How to write a winning match

[Toxxic 0]

Dace, what have you started?

 

Well, I’m going to weigh in with the only thing that I can actually contribute on with any degree of authority (since my success in anything else is more by luck than judgement), and so I proudly present:

 

[Fanfare]

 

TOXXIC’S ROUGH GUIDE TO WRITING WINNING MATCHES WHILST KNOWING BUGGER ALL ABOUT WRESTLING!

 

I came into this fed having only seen a small amount of WCW and WWF when I was a kid, and having watched the current WWF/E since Summerslam ‘00. I have seen 4 NWA:TNA shows, 2 CZW shows and I have one tape of Spanky’s work in Japan. I have never seen Jushin Lyger wrestle. Comments about the Great Sasuke go completely over my head. AJPW style could be the same as Lucha Libre for all the footage I have seen of either. And yet somehow, in a fed that by its very name indicates the presence of Smarks and which tends to look down slightly on people who only know WWE style, I have managed to force my way fairly quickly into the upper-midcard. How? Well, there are on a very basic level, two ways to write a match.

 

Wrestling Based

Probably best exemplified by Dace Night. Dace’s matches (assuming he’s not kicking the shit out of someone in hardcore) will tend to feature some mat work with holds and counters and he relies on his encyclopaedic move knowledge, which means he knows exactly how best to write each move, what the counters are and what its exact effects will be. You can only use this approach if you know these things and if you can explain why the Blue Star Rolling Thunder Diving Powerbomb of UberDeath differs from the Dark Lightning Driver of Imminent Incapacitation, both used only once by Doink The Clown Version 3 under a mask in a Japanese indie fed (or something). You can’t bluff this shit.

 

Drama Based

This is what I do, and in the writing that I’ve seen in my relatively short time here I view its best proponent to be Kibagami. Don’t get me wrong, Kibs isn’t ignorant on the technical side, but he takes a different approach; in his own words, “any spot I write can be a high spot”. Spotty selling, weak psychology... you can (to a certain extent) cover these faults if you write your match in a certain way. I’m not saying that a well-written paragraph can justify you kicking out of the Rage Unleashed and then jumping around, but explanations can go a long way. What you do need for this style is a good grasp of the English language, spelling and most important of all, grammar. Having a spellchecker won’t help you if you’ve used the correctly spelt but grammatically wrong version of ‘there/their/they’re’ every single time.

 

Of course, the very best writers (I’m looking at Tom Flesher here, for one) will tend to combine the two. Flesher knows his mat wrestling like no other, but he has the additional advantage of faultless spelling and grammar, a good sense of humour and a knack for the dramatic. The less fortunate mortals amongst us need to focus on one style, and it’s the second that I’m talking about.

 

 

PLANNING AND PSYCHOLOGY

I’m no expert on these and I suggest you check out Dace’s article, but you need to have some grasp of them to succeed. To be fair I rarely plan my matches, I just start writing and see what happens. But then again, unlike a lot of people (Janus being the notable exception) I don’t wait til due day or just before but start it the day the card goes up. This gives me roughly five days for spots to occur to me while I’m going about my hectic, fun-packed life, so it all works out the same. And trust me, the way I write, spots are important.

 

The planning of a match is relatively simple - how will you win? (assuming you’re writing to win, of course). This will impact on the psychology, since if you’re going to win with a head-based finisher then you’re going to need to work the head in the match (check out both Dace and Kibagami’s articles for guidance here). Even if you plan on using something that the wrestling gurus assure you is an instant legit tap-out (the juji-gatame or cross armbreaker comes to mind) that you could theoretically slap on at the beginning of the match and it would be OVER~, some arm work would still be a good idea. Having your wrestler knacker the opponent’s legs to the point where they can’t stand and then get an arm-based submission is kind of stupid (Johnny, this is NOT an attack on you, but since I know jack-all about instant submissions this is the only example I can think of). If Kibagami ever managed to hit the Demonstar Driver in the first 30 seconds that would still be it due to the lethality of the move... but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t spend the rest of the match working the neck anyway.

 

Having said that, it’s fine to have your wrestler (or indeed the opponent) change gameplan halfway through providing there’s an explanation for it. Has his opponent just taken an unexpected injury to a body part, making it a good idea to abandon the former plan of attack and work on that instead? Is the regular approach (such as a suplex machine facing Janus) just not working? Has your wrestler suddenly taken an injury meaning that his usual plan of attack is no longer an option? Don’t just start a completely different approach without saying why - remember, we’re not move gurus and our actual bare-bones wrestling descriptions are going to be substandard compared to some. You need to explain why you are doing something, even if you can’t explain how all that well.

