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Formatting for Segments and Matches
Topic Started: Jan 16 2011, 07:05 PM (337 Views)
The Blue Scorpion
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The Ruthless Patriarch
OK, after my earlier rant, I thought I'd post this and then hopefully it can get stickied either here or in Backstage Business so that people can reference it when putting together matches and segs for Massacre and PPVs.

The suggestions I make will be the way that, generally, whilst I've been here (a fucking long time, by most people's standards :P) the majority of well-respected, regular members have formatted their segments and matches. Then, hopefully, this will then become the accepted way to structure the shows. Any discrepancies or changes need to be made, please let me know. :)

Matches

OK, we'll start with matches, something I've been doing since time began, it seems, so hopefully I should be OK with getting this right.

So, for me, it should all run as you would expect a normal wrestling show to run. So, before the match even begins, you should have a Ray Douglas introduction, along the lines of "This match is scheduled for one fall, and will be for the CWF World Heavyweight Championship! Introducing first...". Alternatively, if you wanted to switch it up a little bit, you could have a short commentary exchange doing some last minute hype for the match ahead.

Then, this should be followed by entrances, as specified in the Custom Match Entrances Thread (NB: If you haven't written a short little entrance for your character yet, including theme music and any pyro etc, I strongly recommend you do, if only for the matchwriters' sake :P). Following each entrance, Ray Douglas should then introduce the competitor, with weight, hometown and any nickname included, like so:

Ray Douglas: Introducing first, from Atlanta, Georgia and weighing in tonight at two hundred and fifty seven pounds - he is the Ruthless Patriach, THE BLUE SCORPION!

Following all of the entrances and introductions, a short pre-match paragraph can often be good to build realism and, if nothing else, bulk the match out a little bit. Again, take an example from the (fairly) recent Impact Title Tag Team Title Match:

=/= Referee “Big” Denny Davidson takes the Impact Title from Dan Highlander, holding it high into the air for all to see, as the two teams reluctantly discuss who is going to start off in the ring. Highlander, obviously wanting to keep the defence of his title in his own hands, asserts that he’ll be the legal man for his team, whereas a much less vocal conversation on the other side of the ring determines that Jarvis King will be Dan’s initial opponent. The two come to the centre of the ring, the bell sounds, and we’re underway

Then, obviously, we have the in-ring action, which should always be pre- and pro-ceded by the good old fashioned "=/=" symbols. Commentary should have the commentator's name preceding the speech, with a colon. And of course, try to keep in character.

That pretty much sums matches up I think... stick to this basic plan, and you won't go far wrong.

Segments

This should be a much shorter section, as I don't want to go over old ground.

The main thing to remember is to keep your action/descriptions in the =/= symbols, and do the speech in the same way as the commentary... oh, and try to paragraph properly as well. Double space if necessary, and always split up large blocks of text or speech to make it easier to read.

I think that's it...... if there's anything I've forgotten, please let me know and I'll add it in. Otherwise, happy segging and matchwriting as you follow these simple steps to brilliance! ;)
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Former CWF World Champion
3x Former Co-Holder of the CWF Tag Team Titles
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Ataxia

One thing to add here. If you want a different entrance for this match or something to happen prematch or during the match not only pm/email it to Rish but please send it to the match writer just in case people have already started writing. Just a common courtesy thing. We don't want to ruin your storyline stuff we just want to make sure we get it before we send it into Rish so he's not having to edit it when we could do it easy.
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Jarvis King
The Hall of Fame Hallmark
It's nice to know that I'm not the only one who's so fucking OCD about this stuff. LULAS, Mitchy.

One thing to note is the simple formatting of dialogue. That's what gets me. I don't mean to call individual people out, but it's best if we have a concrete example of the wrong way to format and the right way.

Here's an example of a properly formatted segment:

Quote:
 
=/= Jace Valentine is shown, standing in front of a locker room door, with a wide confident grin on his face. He hoists the CWF World Heavyweight championship up on to his shoulder as the camera pans closer to the name of the door, the office of CWF president Steven Gamble.  Jace opens the door quickly, rushing into the office and completely taking Gamble off guard.=/=


Steven Gamble: What the hell are you doing in here?


=/=In a rush of arrogance, Jace slams the championship belt hard on to the desk of the CWF president. He looks up at him, pompous as ever. =/=


Jace Valentine: I just wanted to say, personally....thanks.


Steven Gamble: Don't think for one second that I'm proud of what I did at Frozen Over.


Jace Valentine: But you did what you had to do, right? You did CWF justice, you gave them a champion to be proud of. I assume you saw my Wired promo?


Steven Gamble: Yeah, I saw it. I saw the lying, sniveling coward that you are, Jace. Now get out of my office before I decide to make you defend that title in your scheduled match tonight.


Jace Valentine: Honestly, Steven...you know as well as I do that wouldn't make an ounce of difference. I'm coming out on top of Sean O'Malley and Synn Deville no matter what's on the line.


Steven Gamble: Get out.


