is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Tuesday
Feb 28, 2006

The State of the Blog: February posted by Martin

Friends, Romans, lovers of monospaced courier 12pt typefaces. Welcome to the state of the blog for the end of February.

Spitball! is now officially two months old. If you search “spitball” on Google, we make the front page. This month there have been over 60 posts, mostly dealing with the ongoing plot battle. It started last month when Shockah suggested that we come up with 25 each “in a world” scenarios that revolved around the idea of the Prison Planet, which we decided would be our jumping off point.

After picking our personal 8 favorites, we paired them together to have blowouts. Currently, we’re on round 7 of 8, which has taken up most of the month. Although the going is slow, I think it’s very fruitful, with lots of good ideas being thrown around and lots of ideas being challenged. When this round is done, there will be four heats to pair the 8 down to 4, then 4 to 2. Then, the battle for the plot of the screenplay that we will write in full on the blog.

But, if that’s all you’ve read, you’ve been missing Shockah’s fine posts on the Sequence Method, which are worth a read for the simple fact that he can give you a succinct overview of points of the sequence method better than the guys who write books about it. If you know nothing about it, this is a great place to start. You’ll find them all in the Technique archive section. Also, you’ve missed my beginning’s in making the world’s first screenplay method based on pure farce, and stealing language from the upstanding sport of cricket (certainly a sport that deserves far better than my dragging it down). Our intention, both of us, is to better our craft, our writing, and our analytical skills. I can only joke about something I understand, so that’s my motivation in. Shockah’s motivation, I believe, is his love of figuring out systems and rules, arcane and otherwise. Both of us want to learn this stuff so that we can forget it and write better movies.

It’s been said, but bears saying again that the work is here is released into the public domain. We have doubled the number of people commenting on the forums on plot from 1 to 2. Like last month, I am once again reminding those friends of ours whose shows we have gone to, movies we have worked on, stories we have read, websites we have helped design, dinners we have cooked, shoes we have shined, and good times we have participated in to please get in to the forum and leave us comments. We know you’ve come to our readings and given us your time and effort in the past, but this is your last chance to solidify your relationships with us before we either become famous or social pariahs. If you’re lurking, feel free to de-cloak with some ridiculous anonymous moniker. The people here are named Burley Grymz, Urban Shockah, and Tippy Canoe. You’ll be in good company.

But, this is partially our fault, we have not done any hard promotion yet. During March and April these things will start to happen. In the meantime, you can have that satisfied feeling that comes from being an early member of the group of people, and have an active voice in shaping the way that the forums take shape.

Last month I said that January was the beta month. February was the month where we shook out the cobwebs, and have tested the word limit on this blog thing. So far so good, say I. As always, we’re interested in your feedback of all sorts, be it about the design, editorial standards or lack thereof, or usability issues. Log on to the forums and let it fly. In any case, even if you area lurker, we appreciate your time in reading. We hope you’re enjoying yourself.

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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

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.