 

 

EXPLANATION

So you can’t write a mat-wrestling - don’t try. If you’re facing Flesher you’re in trouble because that’s what he does, but since you are writing to win you’re going to want to stop his character from mat wrestling anyway. Dace or Mak Francis can get away with this by describing the logical counters, but we don’t know them. If you’re a striker, keep your opponent at a distance with strikes (of course if you know very little like me you won’t know the names of kicks either. There’s only so many times you can write “he kicks” before it becomes repetitive, but the same principle applies to facing strikers too). If you’re a powerful HOSS~ then throw the mat guy away from you before he can bring you down. If you’re a flashy cruiser, wriggle out of his grip. Explain why your wrestler doesn’t want to get drawn into that style of match, that he knows he can’t outwrestle Flesher, outstrike Danny, outrun me (in the absence of Wildchild) or outpower Janus. And then explain why he’s unable to close with you, hit you or grab you.

 

The best method I have found for this is getting into the heads of the wrestlers. First-person sucks, by and large. Avoid it. Having the narration mention the thoughts (and indeed feelings and pain) of the wrestlers works though. If your neck is hurting you after that Dangerous Backdrop, describe it. And equally, if your opponent is growing frustrated at being unable to close with you, describe that too. Avoid the temptation to only get in the head of your wrestler, because that will lead to one-sided description. If you’re at a position on the card where you have the spare words to do this then you and your opponent will probably be fairly well-rounded characters, or at least have their own distinct personalities. Dace may not promo as much as some people, but the Dace Night character in a match is obviously a straight-up, no-nonsense type that doesn’t back down but can be made to get angry. Dace won’t start to get scared of his opponent, but he might get so irritated he makes a mistake. Describe the rage rising inside him. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Ace Lezaire is a cowardly heel and might well be a little nervous - if your powerful face has just kicked out of the best he has to offer his best plan would be to follow up anyway and hit you when you’re still down, but he might be so shocked and scared he doesn’t, which gives you the time you need to recover from the nearfall. If you describe his disbelief and fear at your apparent invincibility you can explain why he doesn’t take the course of action that is most obvious to the detached reader. And make no mistake, emotion is important. How many sports teams have you seen that have been theoretically superior to their opponents, but because of their defeatist mentality they’ve lost a match they should have won?

 

 

EMBELLISHMENT

This can be very useful if you have a few words to spare as you can add touches that may just allow your match to rise above one of similar quality. Do the fans chant for someone? In the heat-filled environment of the SWF where even the jobbers get some sort of crowd response, they really should. Are there any signs visible in the crowd? Mention ‘em and comment on them if you can, because that’s a great way to slip in-jokes in and they demonstrate an understanding of where you are competing. If you know something about the fed’s history that’s vaguely relevant put it in, whether it’s that your opponent has lost the last three matches of this type that he’s competed in or whether it’s the anniversary of the Midnight Carnival forming.

 

For God’s sake, use the commentators. Our current crew is Comet and Riley, and they have their own distinct personalities. They won’t agree with each other, they won’t support the same wrestler (except in VERY unusual circumstances, such as Silent vs Edwin from Genesis IV, or when Janus knuckle-bombed Jessica), and they don’t talk in normal voices. Comet is an over-the-top face, uses convoluted and vaguely archaic language and is pathetically heroic, Riley is sneaky, snidey, heelish and not-very-subtly gay (generally towards Tom Flesher). They are great for putting over both wrestlers in different ways, and if you can get some comedy out of them without overusing them, DO IT! They shouldn’t call the match anywhere near as much as a usual team does or they’ll get invasive - use them to fill gaps in the action, pick up on points that you don’t want to do through the general narrative and make jokes. Neither one needs to call the match straight down the middle - your writing is there to describe what’s going on, all they need to do is put their own individual and widely-differing spins on it.

 

 

DRAMATIC WRITING

Hopefully you have decent psychology and a good match layout, with back-and-forth action and explanations of who is doing what and why, but now you’ll need to build to the finish. The dramatic writing methods that I’m going to impart now are useful throughout the match, but they really come into their own at the end. Not matter how instant tap-out your submission or split-second impact your finisher, the match needs to build to that point. This is called the ‘Race To The Finish’ and is where we hit the REAL nearfalls and finisher attempts. How do we do this?

 

 

Use spacing, to make individual sentences seem more important.

 

 

Start one paragraph focusing on one thing, maybe from one wrestler’s point of view. Describe what they want to do, why they’re going to do it and how they’re going to do it, then just as it all starts to happen...

