Writing/Booking in General

[Joe]

I'm just curious what kind of got you guys into writing and/or booking to begin with. I have to credit this game or hobby for me being able to really write at all, let alone well, and part of it was joining E-Fed groups when I was young and them being brutal critics of my work lol.

What piqued my interest back in like 2000 was I went on this site, maybe 411Mania but I can't recall, and somebody was doing like a fantasy WCW write up that they were posting. From there, I was like, let me try that, and I wrote this like two pages match between Taz and Lance Storm, falls count anywhere, and like put their pictures on the front page and printed off on my Ink Jet and showed my Mom. She obviously didn't really understand, but she was like, "Oh, that's nice." She didn't know what a Suplex or a Half Crab was or whatever, so it was like reading Greek, but I eventually found some people who did know what I was talking about.

I'd like to think I keep getting better, but who knows? I tend to think I put something pretty good out each time I post, but then I go back in a couple of years and look at it and just, like, groan lol.

I logged into this ProBoards account and found an old NWA forum JP and I were writing on back in 2016. I read our StarrCade from that year, and that was something. I definitely made some creative choices I wouldn't make now, and my old friend Kevin really let me have it about how hackey my use of the evil boss trope and the heel commentator was. I didn't get it then, but boy do I see what he was talking about about now lol.

I've also tried to write like screenplays and started some novels in the past, but nothing has really panned out on that end, but I do find myself enjoying playing editor for my kid's school papers. I did get A's in my college composition classes, so I try to pass that onto them and I can really thank this hobby for helping me out quite a bit on that front. That and a really good and blunt College Prep English Teacher when I was a Senior in high school. Thank you, Mr. Jones.

[Jeff L.]

That's cool, Joe, you have almost a quarter of century of experience with fantasy booking.

I first started watching wrestling in 2009, I was 12 then. Very soon after I started fantasy booking even though I didn't know what fantasy booking even was then. I remember I'd take a notebook and wrote down the roster, Raw, Smackdown, the belts, and then I'd start writing down matches. Weeklies, PPVs, all of it. I liked to cap off an entire year, from Mania to Mania.

Bit later on I started writing as a hobby. I love fantasy, scifi, post-apo, alt-history. Hell I even got published once. I remember mostly getting Cs and Ds in elementary school writing and essays. Teacher wasn't too keen on my handwriting, but I always thought I write better than I was given credit for.

Finally, my high school teachers would fight through my handwriting. I always remember them giving me a side-eye and they'd roll their eyes at me, before giving me a smile and then spending a long time deciphering my handwriting (or footwriting, as we call messy handwriting here in Croatia).

Luckily, come college, most work was done typing anyway, so I really got to shine during that time. So yeah, I fantasy book, I worldbuild and write short stories set in those worlds. I approach fantasy booking in a similar fashion.

[Joe]

Yes, world building is fun. I've really taken to the organization of this hobby, and just trying to create good formatting and keeping things running smoothly. Working on this forum here lately has been pretty cool, as I have enjoyed really getting things laid out. I think writing started to really click for me in college as I figured out more and more how a paper should be laid out, the parts of it all, and then understanding the referencing. That's how I usually approach my writing these days: get the bones built and then flesh it out.

[Jeff L.]

My experience is very similar. Very usually I have people going 'I've no idea what to write in my paper'. Usually all I ask of them is the title. If you break the title down in 4 or 5 simpler terms, there's your level 1 of headings. Now try breaking those down further, and you'll slowly see what topics in your paper need more or less working on.

So I like to break down titles/thesis, and make a base, what I call a 'skeleton' of work. And then you add flesh to it as you said.

[jp1985]

Before the internet, me and my friends would have our own promotions that we'd run with action figures and sit around writing magazines for. I was definitely more into it than anybody else I knew. When they lost interest, I stopped doing the magazines, but kept booking. When I got the internet and saw that people were doing it online, I eventually hopped in from some people in the official WCW chat room on IRC. I think the first show I ran myself was in late 1997, and I don't remember much, but I remember thinking I was so bad ass having TAKA Michinoku beat Hulk Hogan lol.

[Joe]

Oct 6, 2024 12:32:16 GMT -5 jp1985 said:

Before the internet, me and my friends would have our own promotions that we'd run with action figures and sit around writing magazines for. I was definitely more into it than anybody else I knew. When they lost interest, I stopped doing the magazines, but kept booking. When I got the internet and saw that people were doing it online, I eventually hopped in from some people in the official WCW chat room on IRC. I think the first show I ran myself was in late 1997, and I don't remember much, but I remember thinking I was so bad ass having TAKA Michinoku beat Hulk Hogan lol.

Yes! Taka over Hogan, that's a classic one. I also used to run feds with my GI Joes before actually starting the writing aspect.

[Road Warrior Shark]

Oct 6, 2024 13:59:13 GMT -5 Joe said:

I also used to run feds with my GI Joes before actually starting the writing aspect.

Oh hell yeah! I did Sooo much of that when I was 10-12 or so. I would later recycle some of those wrestler up names when I was Booking an E-fed.

