WWE Creative - Seriously, Why Bother?

[oxbaker]

Apr 13, 2022 15:35:40 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

I think SNL is actually decently comparable to WWE's weekly output when you factor in how much downtime in a wrestling show doesn't need a script, versus an episode of SNL where outside of the musical guest everything is pure content.

As a professional writer though, I can say that working for WWE seems especially thankless and miserable. It's work. It's a gig. But it's very clear that the rewrite process in WWE leads to stuff being scrapped in a way that absolutely genericizes the whole thing. When I'm panic writing another draft to polish stuff up before a deadline, I feel fairly confident that what I'm writing is actually going to make it. I'm making revisions and following notes from an editor, sure, but I'm never afraid someone is going to rip up everything I did ten minutes before it's meant to go online. Maybe you aren't developing scripts for episodes that don't ever get produced, but instead you're dealing with stories that get the plug pulled on them at the last minute, or have Vince change his mind about a story and immediately render everything you just did pointless right before the point of no return. You can be the one taking point on a story line Mandy and Otis that's getting tons of positive reception and could do big things for them and watching as it all gets torn away in the months to come and none of it matters in the end.

So like, it's a job. But it's also a job that has a lot of unconventional elements to it and which I wouldn't say really follows 1:1 with a lot of the usual occupational expectations and structures. It's a place where professional pride and a care for the stuff you make seems like an absolute loser trap.

I’ll address a couples of points:

Raw is 3 hours. NXT is 2. SD is 2. That’s seven hours of programming and we get reminded from time to time how little of that is actual in-ring wrestling. You can’t convince me that seven skits or however-many make it to an episode of SNL to fill say 50 minutes on air is equal to that. (Not to mention a monthly PPV).

Yes the commentary during matches isn’t scripted per se (although I’m sure there are talking points, and the writers would probably be the ones putting those together) but one opening promo with say Cody and AJ in the ring is probably as long as, if not longer than, an average SNL script. All those recaps are scripted, etc.

And while you certainly have some points comparing it to writing for a website, journalists all the time work on stories that are scrapped — let’s say a sportswriter working on a feature on a player … and he gets traded (he’s working for a news site that covers the Dolphins, that guy is no longer a Dolphin so who cares) or injured, out for the season. Or someone covering government has a story ready for a bill if it passes and it doesn’t, or something more important comes up in the session and he’s 90 percent done with that and an editor says ‘drop that, work on this.’

Probably a smaller percentage but it does happen.

Same for songwriting. You write a song and someone wants to record it and … it doesn’t make the album because they decided to go with a different song. Or maybe not a whole movie but the scene you put your heart and soul into ends up on the cutting room floor.

That’s what writing is.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

Apr 13, 2022 15:55:52 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Apr 13, 2022 15:35:40 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

I think SNL is actually decently comparable to WWE's weekly output when you factor in how much downtime in a wrestling show doesn't need a script, versus an episode of SNL where outside of the musical guest everything is pure content.

As a professional writer though, I can say that working for WWE seems especially thankless and miserable. It's work. It's a gig. But it's very clear that the rewrite process in WWE leads to stuff being scrapped in a way that absolutely genericizes the whole thing. When I'm panic writing another draft to polish stuff up before a deadline, I feel fairly confident that what I'm writing is actually going to make it. I'm making revisions and following notes from an editor, sure, but I'm never afraid someone is going to rip up everything I did ten minutes before it's meant to go online. Maybe you aren't developing scripts for episodes that don't ever get produced, but instead you're dealing with stories that get the plug pulled on them at the last minute, or have Vince change his mind about a story and immediately render everything you just did pointless right before the point of no return. You can be the one taking point on a story line Mandy and Otis that's getting tons of positive reception and could do big things for them and watching as it all gets torn away in the months to come and none of it matters in the end.

So like, it's a job. But it's also a job that has a lot of unconventional elements to it and which I wouldn't say really follows 1:1 with a lot of the usual occupational expectations and structures. It's a place where professional pride and a care for the stuff you make seems like an absolute loser trap.

