is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Friday
Mar 03, 2006

Weekly Wrap-Up (2/24/06 - 3/3/06) posted by kza

Stealing an idea straight from the Stranger’s Slog, we’re going to do a weekly wrap-up, covering every Friday to Friday. Although we don’t post as often as other blogs (nor should we, when there’s only two of us and the posts are part of a conversation, and not celebrity gossip or something stupid like that), there’s usually a lot going on nonetheless. To wit:

The Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas rolls on, as this week Burley and Shockah discussed Round Seven, which pitted Rachel, My Dear (a woman trapped in a crazy house designed by her mad fiancé) against Methane Madness (an inmate on a prison planet surrounded by a toxic atmosphere tries to escape by inventing, underneath the guards’ noses, a process to make the atmosphere breathable). After 7 posts of back and forth, we went to vote… and for the first time in the history of the contest, we voted for different stories. We’re now dealing with the post-tied-vote process, which means that each person has to spell out a version they like of the story they didn’t vote for. Burley has already put up a character bio for the imprisoned scientist of Methane Madness, while Shockah is preparing a post that will pitch a story outline for Rachel, My Dear.

Another continuing series is Shockah’s posts about the sequence method, a theory of screenplay structure that will probably be used to help shape the winner of the Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas. (“[H]e can give you a succinct overview of points of the sequence method better than the guys who write books about it” — Burley Grymz, Spitball!) Right now, there’s three posts about the subject: an intro, an explanation of the first four points of what I call “the story core”, and an explanation about the last four points. (Burley has a couple responses to these posts, here and here.) Coming up, Shockah will take an arty, little-known indie from 30 years ago called Jaws and break it down using the sequence method. Should be good for a few laughs; stay tuned.

(Oh, and in the Forum, Shockah and Burley posted their ideas for recasting a remake of Jaws and it’s totally awesome. Check it out and add your two cents!)

Finally, Burley is inventing his own theory of structure based around the game of cricket (which he knows nothing about), which goes by the name of… *sigh*… Tip Scum. See Shockah’s reaction here; and Burley’s reaction to the reaction here.

Comments (0) — Category: communications

HIDE Down Arrow

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.


 Subscribe to our feed


Our Twitter account, where we note when longer articles are posted. While we're at it, here's Kent and Martin's Twitter accounts.

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.