is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Jan 26, 2006

Round 1.4 [Liber XII v. Rasputin the Translator] posted by Martin

Ah questions. Do I need them?

Hell yeah! Working, as you said, from the outside in I’m having trouble seeing the plot line continuum in Liber XII story—but, I also think it’s funny that you’re not seeing it as much in Rasputin—I say funny because it doesn’t surprise me that we’re having trouble seeing the other person’s plot, which tells me that I think there is more imagining going on in our heads that isn’t making it to the page here. But, that’s okay—that’s what this process is for, after all…

Liber XII: In relation to your story, I guess I see it as a more smarty-pants film than you, and maybe that’s holding me up. Although I can see that it’s man-against-nature, in a sense—a hostile environment, but I guess I don’t know why the computer is evil, and that’s also holding up the plot for me. I also want to know if its actually possible for a computer to be evil. I mean, some computers can be pretty badass, but are they evil?

Joking aside (Oh wait, was that a joke? I guess they have to be funny to be considered so…), the real deal is this: computers are logic circuits, and if they had a personality it would be an artificial one. Sure, we can get all Star Trek and talk about sentient artificial lives such as Data, but I don’t think that’s appropriate to the story at hand here. Your plot point is planet goes bad, but how and why? To me, this raises tremendous issues that have to be dealt with before we can figure out plot.

Now, it could be that these issues are a MacGuffin, and frankly all we need to know is that the computer went bad. I can get over myself enough to see that—and, with your description, I’m seeing the scope of the piece better. So, maybe the key to getting this story to work would be putting myself on hold a bit, and just figuring out some big plot points, and then finessing as we go. I can see us doing that, and coming out with an action flick that is respectable. And can include veiled references to both Argentian blind geniuses, and Canadian power trios.

Rasputin the Translator: Here’s my x>y>z thang: Bad aliens appear, are bad > Puny human government impotent > Bad aliens marching on Washington (Moscow / Paris / London) > Rasputin appears and stops march > Rasputin wants unbelievable, and unfair, reward for helping humans > Humans have moral dilemma > Aliens bristle > Rasputin plays his cards > Someone wins.

Of course, in between is a lot of politics. I see this primarily as a political thriller, but I think we need a fair measure of destruction-o-thon to make it read as scary and viable. That would make Rasputin more messianic when he appears—and he kind of would be. I think some people would worship him, and some would want to kill him and just give in to the all powerful aliens.

I think, as you said, this one would be harder than Liber XII, but I think that not because the skin of the story isn’t there, in my mind, but because we’ll be dealing with politics and human condition. But, then I think: How would Altman handle this? How would Cronenberg handle this? I mean—just because it’s a political thriller doesn’t mean it has to be Airforce One—I can see this getting a bit subversive, frankly. How can it not when the main character is an evil, bearded psychic?

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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.