I’ll address a couples of points:

Raw is 3 hours. NXT is 2. SD is 2. That’s seven hours of programming and we get reminded from time to time how little of that is actual in-ring wrestling. You can’t convince me that seven skits or however-many make it to an episode of SNL to fill say 50 minutes on air is equal to that. (Not to mention a monthly PPV).

Yes the commentary during matches isn’t scripted per se (although I’m sure there are talking points, and the writers would probably be the ones putting those together) but one opening promo with say Cody and AJ in the ring is probably as long as, if not longer than, an average SNL script. All those recaps are scripted, etc.

And while you certainly have some points comparing it to writing for a website, journalists all the time work on stories that are scrapped — let’s say a sportswriter working on a feature on a player … and he gets traded (he’s working for a news site that covers the Dolphins, that guy is no longer a Dolphin so who cares) or injured, out for the season. Or someone covering government has a story ready for a bill if it passes and it doesn’t, or something more important comes up in the session and he’s 90 percent done with that and an editor says ‘drop that, work on this.’

Probably a smaller percentage but it does happen.

Same for songwriting. You write a song and someone wants to record it and … it doesn’t make the album because they decided to go with a different song. Or maybe not a whole movie but the scene you put your heart and soul into ends up on the cutting room floor.

That’s what writing is.

Journalism isn't creative writing and naturally has a very different flow. Songwriting? Off-cuts don't just stop existing because they got trimmed off an album. They can end up on the next album, or as a bonus track on a rerelease, or often revised and worked on to be stronger for next time, or given to another performer who will make something of it. There's not a permanence to the word "no" in songwriting like there is in televised wrestling. And often, that last minute 'no' doesn't come from one singular voice who wants to upend the entire story and go in a different direction even though he's been waffling about it for a week. That's not a typical master you serve in writing.

But also I. I don't need to be told what writing is. Writing is my job. And I can say from my experience and from the experience of writers I know, and from everything I have seen former WWE writers say, that there are differences, and those differences look to me like very frustrating things. I even once weighed applying to that position when I was in a long-distance relationship with someone who lived in Connecticut and I was in talks to move down there. Those differences were unappealing to me.

[joeiscool]

2 thoughts

A: WWE is stable work. It's not guaranteed you'll write for a show, and if you do there's a chance it gets canceled or never gets picked up.

B: Show business is full of characters and plain weird people you have to appeal to.The WWE environment is probably not even close to the most hostile workplace for writers.

[King Boo]

Apr 13, 2022 13:44:28 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Apr 13, 2022 13:37:11 GMT -5 Dub H said:

Except if you are good at something ,you don't do it for free.

People do stuff they’re good at all the time for free: hunting, fishing, playing video games, baking … you name it.

For themselves, usually not for other people. If it's being done for other people, they at least try to monetize it at some point. Selling their baked goods, streaming playing video games and selling ad space, etc.

For example, unless it's a family member or a really good friend, if someone requested a person who enjoys baking to make them a cake for someone's birthday, they're probably going to have to compensate the baker in some fashion.

If I wrote a really brilliant angle for WWE and only showed my friends, no, they won't have to pay. But if WWE appared out of thin air wanting to use it? You best believe they'd have to pay me.

[oxbaker]

Apr 13, 2022 16:09:53 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

Apr 13, 2022 15:55:52 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

I’ll address a couples of points:

Raw is 3 hours. NXT is 2. SD is 2. That’s seven hours of programming and we get reminded from time to time how little of that is actual in-ring wrestling. You can’t convince me that seven skits or however-many make it to an episode of SNL to fill say 50 minutes on air is equal to that. (Not to mention a monthly PPV).

Yes the commentary during matches isn’t scripted per se (although I’m sure there are talking points, and the writers would probably be the ones putting those together) but one opening promo with say Cody and AJ in the ring is probably as long as, if not longer than, an average SNL script. All those recaps are scripted, etc.

And while you certainly have some points comparing it to writing for a website, journalists all the time work on stories that are scrapped — let’s say a sportswriter working on a feature on a player … and he gets traded (he’s working for a news site that covers the Dolphins, that guy is no longer a Dolphin so who cares) or injured, out for the season. Or someone covering government has a story ready for a bill if it passes and it doesn’t, or something more important comes up in the session and he’s 90 percent done with that and an editor says ‘drop that, work on this.’

