Previously, in my review of the Screenwriting Expo LOST Panels:

I had the unique opportunity this past weekend to attend the Screenwriting Expo here in Los Angeles.  There were two LOST panels on Saturday afternoon.

The first panel featured producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the geniuses that orchestrate the incredible show.  The second panel featured writers and co-producers Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz as they detailed the writing process behind one of my personal favorites, the penultimate episode of Season 3, the Charlie-centric, Greatest Hits.

Today, here’s some insight into how the LOST Writer’s Room works and some deep insight into the writing of season four, episode five The Constant.

At the end of each season, the LOST writing staff has an intensive, three-week ritual called ‘Mini-Camp.’ They begin by deciding what that will take place in the next season finale.  The finale then becomes the goal that they work toward in the planning of each episode within the season.

“The first question of Mini-camp is ‘What do we owe?’” said Eddie Kitsis.  He was referring to the audiences’ expectations for the upcoming season.

Apparently, Mini-camp makes the LOST writers immune to writer’s block when they have to write an individual episode later on.  One of them (I can’t remember who) said that writer’s block is not a problem at all for the staff now that they are working towards an ending for the show.  LOST is one of the only television shows to have a definitive end-date.  Until the middle of season three, the show was going to run indefinitely as is common in network television.

“The days of ‘What is the episode going to be?’ are behind us,” said Damon Lindelof.

In the first six episodes of season three, several of the central characters were locked up in cages.  Damon said that the characters were locked in cages because the story was ‘locked up.’ The story of LOST has always had a beginning, a middle and an end, unlike most TV shows.  Previously, when the show’s end was nowhere in sight, the story couldn’t progress toward that end. When that reality began to become evident in the story, the fans reacted negatively and the powers-that-be at ABC generously appeased them by allowing the writers to tell the story in the best way possible – with an end in mind.

A typical day for Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse goes something like this:

Damon and Carlton have breakfast together for about forty minutes.  They always have about six episodes of the show in various evolutionary stages so they examine the status of each episode. “We decide which fires are burning most hot,” said Damon. There is always a “wild card” issue that has to be dealt with in a timely manner.

Carlton usually focuses more on the Hawaii production because has more experience than Damon has in the actual physical aspects of making a show. Carlton spends roughly ninety minutes a day on phone directing the Hawaii crew.

Damon said that the “writer’s room is intensive.”  The staff spends about five hours a day, five days a week working together.  Individual teams of writers will go off together to write the actual scripts, but most of their time is spent as a big group in the Writer’s Room working out every aspect of the story on big whiteboards that cover every wall.

They typically spend five days breaking a story. They begin with one day of “blue sky” brainstorming. By day two, they are deciding what specific scenes they want to see. By day three, they start breaking the story outline on the white boards.

The LOST writers construct each episode with a six act structure.  However, they think of the six act structure as “teaser plus five,” said Eddie Kitsis. The ‘teaser’ is everything that comes before the big floating LOST logo at the beginning of the show.

They have three to four scenes per act.  They write out the entire episode’s structure in one-line form (one line per scene) and then they flesh out each scene.  At this point, the “act-outs” are assessed.  A simplified definition of an ‘act-out’ is whatever happens at the end of an act, preceding a commercial break that holds the viewer’s attention through the commercials.  They are sort of mini-cliffhangers.

One of the most beloved episodes of the whole series is season four, episode five, The Constant.  The episode is famous for its remarkably complex plot.  The plot is too unwieldy to attempt to explain here, but you can read a synopsis here.  The Constant took five weeks (as opposed to the average five days) to break because of its complexity.  Greatest Hits (season three, episode twenty-one) was written in three days.

By the third week of working on The Constant, Damon joked about how he wished his consciousness from two years in the future could travel back and give him the script so he didn’t have to finish writing it.  (Fans of the show will get this joke. Like The Constant, the episode it references, it is far too complicated to try to explain here.)

Here are a few other interesting if random notes about The Constant. Damon and Carlton admitted to “stealing” the concept of becoming ‘unstuck in time’ from author Kurt Vonnegut.  He presents this idea in his hilarious and moving novel Slaughterhouse Five.

As I mentioned in part two of this series of blog posts, the writers try to write certain characters so they serve as surrogates for the audience.  In The Constant, Sayid serves as the surrogate for the audience. He is not sure what is happening to Desmond and he’s able to ask questions.  The phenomenon that Desmond experiences in that episode is so unfamiliar that Sayid helps to ground the audience.

At the expo, I had the unique opportunity to ask Damon and Carlton a question about the show.  If you have not watched season FOUR of LOST, skip ahead to the next paragraph.  This paragraph contains a SPOILER.  I told them that they did a great job of ‘earning the moment’ at the end of season four where Desmond and Penny are reunited and I asked them how they wrote such a great love story.  Obviously, the actors (Henry Ian Cusick and Sonya Walger) are wonderfully talented and thus their performances contribute a lot to the emotional weight of the Desmond-Penny relationship but I wanted to know more about the writing behind those great performances.

