Tuesday, October 23, 2007

The advantages of keeping it short

Firstly, as you can see, I made some template changes, separating the "active" bloggers from the people who haven't posted something in six months and such. I removed all the dead links too, and I pared the fed listing, since really, why lead people in the direction of feds that may or may not be open anymore? Exceptions are the FW feds that are sloooowwww rollers right now and LoC, which will remain there until I know they've closed for good.

Secondly, two new blogs have been added to the active section. First one is the Ice Tre blog, an in-character blog from the greatest character in the history of all e-wrestling, and possibly the world of entertainment. The second one is a new, official PTC blog, where Pete, Ross and whoever else wants to contribute will be able to post their ruminations. Go there now, especially if you've asked some questions to Pete in that thread on the forums. He's answered a bunch of them.

And now, onto the meat of the post...

For what seems like eternity now, I've been using and advocating said usage of shortforming for weekly television shows. I know we're all in this hobby because at one time or another, we've been fans of wrestling, and the biggest part of that fandom is watching matches on television or pay-per-view. Because of that, there's been this feeling that the match should be the most important part of the cycle, and thus always should be written out. It's always been the unspoken rule until recently, when I started implementing the short-form highlight package style for TEAM writeups, and other FW feds decided they'd go the shortform route themselves. We all did it for differing reasons. I started mine because the interfed structure really needs to move at a rapid-fire pace, especially if you're not obliging people to stick around any longer then they absolutely have to. Brunk and Edmunds started using shortforms because the well of matchwriters had dried up and they didn't want their feds to lag.

Yet, it's always seemed that people would assume that if you could write out every match, you should, especially if you wanted to be considered a top-flight fed. This has been the case in PRIME for some time. Despite the focus of their shows changing over time from matches to segments, they've strived to have longform matches on every card, but according to a conversation I had with a roster member or two, there's a growing sentiment to drop the longforms on ReVolution and stick with shortforms. This group feels that it takes forever to read through shows, and the long matches are the reason.

On the surface, I can see where that comes into play. TO tell you the truth, I haven't fully read a PRIME show in a long time. To be fair, I haven't read a lot of feds' shows completely in a long time as well, and all that has more to do with my own ever-decreasing time rather than interest in eW or certain feds. Still though, when I was able to read PRIME fulltime, I did get the feeling that the shows could have been shorter.

However, I ask myself whether it was because of the number of matches or the fact that they were longformed, and I came to the conclusion that it wasn't. Very rarely when I read a show do I read the matches fully and completely as I would the segments on the first run, pay-per-views excepted since the matches are, or at least should be the show there. Therefore, I pay a lot closer attention to matches on those bigger cards. Still though, every regular TV show that I read, I skim the matches first and then reread if I feel I've missed something or if I feel that it's worth the time and effort to put in. Why should long matches make my PRIME reading experience any more difficult than something similar that I'd encounter in A1E or NFW? In fact, if my memory serves me well, PRIME's matches were shorter in comparison to other feds' shows.

This narrows the weight problem down to segments. I've always been somewhat critical of PRIME having a number of segs that'd be better suited being off-camera RPs rather than on-show pieces. In fact, when Pete instituted the seg limit and slots on the shows, I praised the move, even though it was never a hard seg limit and people went over all the time. Of course, many people don't see this as a problem, and admittedly, I don't think it's something all that critical to the health of the fed. I mean, I'd rather have that problem then people not giving a shit about the fed altogether. So really, how do you solve a problem of weightiness when the problem isn't really the matches? Force people not to write segs?

Sorry, I can't really advocate doing something like that. Everyone has a story they want to tell, and if they're in the fed, the should have the right to say it. It would be up to the fedhead to keep excess people out of the ranks if they didn't want a million segs on the show, and right now, with the slump that this side of the eW universe has been in, no fedhead should be turning away applicants unless that applicant's name happens to be Jeremy Jenkins or someone of that same dishonorable reputation.

So in the end, the answer has to be shortforming. Once again, TV matches should really only be used to further storylines anyway, thus making anything worth writing in the match bullet point-worthy. Of course, when the PPV rolls around, you better bet that I'd scream bloody murder if the matches were shortformed. If that part of matchwriting ever goes to the wayside, you might as well start calling this Competitive Creative Writing and not e-Wrestling. But for TV shows, pshaw, use the shortform.

Because really, I'd rather the time and effort going into making a huge show go into something you know people are going to read intently the first time around.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

First one is the Ice Tre blog, an in-character blog from the greatest character in the history of all e-wrestling, and possibly the world of entertainment.

Yeeaaaaaaaaaa, Boyeeeeeeeee!

Anonymous said...

Rebutted, good sir.

http://blog.primetimecentral.com/2007/10/23/the-long-and-short-of-it/

Steven Caldera said...