Probably a smaller percentage but it does happen.

Same for songwriting. You write a song and someone wants to record it and … it doesn’t make the album because they decided to go with a different song. Or maybe not a whole movie but the scene you put your heart and soul into ends up on the cutting room floor.

That’s what writing is.

Journalism isn't creative writing and naturally has a very different flow. Songwriting? Off-cuts don't just stop existing because they got trimmed off an album. They can end up on the next album, or as a bonus track on a rerelease, or often revised and worked on to be stronger for next time, or given to another performer who will make something of it. There's not a permanence to the word "no" in songwriting like there is in televised wrestling. And often, that last minute 'no' doesn't come from one singular voice who wants to upend the entire story and go in a different direction even though he's been waffling about it for a week. That's not a typical master you serve in writing.

But also I. I don't need to be told what writing is. Writing is my job. And I can say from my experience and from the experience of writers I know, and from everything I have seen former WWE writers say, that there are differences, and those differences look to me like very frustrating things. I even once weighed applying to that position when I was in a long-distance relationship with someone who lived in Connecticut and I was in talks to move down there. Those differences were unappealing to me.

Writing is writing. A lot of journalists write books, end up writing poetry or writing for movies or TV or whatnot. Each environment presents its own challenges.

A song might be picked up later; so might a rejected wrestling angle. We all know of characters that have been handed to one talent instead of another it was originally conceived for. Look at AEW, where it’s pretty much accepted that Sammy and Tay got handed an angle created for Cody and Brandi.

But a lot of songs and scenes and entire TV shows or episodes end up in the scrap heap too. And sometimes, probably more often than you’d like to think, it’s because one person didn’t like it and that person had power. If the movie director doesn’t like a scene, it’s gone. If the TV producer doesn’t like your script for an episode, it can end up in the trash heap.

And basically NO form of professional writing doesn’t undergo rewrites and edits and changes. Even successful authors like Stephen King tell tales of things things cut out of books by editors (hence the longer version he was able to later release of The Stand, only because it and he were ultra successful, but it was YEARS later), and of rewriting their own material as part of the process. (And read about his experiences with movies made from some of his work that was completely changed with what he felt were important elements completely cut out.)

And guess what: if a writer writes something for Raw and the script gets torn up … it also gets reassembled in some form. There’s still a show every Monday, so the writers produce content every single week that does make it to air.

In short, WWE isn’t unique in any of this. 

[oxbaker]

Apr 13, 2022 16:21:34 GMT -5 King Boo said:

Apr 13, 2022 13:44:28 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

People do stuff they’re good at all the time for free: hunting, fishing, playing video games, baking … you name it.

For themselves, usually not for other people. If it's being done for other people, they at least try to monetize it at some point. Selling their baked goods, streaming playing video games and selling ad space, etc.

For example, unless it's a family member or a really good friend, if someone requested a person who enjoys baking to make them a cake for someone's birthday, they're probably going to have to compensate the baker in some fashion.

If I wrote a really brilliant angle for WWE and only showed my friends, no, they won't have to pay. But if WWE appared out of thin air wanting to use it? You best believe they'd have to pay me.

I don’t understand what we disagree on here.

I pointed out that it’s a job and they get paid for it. Differentiating it from something they do for fun. If someone paid me to bake a cake, I might or might not enjoy it but I’m only baking that specific cake for compensation.

Because the difference is, if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it, I did it for fun and happened to profit from it; if I wrote an angle for WWE and posted it on a website and somehow magically Vince saw it and said, ‘let’s use that, track him down and pay him so we don’t get sued’ — I still wrote it for fun and then happened to get a check.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

Apr 13, 2022 16:28:02 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Apr 13, 2022 16:09:53 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

Journalism isn't creative writing and naturally has a very different flow. Songwriting? Off-cuts don't just stop existing because they got trimmed off an album. They can end up on the next album, or as a bonus track on a rerelease, or often revised and worked on to be stronger for next time, or given to another performer who will make something of it. There's not a permanence to the word "no" in songwriting like there is in televised wrestling. And often, that last minute 'no' doesn't come from one singular voice who wants to upend the entire story and go in a different direction even though he's been waffling about it for a week. That's not a typical master you serve in writing.