Carlton replied with a great bit of wisdom. “To write a great love story, you have to give your characters a great obstacle to overcome…”  They are separated and one of them is on an island that is impossible to find.  That’s a pretty great obstacle.

They explained that the first time the audience really learns anything about Desmond, it is revealed that he was on the island because of Penny. He made a drastic decision because of her and it got them both into an impossible situation.

Damon explained that the writers took their time, revealing the rest of Desmond and Penny’s story through flashbacks. The goal there was to show why they are in love. Damon pointed out that the audience did not even learn how the two characters met until the last half of season three.

I have a couple more great stories from the Expo that I will share in a later post. Damon and Carlton shared their worst industry jobs ever and Damon conveys a life lesson that will benefit any artist who hears it.

Until part five, go well.

Previously, in my review of the Screenwriting Expo LOST Panels:

I had the unique opportunity this past weekend to attend the Screenwriting Expo here in Los Angeles.  There were two LOST panels on Saturday afternoon.

The first panel featured producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the geniuses that orchestrate the incredible show.  The second panel featured writers and co-producers Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz as they detailed the writing process behind one of my personal favorites, the penultimate episode of Season 3, the Charlie-centric, Greatest Hits.

I thought I would start this post with some interesting, funfacts that Damon, Carlton, Eddie and Adam shared about the show.  Some of you hardcore fans may already know some of these, but this was all new to me AND I AM DEFINITELY A HARDCORE FAN.

Sawyer, whose real name is James Ford, is named after actor Harrison Ford because the writers always thought of Sawyer as the “Han Solo” of the show.

Most hardcore fans are aware of the story behind the introduction of actor Michael Emerson who plays the character Ben Linus.  But for those who are not aware, here’s the short version:  In a story arc that spans most of the second-half of Season Two, Benjamin Linus, leader of The Others, is locked in a closet in The Swan Station a.k.a. “The Hatch.”  Originally, the writers planned to have Ben locked in the closet for three episodes and then the character would escape.

However, because of the remarkable presence and impact of Michael Emerson’s performance, the LOST writers opted to keep Ben locked in the closet for a further five episodes.  Eight episodes total.

The part that I had not heard before was how their keeping Ben locked in a closet caused problems with the show’s plot.  Ben still had to escape but the writers had abandoned their original plans for how he would escape.  (I cannot remember for certain, but I believe that the character’s escape was originally going to take place during the events that now take place in episode #217, Lockdown.)

Eventually, they decided to merge Ben’s escape with the events surrounding the murders of Libby and Ana Lucia in Two For The Road (episode 220). (Side-note: At the Expo, Damon and Carlton claimed that this controversial murders of those two characters ‘was always part of the plan’ despite the rumors that the characters’ deaths on the show were a result of the actors’ real-life D.U.I. convictions.)

The story, as it exists now, shows Michael inexplicably shooting Ana and Libby, setting Ben free and then shooting himself in the arm.  It is amazing to think that the drastic change of plans was all a result of Emerson’s now-famous gravitas.

Damon explained that “The Hatch was an ‘inherited mystery.’  The first day that J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof met, they had a long brainstorming session about what LOST could be.  They came up with a number of ideas during that meeting many of which made it into the actual show.

At the Expo,Damon relayed a funny exchange that he had with J.J.:

JJ:  ‘…and they should find a hatch!’

D:  ‘What’s in the hatch?’

JJ:  ‘I don’t know, you can figure it out…’

‘The Hatch’ as it has been referred to by the writers and fans, had no original purpose!  It was just a crazy idea spitballed by J.J.  Of course, it later became one of the most compelling features of the show. The uncertainty inherent in such a random idea is why the hatch wasn’t revealed in-show until the middle of the first season.

Damon and Carlton have a self-imposed rule for writing the show where they never introduce an element of the story’s mythology without having worked out where it came from and where it is going within the story.  They couldn’t introduce The Hatch until that late into the series (despite it being one of the earliest ideas presented) because it took them that long to create the story behind the hatch!

Well, judging from the notes that I have from the Expo, the best is yet to come here on my continuing review of the panel discussions.  In part four I’ll share some deep insight into the fabled LOST Writer’s Room and I’ll share the answer to the question that I personally asked Damon and Carlton!

Doesn’t this stuff make you love the show EVEN MORE!?

:: click here to listen to an interview with Chris about this experience ::

Previously, in my review of the Screenwriting Expo LOST Panels:

I had the unique opportunity this past weekend to attend the Screenwriting Expo here in Los Angeles.  There were two LOST panels on Saturday afternoon.

The first panel featured producers Damon Lindelof and Carlton Cuse, the geniuses that orchestrate the incredible show.  The second panel featured writers and co-producers Eddie Kitsis and Adam Horowitz as they detailed the writing process behind one of my personal favorites, the penultimate episode of Season 3, the Charlie-centric, Greatest Hits.

For this post, I thought that I would attempt to convey, as accurately as possible, some of the bits of writing-wisdom that these four genius writers shared with the attendees.

I will also attempt to keep this interesting for writers and non-writer LOST fans as well.  My hope is that this post will enrich the viewing experience for both writers and non-writers alike.  If you’re not a LOST fan, you should be.  Season 5 starts in about two weeks.  You can watch all of the previous seasons on ABC.com for free.

