is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Thursday
Mar 23, 2006

Round 9.9 [The Atheist v. Atmosphere] posted by kza

In this case the story rests on a fulcrum: the audiences ability to make an emotional connection with the protag. Making him autistic seems like an artificial barrier to doing that.

I totally disagree with this premise. I can’t imagine walking into a movie about an autistic person and thinking, “This guy can’t make an emotional connection to people, so I can’t make an emotional connection with him.” That doesn’t make any sense. I literally don’t understand or recognize what you’re describing. It’s totally contrary to everything I know about stories and films.

The question is whether this story will be enhanced or troubled by having the protag be autistic. I think the latter.

And I think the former.

The fact that he’s, again, for lack of a better phrase, “mentally handicapped” is problematic, but it seems more like an opportunity than a crisis. It’s strange, because putting the deaths of hundreds or thousands of people on the head of a mentally handicapped man is an odd premise for a story. But I don’t think it’s an excuse — he’s still responsible, and there are still ramifications: meaning, this guy with mental problems goes to jail. I think that’s interesting, and invites a complicated response.

But again, what I’m penultimately saying isn’t that it has to be an autistic guy, simply that my version and your version are on the same level, imo — that is, my “autism made me do it” and your “it was a mistake cuz I fell asleep” are more or less equivalent. I still think the culpability of the protagonist needs to be raised.

And what I’m ultimately saying is that I’m tired of considering the audience and trying to imagine what they will or won’t accept. It’s cart before the horse. Figure out the story first, then figure out how to “sell” it to an audience.

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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.