is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.

Friday
Mar 10, 2006

Weekly Wrap-Up (3/4/06 - 3/10/06) posted by kza

Nine posts this week, but only two topics!

Earlier in the week, Shockah posted Part I of his analysis of Jaws, covering the first four points of the sequence method. Part II coming up soon.

Then the Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas came to a screeching halt, as the other eight posts were devoted to a drawn-out, slightly contentious and lovingly pedantic discussion about the penalties of forfeiture. (Yes, we make our screenwriting blog sound like tax law; y’wanna fight about it?) Last week, if you’ll remember, was the very first tied vote in the history of the Tourney. Our rules dictated that Shockah and Burley had to come up with a version of the story they didn’t vote for to continue the discussion. While Burley was able to do so for Methane Madness, Shockah wasn’t sure if he was going to be able to do the same for Rachel, My Dear. What would happen if he couldn’t fulfill his obligation?

After much, much discussion, the rule of forfeiture was agreed upon and there was much rejoicing. No, not rejoicing — something else. Now, the world waits with much anticipation to see if Shockah does indeed forfeit or pulls it together with a blazingly brilliant post about a story idea he ranked fifteenth out of twenty-five. Should be (better be) interesting — there’s a trump card at stake!

We’ll be back in two and two.

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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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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.