is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Friday
Jan 27, 2006

Round 1.5 [Liber XII v. Rasputin the Translator] posted by kza

POINT OF ODOR!

Lisa stinks.

POINT OF ORDER!

I should let Burley and eveyone else know that, right now at least, I don’t plan on Spitball!ing on the weekends. As Burley knows, there are other projects that need my attention as well, and I haven’t been able to give them the attention they need. Hopefully, I’ll be able to give them the same kind of momentum that this has, and then I’ll be able to weave working on them with working on this. But right now, they need their own days. Feed me! Feed me! they say.

AND NOW…

Here’s my kinda-sorta x>y>z for Rasputin: Aliens land > there’s some kind of misunderstanding because of the way the aliens communicate and something bad happens > tensions rise between aliens and humans > Smart Agent realizes there’s a connection between alien language/method of communication and this crazy, brilliant guy she’s read about who lives in the wood > she goes to track him down > there are complications, but she finds him > he’s unwilling to help > she finds just the thing to persuade him to help > he goes to help and talk the aliens into not disintegrating us > but wait, he can communicate with them, but the humans can’t — what’s he really saying? How do we know he’s on the level? > Smart Agent looks into Rasputin’s past > Finds some clue or some revelation that gives her some insight as to what’s really going down > she has to hurry back to the scene of negotiations — it isn’t what the humans think it is! > she gets there just in time to stop it — but is she really correct in her suspicions? Or did she just fuck everything up?

Something like that. That’s awfully vague, but hopefully gives you some idea of how I see this thing.

And to answer my own “con” from my last post (and as something of a warning): If this idea is selected, both in terms of this round and the contest as a whole, my approach will be Everything I Need To Know About The Story Is Contained In The “Rasputin” Character. That is, the aliens, what their deal is, the Agent, the world of the story, everything I really need to know I plan to get by designing this character. I’m not saying this is the best way, but it’s the only way I can imagine finding an “in” for this story for myself.

Oh, and for the record, I don’t see him as evil. Crazy, messed-up, untrustworthy, bad hygeine, violent… yes. But not evil.

And now let’s see if I can give Liber XII a little sugar.

Yes, to me the “evilness” of the computer is something of a MacGuffin. Or to go back to Die Hard, while it’s interesting and cool that Hans Gruber has taken over the Nakatomi building for money and not politics like everyone assumes — is it important? No. What it’s important is that Hans Gruber has taken over the Nakatomi building. Thus, the evilness in the computer is just there to set it all into motion.

Maybe that’s the hang-up — if we look at this from a Sequence Structure perspective (and boy oh boy, that’s gonna need its own blog entry down the line), then the computer planet going bad is the Point of Attack (the storm clouds) and presumably the planet killing someone and taking over the operation (or something like that) is the Predicament. But what’s the Main Tension? What does the protagonist want? What is the majority of the second act about? Sure, he probably wants to escape and/or destroy the computer. But if so, then what’s the Third Act about? And if not — if that is the Third Act— again, what’s the Second Act about?

(Slightly OT and about Die Hard again: It should be noted that the screenwriter of Die Hard considered the first two acts over in the first 20 pages or so, and considered the remainder of the movie to be the Third Act. Which I found interesting.)

So it looks like the question for Liber XII is not unlike the one for Rasputin: who is this character? This is as about as hacky as it gets, but I think he’s low on the totem pole, both in age and rank. His job is something pretty lame compared to the other monks’ — while others get to interface with the computer and manipulate data, etc., he’s out emptying latrines and fixing leaks in the undergound chambers and there are ugly space rats and space roaches running around down there. Or maybe like Steven Seagal, he’s just a cook. So obviously the first point of order for the evil computer is to kill all the elder monks, and that’s when the Little Monk reluctantly comes forward to lead the others in defeating the evil computer.

Jesus. Can I have my million dollars now, Mr. Bruckheimer?

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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.