is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Tuesday
Jan 17, 2006

It's a World World World World World posted by Martin

Did you know if you Google (in quotes) “In a world” the first response is the Beastie Boys website? Now that’s another world for pirate treasure.

Anyway—As much as I liked your original 8 “In a World” scenarios (forever now known as IAWS), I think pumping out a big old slew of them is a great idea. Here’s the ones I could come up with as quick as possible (I made it to 9—33 to go!):

1. In a world where galactic criminals are rounded and left to die on one planet, one man—a crooked cop—must penetrate their violent society to spring a prison break with the leader of the most ruthless gang. If he succeeds, his name is clear. If he fails, Earth will fall to INVADING IMPATIENT ALIENS.

2. In a world where all information is open and no person is private, a grad student stumbles on an ancient secret that could threaten the base of human knowledge…how can you communicate if all language is rendered illegible? Her enemies want to rebuild the tower. Get ready for BABEL.

3. In a world where your DNA is patented and you are born in debt, one woman’s refusal to pay off her birth-deficit lands her in the largest and most violent debtors prison that ever existed: THE PLANET EARTH.

4. In a world devout to an all powerful god, one man uncovers exposes an unspeakable truth: their planet wasn’t carved by a deity, it was created to hold the most dangerous prisoners in the galaxy: their ancestors. What crime is so unspeakable that not only you will be punished for committing it, but all of your heirs will as well? And what happens when you find out that your captors are still watching your every move?

5. In a world where four teenagers are about to become world champions of the Prison Planet Videogame playoffs, someone sabotages their game units and they enter the most violent world ever conceived with no way of escaping, and NO RE-SPAWNING ALLOWED.

6. In a world where lawyers are the only legal parents, two couples are condemned for reproducing without license and sentenced to banishment on the sterile Prison Planet. The only problem is that one of them is the PRESIDENT OF THE BAR.

7. In a world where friendly monks care for a shipwrecked space traveller carrying a deadly secret, ten outposters learn just what it means to be held prisoner on your own planet. With help four hundred light years away, they have no choice but to break their oath of silence and peace, and defend themselves from certain death. [1]

8. In a world where gender roles are reversed and women keep tight rule over their mates, men who act out are sent to Prison Planet! The intense spa planet where a crack team of psychologists will teach them about life, friendship, caring, laughter, and of course—about love.

9. In a world where warning clans tear the landscape in half, two teenagers find each other outside of societies constraints. Love, it seems, can flourish in war. But what happens when their parents find out that their children are trying to escape their grasp, and the only other livable land in the galaxy is THE PRISON PLANET?

[1] Ummm, this one might sound slightly familiar…

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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.


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Kent M. Beeson

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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

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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.