is two guys collaborating to write on writing and collaboration.
Hey folks, things have been busy around both the Shockah and Grymz homesteads, which means things are gonna be real slow here at Spitball!. I’m pretty sure things are going to get more active here in the next few weeks, but until then, here’s what’s been happening:
Towards the Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas, Shockah presented character sketches for the two story ideas under consideration, Terminal Connection and Little Black Stray. Little Black Stray so caught Shockah’s imagination, that he proceeded to write not one, but two more posts about his vision for the story, including details of a shocking and depressing ending that one reader was driven to state in the forums that she “liked it”.
Poor Terminal Connection, however, has not received the same kind of attention. However, it did lead to a brief discussion of whether precognition is involved or not. The Magic 8-Ball says, Outlook not so good.
On other fronts, Burley asked that we, and he, remember the sounds, and Shockah, hepped on goofballs (which is Mountain Dew and chocolate cake) started writing rants, in the Signal vs. Noise style, about screenwriting technique. Something about Loose Ends and Letting the Audience Do the Work. Yes, there will be more.
And there will be more genuine Spitballing! as well. In the next few weeks, we’ll be hearing Burley’s take on some characters from the Terminal Connection and Little Black Stray universes, as well as getting to the last two stories in this heat, La Commune Planet and The Scabs. And from there, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to the final heat, where the winner of the First Spitball! Tourney of Story Ideas will be crowned.
Be there, or be octagonal.
Comments (0) — Category: the screenplay
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.
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.
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 (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 (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.