is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Friday
Mar 17, 2006

Weekly Wrap-Up (3/11/06 - 3/17/06) posted by kza

Lots of activity this week!

First, Shockah posted the second half of his Jaws analysis. (Part One is here.)

Then, after the constipation of being unable to come up with a story for Rachel, My Dear, Shockah was forced to forfeit, the first (and hopefully last) such instance in the short history of the Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas. This meant that Burley could either pick his favorite (Rachel) to automatically move ahead, or he could pick Shockah’s (Methane Madness) and take a “trump card”, meaning he can force Shockah to write a 1000 word essay on a topic of Burley’s choice at any time. Do you even have to ask which one Burley picked? I mean, seriously.

So Methane Madness moved on, and Shockah requested that the title be changed to Atmosphere, in honor of his adopted cousin on his father’s side, the late great Ian Curtis. It was approved.

Then Round Eight, Cop on the Hunt v. The Scabs commenced, and it was kind of like a Yankees v. Devil Rays game — one of these story ideas just didn’t belong here. Maybe in some kind of Spitball! AAA club, but not here buddy — this is the major leagues.

So, Heat #1, where we pitted 16 ideas against each other to come out with eight, now becomes Heat #2, where those eight will become four. These battles will now include short, 600 word character sketches of each story’s protagonist.

Round Nine, The Atheist v. Atmosphere, will begin shortly. Today. I swear. On the grave of my late adopted cousin.

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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.