 

...have a pause, then switch perspectives and explain how the other guy counters it! Use exclamation marks, because this is where the action is starting to really heat up! Use-

 

*WHAM!!*

 

-sound effects to really get across exactly how devastating that potentially match-winning Death Valley Driver was!

 

Start using shorter sentences. Make everything clipped. Imagine your typing matching your wrestler being short of breath. Long, run-on sentences and bulky paragraphs aren’t what you need here (and I’m as guilty of them as anyone, probably more so than most).

 

 

Finally, three rules that come straight from scientifically-proven methods of charismatic speaking:

 

THE RULE OF THREE

If you’re British, you’ll know about ‘Education, education, education’. If not... well, use your imagination. Basically, we internalise information best if it comes in groups of three. The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The Long, The Short and The Tall. They’ve got a good rhythm to them, no? That’s how it works. And that leads me on to:

 

 

REPETITION

Yes, repetition. Obviously, we internalise something better if we hear it more than once.

 

’WHAT?’

 

I said more than once!

 

’WHAT?’

 

I said- well, you get the idea. For all its mind-imploding annoyance, Austin’s ‘WHAT?’ chant allowed him to repeat himself, driving the message home. The same applies in writing, but it’s a good idea to be more subtle than the beer-swilling, wife-beating, space-wasting redneck (see, I just used the Rule of Three. Works, doesn’t it?). Also, if you combine the two you get a idea of knowing how to do something, knowing when to do something and knowing why to do something (OK I made that sentence for convenience, but it shows how easy it is to combine the two together).

 

And finally...

 

CONTRAST

Contradicting yourself is a bad move, but giving contrast in a sentence is good. I just did it, by using the word “but”. It draws attention to your point because the reader (or listener) has to concentrate to work out what it actually is you’re saying. Simple, but effective. Of course the ultimate is to have a sentence of two contrasting parts, each with a repeating group of three in it. Simply; “I now know how to do this, this and this, but avoid doing this, this and this.” Or, for example:

 

“We will increase spending on education, we will create more jobs and we will eliminate poverty from our inner cities! But we will not raise taxes! We will not send more of our sons and daughters to die fighting other peoples’ wars! And we will not let Bradshaw become WWE Champion!!”

 

[CUE MASS APPLAUSE, CHEERING AND ELECTION OF THE CANDIDATE]

 

OK, I’m not sure how much use that ultimate-combined sentence structure will be in match writing, but at least you know what to aim for.

 

That’s it from me. Discusss.

 

 

Edited to Add: Most important of all - WRITE SOMETHING EVERY TIME!!

 

If you get in something, anything, then that's better than nothing. I won my Hardcore title from Aecas in my 7th match - which was only my 2nd competitive one... having lost my 1st one to Alan Clark. All the others, including the Hardcore contender match, I won via no-show. And do you know how I won the ICTV Title for the first time from Insane Luchador? Yup - he no-showed. Obviously the best way is to get in a full match, but something is better than nothing. Whether you have Funyon announce that your opponent can't make it to the arena or you destroy your opponent in 30 seconds flat - if you get something in, you have at least a CHANCE at winning. Plus it shows that you at least have the commitment to try, even if you've been rushed.

 

Thoth once wrote a Clusterfuck (Royal Rumble equivalent) losing match which apparently roughly consisted of "There is a big explosion - everyone dies but Thoth." If all the other writers had got to the last two entrants but simply run out of time and had not gone to the slight extra trouble of writing a couple of hundred words' worth of mass eliminations, and not eventually got anything in... Thoth would have won. Manson has won a tables match using a fricking haiku.

 

Just write.

[Dace59 0]

Very nice article man. Thanks for that. Definatly be a help to a lot of new writers in this fed. (Y)

[Guest Beingz0wningj00]

I have to agree... great tips on many of the subjects. To add to one of your points though.

 

" If you describe his disbelief and fear at your apparent invincibility you can explain why he doesn’t take the course of action that is most obvious to the detached reader. And make no mistake, emotion is important. How many sports teams have you seen that have been theoretically superior to their opponents, but because of their defeatist mentality they’ve lost a match they should have won?"

 

 

This here is one of the main reasons Jake the Snake was so damn over. He was able to create the internal psychology between the two characters, allowing many unusual circumstances to come about. You've seen some wrestlers do it to a lesser extent(Golddust/Rico even) but the character psychology between the opponents is very crucial not only to the match, but future storylines, and to the overall development of your character.

 

 

As the casual crowd, if someone tried to elbow smash Danny Williams, many in the crowd know then and there.... "Oh shit... he fucked up. He's gonna get creamed." They know how the wrestler is going to react and if he's a face, they revel in it.