Jace Valentine: Have it your way, Gamble. To quote a now irrelevant former 'superstar'...be seeing you.


=/= Jace picks up his championship belt, staring a hole into Steven Gamble as he makes his way out of the office. The camera cuts out. =/=




The action is between the =/= tags, and dialogue is preceded by the speaker's full name, and a colon.

Here's a couple of examples of the wrong way:

Quote:
 
=/=The camera opens up to what seems like a long hallway. You can hear what sounds like two pieces of glass clanking together. Slowly, Sean O'Malley makes his way around the corner. He's got a two glass bottles on two fingers on his left hand. He is slowly clanking them together. His eyes are still blood shot and slightly black and blue=/=


Sean - Ataxia.... Come out to play............. Ataxia..... Come out to play..... ATAXIA...... Come out to PLAY......... ATAXIA..... COME OUT TO PLAAAAAY.......


=/=He walks to a looker room door, and pushes it open. Its empty, but he closes it behind him. He is sitting alone in the room, when the door knob starts to twist. The door comes open, and Ataxia walks in, stopping dead when he sees Sean standing there. Sean quickly takes one of the bottles and launches it at Ataxia's head. The bottle shatters over his mask, and Sean lunges at him.Ataxia falls quickly to the much larger man. Sean holds the back of his head, and lays lefts into his skull. He leans down and quietly talks=/=


Sean - Play time is over, Ataxia. Enough of your games, enough of you toying around. You wanted to attack me, like nothing would happen to you. Like you would get away scott free. Not gonna happen, you little freak. The next move is yours....


=/=Sean punches him one last time, and as he leaves the room, rips the sack off of his head. The camera doesn't catch a glimpse of his face before Sean slams the door shut.=/=


Simple enough fix - All of the "Sean -" should simply be changed to "Sean O'Mailley:".

It's just a matter of uniformity. If everything's formatted the same way, if simply looks more professional, more put-together and better over-all.

One more...a good segment, but formatted all wrong.

Quote:
 
"The way I see it.. You've all done the right thing!" These words suddenly echo around the arena shortly before Damon Divine appears on the CWF tron. He seems to be in a pretty happy mood and is wearing his wrestling attire for the upcoming battle royal. "Ataxia, Mike Crisis; you two are the sole people that have earned my respect this past week. Everyone knows wrestling is broken down into two parts, the first and most important is obviously what you can do inside that ring. The second is your ability to get inside your opponents head, you know, all the mindgames and BS you can spew out to get the psychological advantage. Ataxia and Mike have both been out this past week, I've seen what you've had to say and now I just got to wait patiently and see wether you can back it up in the ring. The others? Nobody even knows if there going to show up for Massacre! So either you all think your that damn good that you can just show up and win, or you've all done the right thing and aren't going to show up. Hell I cant blame you, if I thought I was out of my league I'd of probably done the same thing."

Damon shakes his head in disappointment. He takes time to steady himself before speaking again. "So where does that leave us? For the fans it leaves you wondering whether this battle royal is going to be turned into a triple threat. For me? Its just made it that much easier for me to get my first victory. So I'm letting you all know now, win or lose, I'm going to be ringside at the Impact title match! Highlander, Dangerous Dan.. Whoever ends up winning the match just know that it's probably going to be me your facing off against next week. So if your clever you'll be doing the exact same thing, come down and see firsthand just exactly what I can do. A new era is coming, the era of Damon Divine and tonight marks the beginning!" A voice off camera is heard talking to Damon. Divine nods before turning back to the screen. "Well folks, looks like I'm up next.. The next time you see me speaking I WILL be the Impact number one contender! I'm Damon Divine and this has been, simply divine."
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weaponx
The HarKore God

I'm sure if Storm shows up he can remember some of my anal retentive ways about either shows or other things as he's known me years but yeah I'm looking over them now as I agree with most of this.

Not my exact way of course but, as I said in the Massacre thread for last week, if the "flow" of the show is so chopped up it's not believeable so as long as we have a format it makes alot of things easier.

So kudos for Blue bringing it up again.
A Moral Compass & Hardcore Legend in Professional Wrestling Since 1995.

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The Blue Scorpion
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The Ruthless Patriarch
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Former CWF World Champion
3x Former Co-Holder of the CWF Tag Team Titles
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Alex Cain
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Alex Cain
Can i just make a point, that on occasion it is sometimes not workable to have each piece of dialogue preceeded by the characters name. Most notably when the character in question is a "mystery person" in said seg. in which case i presonally find that the seg is better seved just having the dialogue written without having something as crass as Mystery Person preceeding it. for instance.

"I knew you would get here sooner or later"

=/= The voice reverberated around the room to such an extent that Alex Cain didnt know where to look into the shadows for it. =/=



Its a very occasional thing but i think sometimes it helps to break from the rigidity of structuring a seg exactly the same all the time.

just my two pence for what its worth, which i imagine is about...oooh....two pence?
5x CWF Champion
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