But also I. I don't need to be told what writing is. Writing is my job. And I can say from my experience and from the experience of writers I know, and from everything I have seen former WWE writers say, that there are differences, and those differences look to me like very frustrating things. I even once weighed applying to that position when I was in a long-distance relationship with someone who lived in Connecticut and I was in talks to move down there. Those differences were unappealing to me.

Writing is writing. A lot of journalists write books, end up writing poetry or writing for movies or TV or whatnot. Each environment presents its own challenges.

A song might be picked up later; so might a rejected wrestling angle. We all know of characters that have been handed to one talent instead of another it was originally conceived for. Look at AEW, where it’s pretty much accepted that Sammy and Tay got handed an angle created for Cody and Brandi.

But a lot of songs and scenes and entire TV shows or episodes end up in the scrap heap too. And sometimes, probably more often than you’d like to think, it’s because one person didn’t like it and that person had power. If the movie director doesn’t like a scene, it’s gone. If the TV producer doesn’t like your script for an episode, it can end up in the trash heap.

And basically NO form of professional writing doesn’t undergo rewrites and edits and changes. Even successful authors like Stephen King tell tales of things things cut out of books by editors (hence the longer version he was able to later release of The Stand, only because it and he were ultra successful, but it was YEARS later), and of rewriting their own material as part of the process. (And read about his experiences with movies made from some of his work that was completely changed with what he felt were important elements completely cut out.)

And guess what: if a writer writes something for Raw and the script gets torn up … it also gets reassembled in some form. There’s still a show every Monday, so the writers produce content every single week that does make it to air.

In short, WWE isn’t unique in any of this. 

You're right I must be a clown who has no insight or idea what I'm talking about when I say WWE is structurally different than working with an editor or in a conventional draft process. I don't know anything about writing, please explain my job to me so that I can one day actually know what writing is.

[Cyno]

A gig's a gig and WWE's rotten reputation for how they treat their writing staff isn't really that well-known outside the wrestling world. Also helps that they're based out of New York instead of LA where there's a lot more entertainment gigs (and writers on top of that).  I'm also not 100% sure if WWE's creative writing team is covered by the WGA or not, though I'd lean more towards "yes."

Granted, I base that off about 10-year old first-hand information (knew a non-wrestling fan professional writer who applied and got into the interview/tryout process for their creative team). So maybe that reputation has spread since. Like this was well before that story about the former writer who won an Emmy and put it on her desk only for it to get petty backlash.

[oxbaker]

Apr 13, 2022 16:34:31 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

Apr 13, 2022 16:28:02 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Writing is writing. A lot of journalists write books, end up writing poetry or writing for movies or TV or whatnot. Each environment presents its own challenges.

A song might be picked up later; so might a rejected wrestling angle. We all know of characters that have been handed to one talent instead of another it was originally conceived for. Look at AEW, where it’s pretty much accepted that Sammy and Tay got handed an angle created for Cody and Brandi.

But a lot of songs and scenes and entire TV shows or episodes end up in the scrap heap too. And sometimes, probably more often than you’d like to think, it’s because one person didn’t like it and that person had power. If the movie director doesn’t like a scene, it’s gone. If the TV producer doesn’t like your script for an episode, it can end up in the trash heap.

And basically NO form of professional writing doesn’t undergo rewrites and edits and changes. Even successful authors like Stephen King tell tales of things things cut out of books by editors (hence the longer version he was able to later release of The Stand, only because it and he were ultra successful, but it was YEARS later), and of rewriting their own material as part of the process. (And read about his experiences with movies made from some of his work that was completely changed with what he felt were important elements completely cut out.)

And guess what: if a writer writes something for Raw and the script gets torn up … it also gets reassembled in some form. There’s still a show every Monday, so the writers produce content every single week that does make it to air.

In short, WWE isn’t unique in any of this. 

You're right I must be a clown who has no insight or idea what I'm talking about when I say WWE is structurally different than working with an editor or in a conventional draft process. I don't know anything about writing, please explain my job to me so that I can one day actually know what writing is.

