Diary Writing Tips

[Erock]

Governmental legislation.

 

Somebody/persons do something bad with wrestling being tied into it and suddenly there's a huge outcry that wrestling needs to be banned, and in a knee-jerk reaction the bigwigs outlaw it, forcing everyone to pack up shop

 

If ZMAN doesn't use this do you mind if I do?

[Stennick]

Just giving this a bump a month and a half since its had anything posted in it and I figured it needed to be seen by any new writers or old ones for that matter. While reading over these tips please say "go Cards" in your mind mentally willing us towards an *ahem* eleventh championship. Go Cards and um go Dynasty Writers!

[angeldelayette]

With the influx of some new diaries, I thought this might deserve a bump. Even if it doesn't, well, the bump is here anyway.

[JackKnifed72]

Not so much a tip on writing style, as there are soooo many way to write a good diary, but to the writers:

 

"If you build it, they will come."

- Teddy Roosevelt (seriously, he said that waaaay before Field of Dreams)

 

I see so many diaries start up...a show or two is posted...then you see a post that goes something like this:

 

"So what does everyone think so far?"

 

no replies...another diary is dead

 

In short don't get frustrated if you don't get a flood of responses, comments etc. Just write a good story, one that you enjoy, and over time you will gather a following. To be honest, Ida probably given up fairly quickly, but being that my diary is part of a multiplayer game/diary I had a reason to keep plugging away. Now I see a huuuge number of views each time I post a new show or preview...

 

...unless of course it's my ex-girlfriend...obsessively rereading my every post...over and over and over...cyber stalking me 24/7...

 

...I gotta go lock my doors

 

Later

[CadeSydal]

I think thats some of the best advice I've seen. If you are going to write a dynasty its got to be on a game you enjoy. And if you enjoy the game and you enjoy the story your writing than keep it up.

 

Another tip I'd give that I'm sure has been said before. Write out about four shows in advance. In fact what I usually do when I'm doing stuff like this on other sites is that I write out four shows and a pay per view. That way my first month is in the bag. Then I write out the backstory and then I can take my time posting once or twice a week and continuing to play the game and write as well.

 

So many people start up the game and dynasty at the same time and when they get tired of the game three weeks in there goes the dynasty. If you wait until you have a vested interest in the game and then take the time to write out five full shows you'll stick around longer

[HEEL]

I think you need to have a few shows completed in a wordpad/word document before starting so if for some reason real life gets in the way you still have some shows in the bank and the pressure to get shows up will be less.

 

If that makes sense..

[jhd1]

Another tip I'd give that I'm sure has been said before. Write out about four shows in advance. In fact what I usually do when I'm doing stuff like this on other sites is that I write out four shows and a pay per view. That way my first month is in the bag. Then I write out the backstory and then I can take my time posting once or twice a week and continuing to play the game and write as well.

 

I think you need to have a few shows completed in a wordpad/word document before starting so if for some reason real life gets in the way you still have some shows in the bank and the pressure to get shows up will be less.

 

If that makes sense..

 

While this is good advice generally, there's something to be said for booking and writing at around the same time. From experience, writing too far ahead can become a drain on a diary - you lose the connection to it (after all, you're writing shows that you booked two weeks ago), and there is little room to alter your bookings based on fan comments (which might not always be a good thing, but having the option is good).

 

I agree with Cade in that booking a month or two first is a good idea, just so you know the game is one you will enjoy, but you don't necessarily have to write up these shows. If nothing else, people won't have to read through the same starting storylines for the umpteenth time!

[James Casey]

My own experience says that writing well ahead means I lose touch with the diary as the readers are experiencing it. I don't proof-read, don't wait... I complete a show and post it. Detrimental? Sometimes *cough* and not at all how a 'real' writing project works... But after so long writing diaries I have a decent grasp on how to put together one of my shows (as opposed to someone like Tigerkinney's epics) and I can always dial down the detail if I'm really running behind and fire one out in fairly quick time.

 

I'd also advocate using a template for your shows. I know, for example, that my typical show opens with announcer hype, an opening match, a segment, another match... I never have matches back to back either. So the last two or three pages of my diary document are a pre-formatted show template (title-intro-match-angle-match-angle...) that I can extend with additional matches/angles/whatever as appropriate.

 

Of course, that can lead me into an unthinking rut, but that's another post...

[Hyde Hill]

Friendly bump.

[James Casey]

10,000 hours.

 

That's the predicted time required on directed practise in order to become an expert at something.

 

Assuming an hour of writing a day, that's 27 years, 5 months of practise - time spent enhancing and honing every element of the writer's craft. Writing the same thing over and over won't count either, although I guess you'll get to be an expert at that one thing

 

Now, of course, the nice thing about wrestling is that the need for an understanding of nihilist existentialism, and the ability to succinctly convey your understanding of same, is limited. Likewise the teen romance genre can fairly safely be ignored (although if you have Jay and Alicia sitting in a tree, by all means take a crack). So becoming an expert on writing wrestling will allow you to whittle down those 27.4 years a little...