Here's another rebuttal for you. ;)

http://calderaenterprises.blogspot.com/2007/10/dont-forget-about-me.html

Anonymous said...

Holzy,

You know its ALL subjective. Some people in PRIME probably feel that anything written by Person X is the greatest thing since sliced bread, no matter the length.

You won't read a PRIME show in entirety or a Katz written NFW show in entirety because you're not as big of a fan of the writing style.

However, you'd probably read a 30 or 90-page card by Jamar Nicholas, start to finish. It could have 2 segments or 20 and you'd still read most of the whole kit and kaboodle.

Why?

You love his style more than anyone else.

I'm sure there's someone out there that can't get through 1 page of JN's work 'cause its in script format, but will read a 30 page match by Devin Woods or Michael Dupin with five segments associated with it.

Subjectivity shouldn't influence what a fed is producing. If PRIME can pump out full-length matches with 20 segments for a show and the majority of their roster is reading everything, then I'd have to say that they shouldn't mess with their format.

However, if nobody in the fed is reading half of the shows (something that tSC and now NFW are notorious for), then obviously there's an issue that needs to be resolved.

-MUSTdie

TH said...

The reason why I wrote the entry was because people in PRIME are discussing why people don't read their shows in their entirety.

Anonymous said...

If they're talking about people in their own fed, then I refer to my last sentence of my first comment. That's definitely a fed issue needing to be resolved.

If they're worried about people outside their fed, they might as well stick their dick between their legs and start bleeding out of their ass every 30 days.

...especially that Lindsay freak. ;)

Seriously though, you shouldn't expect outside readers, but you should enjoy/encourage them if they are present.

--MUSTdie

Unknown said...

See, I think people nowadays tend to look at matchwriting as a boring aspect because, like people have mentioned, that wrestling is in a decline. We’re all writing storyline segments and roleplays that advance well-laid plans, but writing a match is tedious because only a few of us actually cherish a series of moves anymore.

So, what I’ve done in FUSE is try to use the color-commentator to a new level. FUSE has Eugene Ware, who in my mind I’ve always pictured as a Peter Griffin type fella, from The Family Guy. Fat. Sarcastic. Stupid. Rude. Non-sequiter comments, and the like. When I write a segment or a match, I’m constantly trying to “out-Ware” everyone else on the card. It’s made match writing so much less stressful and more enjoyable, I can’t even begin to describe.

Granted, I don’t write matches every week. But I’ve written more in the last three months than I have in the last five years.

I know these are out of context, but I chuckle at them every time. They are some of my favorite Eugene Ware-isms over the last few FUSE Uproar’s.

—– Example 1 —–
Lane Stevens: Pretty much. Back to you, Eugene! You're the real play-by-play guy in my heart.

The River Rat pats his own chest with . We go back to ringside, where Eugene Ware and Dave Gibson are staring into the camera.

Ware: And there's a hip toss!

Gibson: There's no wrestling going on. You suck at this.

Ware: AND HE BARELY KICKED OUT!

Gibson: (sigh) Lane Stevens has some kind of audacity, I'll tell you that much. Aimz has got to be dying to get her hands on him at this point.

—- EXAMPLE TWO —-
Sooner or later, the camera settles in on our announce team. Dave Gibson is wearing a FUSE polo, and Eugene Ware is dressed in all black, and wearing a black mask, just like the Scourge.

Gibson: LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! WELCOME TO UPROAR!

The explosions on the entrance ramp become more frequent.

Gibson: I'm Dave Gibson, and with me as always is Eugene Ware.

Ware: Scourge got fat.

—- EXAMPLE THREE —-

Gibson: There he goes again. It was a bloody nose. THERE IS NO SCAR!

Ware: Not all scars are physical, Gibson.

Gibson: So true, because I think you've scarred my psyche for life. And I've seen my share of...

Ware: Silence those beautiful lips.

—- EXAMPLE FOUR —-
Gibson: Well, she certainly is a beautiful woman Eugene.

Ware: I like my women like I like my sandwiches...cut in half, and covered in mayo.

Gibson: That's disgusting.

Ware: Alright, ranch dressing.

———————————-

Be creepy. Reference movies. Be hilarious. Go out on a limb, and make the reader laugh when they’re reading. After all, you’re supposed to be entertaining them. I know it might upset those purists who want to see a drop toe hold followed up by an armbar, rolling over into a schoolboy pin or something ridiculous, but like a few of you have pointed out: this day and age of wrestling, the result is what matters more than the actual wrestling. Just get the match told, relatively nicely, and get the result for the handlers.

For me, I’ll try to accomplish that, but making them laugh and hopefully ‘did he just say that?’ a few times along the way. :D