Nobody is challenging you. This thread isn’t about you. You have some insight but maybe I do also. I’m not going to doxx myself so I’ll leave it at that.

But whatever your or my or anyone else’s professional experiences might be, unless one of us wrote for WWE we don’t know everything and thus our insights aren’t unimpeachable. 

I cited things like SNL, where there are books and articles where the writers have talked at length about their creative process and how things get rewritten at the last minute; I’ve cited what Stephen King has said and written about his movie experiences, as well as those of other writers. Yet you want to tell me … that they don’t know what they’re talking about?

I get it. You don’t want to write for WWE. You think it would be the worst experience in the world. But not everyone who has ever worked there has trashed it — wrestling IS unique in that there’s a whole sub-industry around people who have been in the business dishing on the bad parts of their jobs or experiences: shoot interviews with wrestlers trashing other wrestlers, etc. And yes we get the same from writers in the industry.

There’s a reason the name is dirtsheets — because it started out as ‘learn all the dirt on what’s really going on.’ We can conclude either (a) nobody ever had a good experience in wrestling, or (b) there’s not much of a market for people writing books or doing podcasts or shoots where they say ‘let me tell you how great everything was.’

[This Player Hating Mothman]

Actually, I think I wanna go a bit deeper into how the sausage is made here because "it's different" is just the tip of the iceberg.

WWE is live, serialized, scripted, fictional, weekly television with no breaks. There is almost nothing like it. The only comparable cases are other weekly-televised wrestling promotions, none of which seek to have a Hollywood-style writers room and a staff on-hand to write scripts. This format produces a lot of very specific quirks that are applicable only to it. Rewrites and direction changes will happen in TV. Plans will change, episodes will get scrapped or f***ed around with. But what's important is that those are decisions that are made at a time and then production typically proceeds as normal. A typical TV show will be weeks ahead of the episode presently airing, with multiple episodes in different stages of having been written, being produced, and being edited together. When someone says "We're cutting the romance subplot out of these episodes and moving it later into the season", that's a choice that everyone is acting on and aware of.

Another Not The Same example: late night talk shows. They typically air year round, maybe have a short break. Their big scripted component is typically the opening monologue. Written in reaction to current events, typically. Very heavy crunch. Got to get ones out every day. That's its own kind of pressure, different from most conventional writing gigs. But not much continuity or fiction. Recycling jokes. Rarely is there a fictional narrative spanning multiple days that can be upended midway through. Those are pretty intense writers rooms. I know someone who works for a major late night show. It's a lot. The pressure is a lot, but you get in those rooms because you're a good comedy writer with sharp instincts. You overcome.

Take a movie script. That's changed hands like five times and it's been a mess. But then it makes it to screen, and you're sending your dailies to the producers. Hopefully all is going well. Maybe you get sent for reshoots. New script, call the actors back, stick them in a wig, CGI out the mustache. Stuff got changed, scenes are being scrapped, we're adapting to what test audiences want, ignore those scenes. Three editing houses are going to make cuts for this movie. It's a mess. Suicide Squad. I'm talking about Suicide Squad right now. There are points of commitment. The base script. The reshoot script. Revisions from studio notes. It's happening not quite in real time to shape together an ideally coheisve whole, and the final product is put before audience's eyes as a singular work.

WWE has no ability to make television weeks ahead. Everything is live. Because everything is live, everything is typically done on a week to week basis. Within that week to week basis, things that have been committed to can be just totally abandoned. Storyline changes midway through. Character who's supposed to debut and has hype vignettes is just not showing up. Okay we'll keep airing the videos, VEER is coming. Boss decided this match is getting cut. We were supposed to build to something in this match. Oh okay we need to change the finish of this, but we did this last week and that's not going to make sense. We're mid-show and Dolph is getting a promo, quick someone hack together some stuff for Dolph. What's Dolph doing? We don't know. Just write something. The usual shit. It needs to happen right now, he's out there in half an hour. Also that promo you wrote for Orton that was actually good and interesting is off the show, Orton's not doing shit this week. You had something good written out but instead you got saddled to do a 'You people' promo for Dolph Ziggler.

