entertaining that I decided I wanted to bring the Inner Circle into the Temple and play around with having Le Champion become a champion in Lucha Underground.
I have go on at great length. There is maybe more I could say - like how I don't do a lot of adding and dropping talent in-season and even less trading (which has a lot to do with how I write) - but I'll leave it at that for now.
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Post by gkr1988 on Jun 22, 2020 11:29:11 GMT -5
Sorry it took me so long to comment on this. I can write up a book on this subject but I will keep it brief lol
The way like to write has kind of evolved since I joined her. I used to rp on a Efed where we would control everything about our character. Promos and Matches during that time I got really tired of writing matches and super into writing promos so when I started fantasy booking here my shows would be 80 percent promos and 20 percent match... I realized right away that's a shit ton to write and probably a shit ton to read so I actually took some ideas from allot of the writing here to do what I do now... Using the made pictures on my weekly shows and summarizing the show instead of outright writing promos and matches was such a big for me because It takes me allot less time and has still remained fun to me which I think is the most important thing. I still go out for my main shows because it really isn't ever hard for me to write out longer matches for them.
But I agree with what King said I honestly say just do it the way you want... Your not going to please everyone with your style of writing and I can honestly say I check out every show and I like how everyone is different in their writing but I will say the way that I am writing has saved me allot of time and I still enjoy what I put out each week.
I will also say I do take allot of advice from comments. For example I was told in a comment that they wanted to see more dream matches with some older guys so I went and got my self The Rock, Bret Hart and HBK because I think that was fantastic advice. I also like to change peoples opinions of guys that I am pushing that they don't particularly like IRL and I believe I have done that a couple times already lol
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Joe
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Post by Joe on Jul 4, 2020 11:51:58 GMT -5
Here's a thought I've been having for awhile. It used to be a little more prevalent that we would specify what year a talent was being used from when they were a wrestler from the past. Obviously, we still use many wrestlers from the past, or wrestlers that have died, though rarely is it ever specified anymore what time a wrestler's life we are actually drawing from.
Just baring that concept in mind, though, I am wondering if anybody else thinks like I do that we really should be able to run in any time we would like, or maybe in old arenas that don't exist anymore, in front of crowds from the past.
I noticed everybody else running these shows like they have to be in a COVID bubble, and I even addresses these things in a press release a bit, but when I wrote my first IPW shows in Philadelphia, I was running those with the mindset that I was in front of late 90's to early 00's Philly crowd in the ECW Arena, pretty much.
Does anybody else have that mentality at all? I am curious to know.
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Leo
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Post by Leo on Jul 4, 2020 12:38:50 GMT -5
I'm new, but my concept is that my company exists in a null space outside of space and time. It's roughly the 1980s, but I do have newer talent. Some talent are a mix of eras. I'm using Attitude Era Steve Austin, but Midnight Rockers Shawn Michaels. Shawn might age up over time. Hell, Austin might go back to Stunning Steve. Being this is a total fantasy exercise, I think you can do whatever you want to tell the stories you want to tell. There is no reality to hold too.
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Post by fifthhorseman on Jul 4, 2020 14:28:30 GMT -5
In my mind, CWF exists in 2020, so real world events and technology can help shape what occurs in my fed. However, I'm in that "null void" bubble as well where all of my guys are roughly in their primes, or at least what you, the reader, imagine their physical and wrestling characters primes are unless otherwise noted.
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Slade
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Post by Slade on Jul 4, 2020 15:38:28 GMT -5
I think you should do it up however you want, Joe.
I haven't been writing in a COVID bubble. As far as I can tell, its only GWA and ROH (and maybe AEW) that are doing this. I still pack my Temple full of believes. I'm ignoring the coronavirus outbreak. Either I've taped my entire season before March (a very real possibility for Lucha Underground) or it doesn't exist. I think I might have mentioned it once in a segment involving the President and Agent VKM, but I don't remember. If I did, it would have only been because mentioning the President's real world political troubles is good context for his story, but I'd rather not mention it at all (and I won't do it again).
I don't think it's necessary to mention what year the character is from. I often imagine that a character is what I think of as his or her best version, from whatever year that may be. That said, paying attention to specific character traits helps me get a better idea of what version of the character someone is using. For example, if someone uses Broken Matt, I don't think of him as being at his physical peak. But, then, he doesn't have to. That character is great in spite of his physical deterioration. With Leo matching Shawn Michaels up with Marty Jannetty on his roster, I picture he'll be a younger performer who might suffer a lot of losses in singles competition (and maybe even in tag team matches). I have had Chris Jericho on my roster for an eternity. Until Lucha Underground 4, I also pictured him as being at the top of his game physically (whether I used a profile picture with short or long hair), but now that I have him leading the Inner Circle, I see him as the older man that he now is (as evidenced also by the photo I've chosen for him).
Another thing worth mentioning is that wwefan used to run his WWE shows out of the old WWF territory arenas and stadiums. I distinctly remember him booking events at the now demolished Boston Garden and Exhibition Stadium in Toronto. He might have also booked events at the Montréal Forum, which was renovated and turned into a shopping centre that houses an AMC Cinema, Staples, fitness centre and a few other shops. I liked that he did this. I say, hold your events wherever you damn well please.
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Joe
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Post by Joe on Jul 4, 2020 19:33:19 GMT -5
Right, I am pretty much there, I just liked the idea of running shows in MSG in 1965 and then going to Philly in the 90s and having that atmosphere involved.
I really can't stand modern day wrestling crowds and how they react to things, things have gotten really bad in that regard, so I'd like to think my shows are performed in front of actual good crowds, I suppose lol.
Obviously I don't mention the years anymore or whatever, I think about it the way everybody else does, I was just wondering if anybody else had specific time periods or whatever in mind for their arenas and locations.
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Leo
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Post by Leo on Jul 4, 2020 19:59:46 GMT -5
Far as location. My studio show is at the fictional Andy Kaufman Studios in Dothan, Alabama. The monthly super shows will be at older arenas across the south to keep with the vague 1980s theme.
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