 

But you still have to try. You still have to accept that a lot of what you write (especially if it's your first venture into writing) will be rubbish. Accept that, write it anyway, and enjoy it. Tell the story you want to tell, and in a few years you'll be able to look back and appreciate how far you've come.

 

Speaking as someone coming up on 12 years of writing virtually every day, I can look back now and appreciate how bad a lot of my early stuff was (very flowery, for a start, with as much depth as an evaporated puddle, and wildly overambitious) but it all contributed to my improving, I hope

[Guest codey]

10,000 hours.

 

That's the predicted time required on directed practise in order to become an expert at something.

 

Assuming an hour of writing a day, that's 27 years, 5 months of practise - time spent enhancing and honing every element of the writer's craft. Writing the same thing over and over won't count either, although I guess you'll get to be an expert at that one thing

 

Now, of course, the nice thing about wrestling is that the need for an understanding of nihilist existentialism, and the ability to succinctly convey your understanding of same, is limited. Likewise the teen romance genre can fairly safely be ignored (although if you have Jay and Alicia sitting in a tree, by all means take a crack). So becoming an expert on writing wrestling will allow you to whittle down those 27.4 years a little...

 

But you still have to try. You still have to accept that a lot of what you write (especially if it's your first venture into writing) will be rubbish. Accept that, write it anyway, and enjoy it. Tell the story you want to tell, and in a few years you'll be able to look back and appreciate how far you've come.

 

Speaking as someone coming up on 12 years of writing virtually every day, I can look back now and appreciate how bad a lot of my early stuff was (very flowery, for a start, with as much depth as an evaporated puddle, and wildly overambitious) but it all contributed to my improving, I hope

 

To add to this, a very good example to read is Stephen King's Dark Tower Series. He wrote it over the course of his entire career, with The Gunslinger being one of his first ever, and you can see a definite change in writing in every book. In the copy of The Gunslinger I own, his foreword mentions this as well. He notes that his writing is very flowery with a lot of purple prose, and that over the years he's learned to cut that out, and it was through practice. The man writes about ten pages a day, after all.

 

Continuing on the Stephen King note, and this is just a general writing tip, but I would suggest to anyone to read through On Writing. The first part is mostly autobiographical, but the second part delivers great writing tips and is extremely helpful. Part three, if you're interested in becoming a writer like I am, also details gret ways to get your name out there as a writer. Of course, it also tells you to prepare for a ton of disappointment, but that's to be expected

[Phantom Stranger]

A side note to this point:

 

Not everyone can write the way King writes. He makes this point himself, but it's worth making.

 

Some folks write for a set amount of time a day. I write a set minimum number of words. My other fraction writes pages if using her notepad, and wordcount otherwise. Balzac used to think about his novel for three months then buy four reams of paper, six cartons of cigarettes, a case of wine, and bang the whole thing out without sleep. P.G. Wodehouse stapled pages to his walls, the higher the higher quality a page, and aimed to get the whole book to the ceiling before publication.

 

Find what works for you.

[Guest codey]

So I went back through my Johnny Heizenger Story diary to read some of my old stuff (I like to read it, it's fun to me...), and I got to what's been possible my favorite match write up yet. I've never been good at match write ups, and I don't pretend to be, but I feel like this is the best example of how I do them, but I'm not sure if it's a very effective way of handling all of my matches.

 

You can read it here, it's the El Mitico/American Patriot I Quit match:

http://67.19.230.91/~arles/forum/showthread.php?t=175772&page=22

 

Now, my feelings are that I tend to just gloss over the beginning and middle of matches and skip straight to the finish, which I usually describe in some semblance of detail. That's okay with matches that are just average I feel, but I think I do it too much with great/feud ending matches as well, and I don't think that's very appropriate. The match write up I posted was the final match in a long standing, months-long rivalry, and I nearly completely skipped the first two-thirds of the match aside from a short paragraph at the beginning.

 

My question for readers is is this type of match write up satisfactory for you? Are there any changes that you would suggest or preferences that you have to make them more exciting/readable?

[James Casey]

I tend to get lost with long match write-ups. Mine only tend to bet two or three paragraphs for the great majority of matches.

 

That said, for bigger matches I kind of expect the writer to put a bit more in. I still wouldn't necessarily want reams, but that's personal taste.

 

Ultimately, it probably comes down to the psychology of the match. Is it playing off story points that have been building up to the match, like an injured knee that's been attacked several times or a valet caught in a love triangle? Is it telling an internal story, like the Andersons used to do with their 'three-legged table' approach to matches? Do the workers get into a one-upmanship contest mid-match that affects things? That sort of thing can flesh out a match, and make it more than:

 

In a match with great action and a white hot crowd Nemesis beat Tommy Cornell in 15:39 after powerbombing him through a table.

This match lifted the crowd.