None of those individual pieces are impossible to run into in a conventional production. What's important here is that there is never any commitment to an idea. You are constantly changing plans, constantly running around in rewrites, you're never locked into something, you're never moving forward with an idea. The episode last week is not a set in stone guarantee that the showrunner's mind is made up and we're doing it this way. In fact if last week we kicked off previously-held-gold Dominick Mysterio from the Survivor Series team because we only want champions, but now Austin Theory is going to get added to the team, it doesn't matter what words were said last week. Just keep going. Just barge onward, boss says Austin Theory in the match. WWE's format and the production schedule it keeps, paired with how much rewrite stuff is said to go on (which in turn keeps them from plotting out further plans on several fronts) absolutely creates a unique complication. The persistence and the consistency that comes with WWE's specific brand of chaos is absolutely not typical within the field of TV writing.

Now do that every week all year round. Commitments never come, it's a constant week to week cycle, you're trapped making the same episode of TV every week until you die. No matter who writes the scripts everybody sounds the exact same, and you also have to navigate one of those 'don't touch the walls or you'll get an electric shock' mazes of phrasing and word choice that involves like four pages of no-no words that are the words people would naturally use in that context. There is never a point where something is set. There is never a moment where you reach that step of sitting down to work out the rough plan of the whole next season to come. You're always moving directly forward in the short term right now and the deadline for the short term is the literal second someone's music hits.

Literally nothing else in show business operates this way.

[Deleted]

LU is the only televised wrestling show that was run like a ordinary TV show in how it was done and that is unique in itself in wrestling just like how WWE having no weeks off and constant changing of everything is unique to show business itself.

I always loved listening to the producers on that show talk about how they had to shoot the amazing vingettes and those shoots got up to like 12hr days through out the week as they were taping the matches on the weekend and typically from season greenlight to air time was about 4 months and that MGM had very little notes to send in on the show so they were largely left to do their own thing.

So pretty facinating IMO that since LU you could finally look at the two absoloute extremes as far as production goes one that operated like an ordinary show and one that does not and how that trickles into the creative and production processes.

[This Player Hating Mothman]

Apr 13, 2022 16:54:41 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Apr 13, 2022 16:34:31 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

You're right I must be a clown who has no insight or idea what I'm talking about when I say WWE is structurally different than working with an editor or in a conventional draft process. I don't know anything about writing, please explain my job to me so that I can one day actually know what writing is.

Nobody is challenging you. This thread isn’t about you. You have some insight but maybe I do also. I’m not going to doxx myself so I’ll leave it at that.

But whatever your or my or anyone else’s professional experiences might be, unless one of us wrote for WWE we don’t know everything and thus our insights aren’t unimpeachable. 

I cited things like SNL, where there are books and articles where the writers have talked at length about their creative process and how things get rewritten at the last minute; I’ve cited what Stephen King has said and written about his movie experiences, as well as those of other writers. Yet you want to tell me … that they don’t know what they’re talking about?

I get it. You don’t want to write for WWE. You think it would be the worst experience in the world. But not everyone who has ever worked there has trashed it — wrestling IS unique in that there’s a whole sub-industry around people who have been in the business dishing on the bad parts of their jobs or experiences: shoot interviews with wrestlers trashing other wrestlers, etc. And yes we get the same from writers in the industry.

There’s a reason the name is dirtsheets — because it started out as ‘learn all the dirt on what’s really going on.’ We can conclude either (a) nobody ever had a good experience in wrestling, or (b) there’s not much of a market for people writing books or doing podcasts or shoots where they say ‘let me tell you how great everything was.’

No see the part you still aren't getting is that like. I understand that edits happen. That rewrites happen. SNL is a special case. Stephen King? I've read a lot of what Stephen King says too. Stephen King's done a lot of work with editors on the many books he's done. Writing a book is not the same as producing live television, and adapting a book to film is not the same as producing live television, and the sole point I have been making is that the way WWE is structured and the way its rewrites happen is not comparable to the draft process of a novel, and that the unique facets to it are things that can easily be draining and unpleasant to people. I never said Stephen King doesn't know what he's talking about and my opposition here isn't to "this thread isn't about me" but to the condescension that comes from just not being able to understand a premise as simple as the idea that WWE's process is unconventional, backed up by my experience in more conventional frontiers of writing that have more pronounced steps to them. There are standard ways things go and then there are outliers. The outliers tend to be very different beasts of circumstances. I'm not ignoring what happens on SNL. SNL is also a very unique kind of show that presents its own writing challenges and I'm sure anyone who's been in that room but then also worked a conventional taped sitcom could say as much. WWE poses its challenges too. That was the whole point.

