Big and Tall or Skinny and Short?

The Holzerblog
Caldera Enterprises
PRIMEtime blog

All three over the past day or so have written something about longform vs. shortform. You've got Tom on one side suggesting that you should have shortform on the TV shows, Pete saying thou shalt NEVER shortform matches (basically, in a nutshell, read his post for more info!), and Steve giving a little bit of both. So why shouldn't I put my oar in and help move this boat?

To cut to the chase, I think it depends solely on one thing, and one thing alone, as to which is preferable, and it's based on individual circumstances.

How long do you want cards to take to write?

I'm in three feds, one of which full-forms everything, one has a short-formed show, and the third has started shortforming anything that's not got a matchwriter. A1E turns things around quickly, New ERA has problems with turnaround, and EPW has started shortforming some matches. EPW did have a group of people who would full-form matches in a play-by-play style, but even with that and the one week deadlines Dave would give us, it would sometimes take far longer to get something down.

Pete said that it was an insult to the handlers who put in effort if they're rewarded on a TV card with a short-form. To me, it is wrong to think of it that way, especially with a lot of people wanting to tell stories. I actually lean the other way, that it's an insult to the handlers to make them wait x weeks for the card to be published, making their stories wait, or worse, allowing them to get so bored that they leave with the story untold. I've seen it time and again that people don't have the patience with the schedules some feds keep, and leave because they weren't able to tell the story they wanted - and the simple reason is that the fed-head was waiting on matches to be written.

I'm like Tom in that I've no problem with shortforming if it speeds things up. If you've got some people who can quickly turn matches of a good quality round, then great. If you don't have enough to do the whole card, than think which matches deserve full-form treatment based on the RPs. Even if the 'main-event' ends up being shortform.

Say you've got an eight match card. The hottest RP'd for one was the scheduled opener, and the main-event was a double no-show, with the other six a mixture. I'd happily drop the main-event down the pecking order, or turn it into a brief segment, and bump the opening contest up the card. But the matches which I couldn't find a matchwriter for, I would shortform in such a way that at least people knew I appreciated their effort - it wouldn't be what you see in some feds:

[The two men entered the ring. After some to-ing and fro-ing, A hit a lariat on B, hit his finisher, and won]

It'd be a fuller short-form. Not necessarily play-by-play, but up to a page or so? Something to show the big spots, some standard stuff, and the ending. That's an acceptable short-form, kinda like New ERA does on RAPTURE.

Now. The other thing the trio talked about was segments, and without going into something I wanna write about seperately, I do think that you need to cap segments, even on TV. You have to remember that a standard TV wrestling show these days is one to two hours long. Giving maybe five to eight minutes a match with seven matches, and 15 minutes for the main event, that's possibly about an hour of action. When you look at some of the segments on cards these days, they're longer than the actual matches! At Wrestlestock between New ERA and EPW, you had the impromptu Daymon backstage fight, which was longer than most of the matches across BOTH nights! No disrespect to Ryan, but I switched off less than a quarter of the way through that, because it was too long. I've skimmed it and I think it should have been a lot shorter.

But that's often the case with segments on cards. They're getting too long. Again at Wrestlestock, you had Lindsay Troy come out on Night Two. That segment, I felt, was too long. Understandable and logical, but too long, especially since we'd already had two segments on that card (and the show literally just opened when Troy came out!). Segments should be capped - you don't need to tell all the stories at the same time.

For instance, you've got eight matches on a card. In that time, I'd guess you can excellently sell three feuds through one segment each. Maybe have a promo thrown in there to start the ball rolling on one, at a stretch two, more. Priority given to those that are on-going, of course. You can then hold onto anything else that's handed in, and use it on another card down the road. You can start a feud between Y and Z after the feud between B and D has finished, and have A against C and G against H and J at the same time. What you can't do, I think, is give all four feuds the same attention they deserve at a high level of intensity (if that's what people are going for) because, as I'll write next time, you just make things too intense, or too long.

So, what's the best option? If you can get a high quality full-form out promptly, go for it. If not, shortform, and let people know that's what you're doing and why. Be happy to move matches up and down the order based on the effort put into RPing. But segments? Cut down on them, or their length. Take a hatchet to a submitted segment if you feel it's too bulky for the card. Set a time-limit for your TV shows - one or two hours (which if you talk constantly is 21600 words at radio standard three-words-a-second, and is more than long enough to tell a lot of stories in matches and segments), and you'll find things can run a bit quicker, more smoothly, and, if you're holding off on pulling the trigger on something, you get more time to plan and make the story that much better.