is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Tuesday
Mar 07, 2006

Re: Point of Order: Rules Clarification posted by Martin

I’m torn about this. On one hand, I do want Rachel, My Dear to move forward, and also want to keep the competition moving forward. On the other hand, it seems that the argument is that Rachel should win because you aren’t finding it compelling enough to find your way into it. That tells me that it’s not a good candidate for moving on, since in the next rounds I want the competition to be stiff and full of it. Ideas, that is.

So, thinking about those things, I think we should establish the following rule: forfeiture. You forfeit the round if you feel that you can’t further the story of the disputed work. Forfeiture means that the other player gets to pick which work moves forward, and also receives a trump card.

What does the trump card do? Hmmm, since I’m about to receive one, I should shoot the moon. I think instead I’ll just say this: the trump card can be played at any time to make the other player write an essay. The essay will have to be 1000 words or more on a topic of the trump card holder’s choice written within one week.

If you accept these terms, we’ll move forward, and I will post which story I choose to forward this round.

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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.