[King Boo]

Apr 13, 2022 16:29:54 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Apr 13, 2022 16:21:34 GMT -5 King Boo said:

For themselves, usually not for other people. If it's being done for other people, they at least try to monetize it at some point. Selling their baked goods, streaming playing video games and selling ad space, etc.

For example, unless it's a family member or a really good friend, if someone requested a person who enjoys baking to make them a cake for someone's birthday, they're probably going to have to compensate the baker in some fashion.

If I wrote a really brilliant angle for WWE and only showed my friends, no, they won't have to pay. But if WWE appared out of thin air wanting to use it? You best believe they'd have to pay me.

I don’t understand what we disagree on here.

I pointed out that it’s a job and they get paid for it. Differentiating it from something they do for fun. If someone paid me to bake a cake, I might or might not enjoy it but I’m only baking that specific cake for compensation.

Because the difference is, if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it, I did it for fun and happened to profit from it; if I wrote an angle for WWE and posted it on a website and somehow magically Vince saw it and said, ‘let’s use that, track him down and pay him so we don’t get sued’ — I still wrote it for fun and then happened to get a check.

I guess the confusion is that the phrase "if you're good at something, don't do it for free" usually applies to work-related things, and you listed hobbies. Like your cake baking example "if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it", that's just... not how that would work? So I guess that's where maybe some wires are getting crossed. But it's all good now.

[Feyrhausen]

Apr 13, 2022 17:24:15 GMT -5 King Boo said:

Apr 13, 2022 16:29:54 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

I don’t understand what we disagree on here.

I pointed out that it’s a job and they get paid for it. Differentiating it from something they do for fun. If someone paid me to bake a cake, I might or might not enjoy it but I’m only baking that specific cake for compensation.

Because the difference is, if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it, I did it for fun and happened to profit from it; if I wrote an angle for WWE and posted it on a website and somehow magically Vince saw it and said, ‘let’s use that, track him down and pay him so we don’t get sued’ — I still wrote it for fun and then happened to get a check.

I guess the confusion is that the phrase "if you're good at something, don't do it for free" usually applies to work-related things, and you listed hobbies. Like your cake baking example "if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it", that's just... not how that would work? So I guess that's where maybe some wires are getting crossed. But it's all good now.

Works for hobbies too. Only do it for free for yourself. If I like baking and a friend needs a wedding cake cheap I made do if it makes me happy. However if they are a bridezilla and baking for them will make me unhappy then you bet I want money.

[oxbaker]

Apr 13, 2022 17:24:15 GMT -5 King Boo said:

Apr 13, 2022 16:29:54 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

I don’t understand what we disagree on here.

I pointed out that it’s a job and they get paid for it. Differentiating it from something they do for fun. If someone paid me to bake a cake, I might or might not enjoy it but I’m only baking that specific cake for compensation.

Because the difference is, if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it, I did it for fun and happened to profit from it; if I wrote an angle for WWE and posted it on a website and somehow magically Vince saw it and said, ‘let’s use that, track him down and pay him so we don’t get sued’ — I still wrote it for fun and then happened to get a check.

I guess the confusion is that the phrase "if you're good at something, don't do it for free" usually applies to work-related things, and you listed hobbies. Like your cake baking example "if I bake a cake and then someone wants to buy it", that's just... not how that would work? So I guess that's where maybe some wires are getting crossed. But it's all good now.

I see the disconnect and sorry for any confusion.

My point was work is work and play is play — work isn’t always going to be fun; it’s not designed to be fun, although a work environment can be fun (more often it’s fun sometimes and less fun a lot of the time).

