is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Jan 05, 2006

Contemplating the contemplation posted by Martin

Mr. Shockah and I have more ideas than time to flesh them out. That’s just the nature of writing—the fullest screenplays start with a singular query—something that captures your attention. For me, it’s usually a question—in this case, what would a prison planet be like?

Now that we have to answer that question—have to, mind you—I’m trying to think about it from a different angle. Could you tell a love story on a Prison Planet (a: yes). Could you tell a comedy on a Prison Planet (a: yes). Could you make an action-adventure / horror / gory mess on a prison planet (a: yes). Political movie, chick flick—it could be all be done there—the setting suggests a plot, but doesn’t have to be the plot. Of course, if it’s not important to what happens, then there is no sense but pure whimsy to put the thing on the damn planet to begin with, so the plot will have to revolve somehow with the fact that the setting is a prison planet.

But, that caveat aside, we could really do anything we want. So, where do we start? Maybe we start with a character. Maybe that character is a prisoner just being sent to the planet. So, if that is indeed where we’re going to start (I’ll wait for Mr. Shockah to opine before I start spinning too far), then a bunch of questions pop up. Why is he there? What did she do? How did he get there? How is she put on the planet’s surface? Where on the planet is he put down? Are their guards on the planet surface? Are their guards in space? Do they monitor technology on the surface? What is the weather on the planet?

Suddenly, these questions start getting answered and a hazy picture starts being drawn:

A woman was convicted of murdering her violent husband is sentenced to the Prison Planet. She arrives there after being beamed on a stream of light. There is a heavily guarded landing station that the prisoners are always trying to assault, but as of yet they have not been successful. The skies are continually stormy with orange clouds as she is pushed out into the station by cruel guards into a crowd of very hungry looking men… or

A man convicted of treason—he was the president of his planet—is sent away after a coup. He is put on the ground by a lifter space craft that drops him with supplies in the middle of a desert. There are no guards. there is no one around. He has limited food and water… or

A woman is brought before a court in the largest city of the prison planet. They read the charges from her captors and assign her a task on the planet surface. The ore mines are popular with many people, but she has experience with high culture. She’ll be a domestic to one of the highest ranking judges, just doing his time until he can be rotated off the prison planet…

So, none of those kill me, but I could spend all night writing little synopsis. Somewhere in there we’ll find the hook that starts getting us more jazzed. What say you Mr. Shockah? Where would you like to start this discussion?

Comments (0) — Category: the screenplay

HIDE Down Arrow

What is Spitball!?

Spitball! is two guys collaborating to write about writing and collaboration. We're writing partners who have worked together since 2000, and placed in the top 100 in the last Project Greenlight for our script YELLOW.

Currently, we are both working on multiple screenplay, short story, and novel ideas independently and together, and collaborate on this blog.

What Spitball! used to be

Spitball! started as an attempt to collaborate on a screenplay online in real time. From January 2006 to July 2007 we worked on an interactive process to decide the story we were going to make. A full postmortem is coming, but you can find the find all the posts by looking in the category Original Version.

During this period, we affected the personalities of two of the most famous spitball pitchers from the early 20th Century. Look at our brief bios for more info about this, and so as not to be confused as to who is talking when.

We rebooted the franchise in early 2009 in its current form.


 Subscribe to our feed


Our Twitter account, where we note when longer articles are posted. While we're at it, here's Kent and Martin's Twitter accounts.

Kent M. Beeson

Urban Shockah pic

Kent M. Beeson (aka Urban Shockah) is a stay-at-home dad and stay-at-home writer, living in Seattle, WA with his wife, 2 year old daughter and an insane cat. In 2007, he was a contributor to the film blog ScreenGrab, where he presciently suggested Jackie Earle Haley to play Rorschach in the Watchmen movie, and in 2008, he wrote a film column for the comic-book site ComiXology called The Watchman. (He's a big fan of the book, if you couldn't tell.) In 2009, he gave up the thrill of freelance writing to focus on screenplays and novels, although he sometimes posts to his blog This Can't End Well, which a continuation of his first blog, he loved him some movies. He's a Pisces, and his favorite movie of all time is Jaws. Coincidence? I think not.

Martin McClellan

Burleigh Grimes pic

Martin (aka Burley Grymz) is a designer and writer. He occasionally blogs at his beloved Hellbox, and keeps a longer ostensibly more interesting bio over here at his eponymous website. You can also find him on Twitter.