What’s The Story?
In a recent appearance with Bryan Alvarez, Lance Storm talked about having recently seen the movie The Expendables. You can hear Lance’s thoughts here. Lance, in discussing the writing of the movie, questioned why we liked the good guys, how the bad guys lacked credibility and the plot holes in the story. Lance mentioned that people said to him, “It’s just an action movie” and to not take it so seriously; some even equating that same theory to wrestling. Lance proudly has boycotted TNA Wrestling for this same “lack of logic” storytelling.
Quality writing is quality storytelling; and that does translate to professional wrestling. This won’t be a entry about what is wrong and why with wrestling. Instead, with the Hollywood Award Season kicking off on Sunday with the Golden Globes, I wanted to offer a weekend read if you’ve ever wanted to write. I’m a big believer that we are all storytellers. Some of us are the heroes, some of us are the villains; but every character believes he’s justified in his actions. If this peaks your interest, I recommend the following book. SAVE THE CAT!
I know there are a ton of screenwriting books on the market but this is the easiest to pick up and read. You’ll appreciate movies on a higher level after reading this book and maybe even wrestling. And if you’re wondering about the title, in every movie the hero must do something early to show the audience he’s a good guy; saving a cat from a burning building. When you watch a wrestling match, think about what the good guy does to make you root for him. I gave this book as a Christmas Gift to a talent so he could see the correlation between movie and wrestling storytelling . Though, I don’t expect to see him utilizing a cat in his matches, I do expect to see him main event Wrestlemania one day.
Demand good storytelling from all forms of entertainment you consume. Movies, TV, Wrestling, and even all things internet based. If it’s good, it will move you. And that’s why I started this site. Because I want us all demand better and say #IWantWrestling
IWantWrestling.com 
This is your blog. You’re entitled to post what you want. I’m just going to reiterate just how silly your posts are, especially concerning writing for wrestling. As i already mentioned, wrestling is on it’s last leg and criticizing the industry at this point is simply helping push it over the cliff.
I can’t help to find it somewhat amusing that you write about the current TNA writing. I agree with you and Lance. It’s downright stupid. On the other hand, ROH is completely devoid of writing and characters you can keep up with in any capacity. As i have openly admitted, ROH is the best pure wrestling in the business. People however, easily overlook the lack of characters, personality etc that ROH either does little of or does so poorly. Cutting a short promo backstage and then wrestling is not story telling or writing.
Onto the Good Guys and Bad guys. Austin Aries has been the best heel ROH ever had in my opinion. He defined a true classic heel. When you have fans attacking you then you know you are doing your job. As we all know, Aries isn’t there any more. The majority of other ROH talent are cheered or booed due to their ring skills. Not because of their personas. That does’t make clear cut faces and heels.
One of the few stories ROH has done was also downright awful. I don’t think i need to get into detail about the Jerry Lynn/Randy “The Ram”. Putting on a storyline with Lynn questioning whether he still has it after he put on so many great ROH matches and being on ROH TV just a short time earlier doing great work. This is just as insulting to wrestling fans as some of what TNA or WWE Puts on. Let’s not forget the ROH rape angle; Just as disgusting as HHH banging a dead woman.
Let’s look at the current ROH Video wire. I think out of all the guys on there, I know only one person. There aren’t even any captions to tell me the persons name or any info on them at all. It’s simply fade to black and reappear in a different location with a different wrestler. Not much logic in that.
Some of the locations also get me. Segments are filmed in numerous, less than great locations like in the middle of the sticks at night with a barely viewable mountain in the background and tons of snow. Only to have car drive right by and completely kill the entire segment. Did nobody have any sense to retape this segment inside with some light and away from cars? Whoever is doing these stupid videos needs to be replaces asap.
Let’s go over to the next segment with the hansen twins erm I mean the Bravado Brothers. I thought the Young Bucks looked vanilla. To top it off, they cut a promo in a house that looks like it was built prior to the revolutionary war. It seems nobody in ROH had enough sense to order a black tarp, some lights so they could cut uniform looking promos while on the road.
Everybody has their own idea about what wrestling should be. That doesn’t make it wrong. With that said, the void in ROH “writing and storytelling” isn’t much better.
For one thing, I agree and disagree with the poster above to a certain extent. Ring of Honor can have a captivating story, and I think Steen/Generico and KOW/Briscoes proved that. However, I do think there is a lack of storytelling. I don’t know where the Bravado Brothers came from, or why I should care about them. I’m not sure why calling Truth Martini a bitch merits a title shot. The KOW/American Wolves feud was hard to care about when parts of the breakup from Shane Hagadorn happened so far apart, and the Kings are obviously more focused on the Briscoes and the Wolves on their singles careers. This example, of course, is just bad timing.
Another issue I have is the Ring of Honor taping schedule… because I was at Final Battle, I saw Daniels as TV champion, I saw Eddie Edwards on a video wire say he was going to try to win it back… and suddenly, Eddie’s defending the title against Mark Briscoe. It makes it look like there’s a lack of continuity.
I will concede the point though: Ring of Honor storylines make much more sense than TNA storylines.
I think it’s something the industry on a whole has to work on, and it starts here: wrestling storylines should have a simple premise. One man’s the best (in Ring of Honor’s case, we’ll say Roderick Strong because he has the belt) and other men want to be the best, so they wrestle for the title. There should be no mysterious theys or anything like that. A surprise does not make up for bad storytelling. The more complex the premise is, the more complex it’s just going to get.
Look at Steen/Generico. Partner turns on partner because he feels like he’s being held back, that Generico gets all the credit despite his work. (That promo where he talked about people shouting Ole during his matches? Excellent) Generico still feels like this is his partner, and doesn’t want to fight him. This is a simple premise. This is not complicated. This is also understandable. This gives you lots of different options of where to go with it, of how to make Generico finally fight with Kevin.
We shouldn’t hear about tangled legal disputes, branding people with a hot iron, arson, or anything else that shouldn’t be solved in a ring but in a court room.
just for future reference, it is ‘piques’ not ‘peaks’.
wow. I never thought about this in that way