People do things that are fun for free. I’m not saying they should take valued skills and work for free — don’t wrestle for a hotdog and a handshake just because you like wrestling. But people can be good at something and do it for free … because that’s not the field they went into and it’s just what they do for fun; or because there’s no market for it.

[Nosnorb]

It's a job, it's for one of the biggest entertainment companies in the world, and there is a chance that you could play a part in creating a classic piece of pop culture. Seems pretty simple to me.

[fw91]

I honestly would stay away from the industry in any capacity.

[stoptheclocks]

Apr 13, 2022 15:55:52 GMT -5 oxbaker said:

Apr 13, 2022 15:35:40 GMT -5 This Player Hating Mothman said:

I think SNL is actually decently comparable to WWE's weekly output when you factor in how much downtime in a wrestling show doesn't need a script, versus an episode of SNL where outside of the musical guest everything is pure content.

As a professional writer though, I can say that working for WWE seems especially thankless and miserable. It's work. It's a gig. But it's very clear that the rewrite process in WWE leads to stuff being scrapped in a way that absolutely genericizes the whole thing. When I'm panic writing another draft to polish stuff up before a deadline, I feel fairly confident that what I'm writing is actually going to make it. I'm making revisions and following notes from an editor, sure, but I'm never afraid someone is going to rip up everything I did ten minutes before it's meant to go online. Maybe you aren't developing scripts for episodes that don't ever get produced, but instead you're dealing with stories that get the plug pulled on them at the last minute, or have Vince change his mind about a story and immediately render everything you just did pointless right before the point of no return. You can be the one taking point on a story line Mandy and Otis that's getting tons of positive reception and could do big things for them and watching as it all gets torn away in the months to come and none of it matters in the end.

So like, it's a job. But it's also a job that has a lot of unconventional elements to it and which I wouldn't say really follows 1:1 with a lot of the usual occupational expectations and structures. It's a place where professional pride and a care for the stuff you make seems like an absolute loser trap.

I’ll address a couples of points:

Raw is 3 hours. NXT is 2. SD is 2. That’s seven hours of programming and we get reminded from time to time how little of that is actual in-ring wrestling. You can’t convince me that seven skits or however-many make it to an episode of SNL to fill say 50 minutes on air is equal to that. (Not to mention a monthly PPV).

Yes the commentary during matches isn’t scripted per se (although I’m sure there are talking points, and the writers would probably be the ones putting those together) but one opening promo with say Cody and AJ in the ring is probably as long as, if not longer than, an average SNL script. All those recaps are scripted, etc.

And while you certainly have some points comparing it to writing for a website, journalists all the time work on stories that are scrapped — let’s say a sportswriter working on a feature on a player … and he gets traded (he’s working for a news site that covers the Dolphins, that guy is no longer a Dolphin so who cares) or injured, out for the season. Or someone covering government has a story ready for a bill if it passes and it doesn’t, or something more important comes up in the session and he’s 90 percent done with that and an editor says ‘drop that, work on this.’

Probably a smaller percentage but it does happen.

Same for songwriting. You write a song and someone wants to record it and … it doesn’t make the album because they decided to go with a different song. Or maybe not a whole movie but the scene you put your heart and soul into ends up on the cutting room floor.

That’s what writing is.

I'm not sure you can equate the time it takes to write something based on duration of the output output.

Give me a couple hours and I could do write a script for a wrestling promo (albeit not a very good one). But I'd be absolutely nowhere close to writing an SNL skit or a song.

Anyway, the answer to the question is that the people that do it either enjoy it, or recognise that there are thousands upon thousands of harder ways to make a living. Or a combination of both.

[lildude8218]

To be fair, we haven't ever seen any writer's first draft that is given to Vince. We don't know that their best work is getting ripped up or passed over. They could be turning in stuff that you'd find even worse than what ends up on television.

[Dub H]

Apr 14, 2022 1:50:11 GMT -5 lildude8218 said:

To be fair, we haven't ever seen any writer's first draft that is given to Vince. We don't know that their best work is getting ripped up or passed over. They could be turning in stuff that you'd find even worse than what ends up on television.

They laughted at the person that wanted a continuity -anything-.

I dont think they WANT good writers