[jp1985]

I had a mix of them. WWF LJN thumb wrestlers, 1984 Secret Wars, 1984 Super Powers, the original run of Star Wars, GI, Joe, and then with allowance and Christmas money and what not, I'd buy new WWF Hasbro figures, the 1990s Marvel Toy Biz line, then I'd always have just other random ones from when I was a kid. There were a lot of Playmobiles but they were mostly ehancement since they were so much smaller lol.

[Road Warrior Shark]

Oct 6, 2024 15:45:06 GMT -5 jp1985 said:

I had a mix of them. WWF LJN thumb wrestlers, 1984 Secret Wars, 1984 Super Powers, the original run of Star Wars, GI, Joe, and then with allowance and Christmas money and what not, I'd buy new WWF Hasbro figures, the 1990s Marvel Toy Biz line, then I'd always have just other random ones from when I was a kid. There were a lot of Playmobiles but they were mostly ehancement since they were so much smaller lol.

Definitely worked with some LJNs. Also had an Remco AWA fed, which included a few He-Man MOTU characters as well. There were a couple Star Wars jobbers in my GIJoe fed. Aged out of "Playing with toys" when the Hasbros came around (and got into equally nerdy baseball card collecting) , but I doubt I would have liked the lack of articulation. 

[Joe]

The articulation of the smaller profile GI Joes was appealing to me as a kid. The GI Joes and the CORPS figures worked well. Back then, the WWF figures just had the arms and legs that moved back and forth, and WCE and ECW both usually had figures with weird, unnecessary features that made them less easy to manipulate.

Having the wrestling rings could be cool, but the only one I really liked was my Monster RAW WWF ring, as it was big enough that I could slide my hands and forearms in under the ropes. I found the other rings really annoying, because I'd have to go in over top of the ropes and it just didn't work out as well for me, personally. I'd also just make rings I liked better out of different boxes and whatever I could find to put one together.

[jp1985]

I always wanted an official ring. They were really hard to find here for some reason, as were WWF Hasbro figures at times. Some lines there would be dozens and easy to get, then other years, it would be nearly impossible to find anything. Usually I would get a few on family trips.

I found the LJN thumb wrestlers to have good movement, specially being able to bend the legs so easily into whatever move, and the Kenner Secret Wars figures could also be good for that.

The best champion was probably the second Apocalypse figure by Toy Biz from 1994. He was just big enough to have a dominant Vader like presence to every other action figure, without being too big, plus that was when I was most into it. I would spend almost every other cent I had on wrestling, whether buying new figures to use for my promotion, buying magazines to read, or renting videos to watch.

[Joe]

Oh man, same here. I'd get the action figures, the PWI magazines and whatever other magazines I could find at Walmart, and I had a small but mighty VHS collection. My crown jewel of that was my ECW tape, which has Taz vs. Sabu from Barely Legal, one of the RVD vs. Jerry Lynn matches, and one of the Mike Awesome vs. Masato Tanaka matches. That one and WrestleMania 14 were frequently watched. Back then, between WWF, WCW, and ECW on TNN, there was wrestling on like every night, so life was good.

[jp1985]

I still have every issue of PWI from 1993 to 2000. Before the internet, it was pretty much the main way to get news and learn some history. I also got WWF magazine, but more just because everything was in color. I would also get the occasional Apter mag of the other names if the cover and content interested me.

I used to record wrestling off TV to watch later. My first internet purchase was two tapes - Barely Legal and WWF on the MSG Network from March 1997, and the first six episodes of Shotgun Saturday Night from night clubs. It would have been just after Barely Legal as I needed to see what the hype was about. I still have the tapes. The ECW full event tapes were great, and I also liked getting older WWF stuff like Saturday Night's Main Events or MSG Network shows. I definitely threw money away a few times on tapes I never got or just unwatchable stuff, but for the most part, it was a good hobby.

[Joe]

Ordering tapes was pretty cool. I bought one of the All Japan Women super shows back in 2002, probably. My Mom didn't believe they were all women when she saw Aka Kong and some of the more androgynous women, but I was so happy to get that tape. I mostly had WWF compilations, though. I was a huge Rock mark in the late 90s until I started seeing more ECW stuff. Then I started downloading whatever matches I could find on like Limewire and Kazaa to be able to see Ring of Honor and Japanese stuff.

[jp1985]

I took a long time to get into Ring of Honor. I ordered the first events in 2002 and while good, it just lacked the showmanship for me. A few years later, I started getting more into it once things got established and the matches felt like they mattered more. I was always more into episodic TV with indies and tended to prefer southern style wrestling and WWE developmental stuff to see guys before they hit it big.

For Japan, I ordered tapes here and there, usually if a big name American was on the event. It helped get me familiar with a lot of the talent though. When Lesnar was the champion there after leaving WWE, I think that helped elevate my interest more on the regular. Although by that time, I would have been getting DVDs or like you said, finding the content online. When it switched to DVDs, it became so much cheaper to be a fan. Buying a VHS and shipping it to trade was so much more, as I think I was able to trade 4 or 5 DVDs for 25 cents each and a postage stamp. Not to mention it goes from real time, VHS to VHS, to burning, which saved hours. I think the change for me was around 2005.