The panel was moderated by Jeff Goldsmith, the senior editor for Creative Screenwriting Magazine.  He did a remarkable job and asked some really great questions.

As a LOST super-fan, one will find a great deal of redundancy in the available articles, interviews and stories about the producers and the show.  It was, therefore, an absolute pleasure to have someone like Jeff run the discussion.  He is objectively well-informed and subjectively a fan.  Needless to say, almost all of his questions yielded some very rich answers.

While he was growing up in New Jersey, Damon Lindelof used to work as an usher at a movie theatre.  He was given fifteen minute breaks during which he would watch the movies that were playing at the theatre in fragments. …in fragments and also out of order.

He might have watched a scene where two people were fighting and wonder, “Why are these people fighting?”  A couple of days later, he might see another segment of the same film that would answer his question.  He was drawn to the mystery.  It was this experience of watching pieces of movies out of sequence that formed his fascination with nonlinear narrative.

Damon then went on to explain another famous nonlinear narrative and its impact on him as a writer.   “Then Pulp Fiction came out and it changed everything,” said Damon.  He referenced a scene near the end of the film where the John Travolta character, Vincent Vega, is walking into his apartment building.  That particular scene, Damon explained, has an incredible weight to it that would not otherwise exist because the audience knows at that point that Vincent is walking to his death.  The audience knows this because they all witnessed his murder in a scene that appears out of sequence (and rather jarringly) in the middle of the film.

One of the main ways that the LOST writers apply this technique of nonlinear narrative is through the pervasive use of flashbacks.  Damon and Carlton referenced the episode where Sawyer seeks to avenge his ravaged tent by killing the wild boar that did it.  Damon said that the audience should be asking, ‘Why is Sawyer having such a emotionally disproportionate reaction to the boar?’  He explained that the writers could answer that question with a long soliloquy at the end of the episode where the character explicitly tells the audience what he is thinking and feeling and why, OR it can be revealed through the character’s back story.  What we are is directly related to where we have been and what we have done.

Damon and Carlton emphasized that the question they are asking when writing any given episode is not just ‘what is the mystery going to be’ but WHEN is the time to reveal the answer to that mystery?  The time to reveal the answer is whenever the revelation will have the greatest emotional impact.

The LOST writers spend 80% of their time talking about character and 20% on the mythology  of the show.  They are convinced that this is the reason why the show has such broad appeal.  Damon and Carlton claimed that they ‘suckered’ the show’s broad audience into watching a show with supernatural and sci-fi elements by relying so heavily on compelling character stories.

Eddie and Adam gave some insight as to how they smuggle the more precarious sci-fi aspects of the show into the script without it all coming across as geeky gobbeltygook.  “We try to make exposition as emotional as possible,” said Eddie.  For example, in the episode Greatest Hits, the scene where Sayid is pointing to the map of the underwater Looking Glass Station and going on and on about the details of how someone will have to swim down to the station and flip a switch was the hardest scene in the whole episode to write.  That was until  they made the scene about Charlie.

Again, through a flashback, the audience learned that Charlie has a fear of swimming.  The previous episodes revealed that Charlie has a fear of dying as well.  He is repeatedly told that he is going to die by the allegedly-precognitive Desmond and Charlie is shown struggling with these fateful messages.  So in the Sayid exposition scene in Greatest Hits, the audience is really thinking about Charlie and what must be going on in his mind as he listens to Sayid.

(As a side note, Damon and Carlton said that they commonly write their characters as surrogates for the audience.  In other words, Sawyer is always ‘in on the joke’ with the audience.  He knows when weird stuff is happening on the island and he points it out.  He says what the audience is thinking and they can relate to him for that reason.  Hurley asks the questions that the audience is asking.  Sayid even serves as an audience-surrogate in the episode The Constant but I’ll explain that more in future posts.  In this scene, Charlie is a surrogate for the audience.  The audience feels the weight of the choice that Charlie is making.)

The audience is reminded in an exchange between Sayid and Jack that whoever will swim down to the station will almost certainly die.  Charlie is thus facing both of these fears in the bravest of ways when he volunteers.  At that point, the audience  has the necessary (but less-interesting) information about the station (the geography and what needs to be done) but they have gone on an emotional journey through Charlie’s fears and courage that pays off in a big way in that scene.  They make the exposition as emotional as possible.

I have at least two more posts worth of LOST insight to share with you.  I will try to get parts three and four of this review up as soon as possible.  Until then, go well.

Doesn’t this stuff make you love the show EVEN MORE!?

:: click here to listen to an interview with Chris about this experience ::

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IN THIS EPISODE::

Special guest Mike Greenholt joins me on this audio commentary that can be played along withTinker Bell the movie (now available on DVD and BluRay).  We explain what we did on the film and how we did it.  We also share stories about the production as well as some personal perspectives on the art of animation.

This podcast is for entertainment and informational purposes only.  The views and opinions expressed therein are those of the individual speakers and do not necessarily represent the views of The Walt Disney Company or any of their respective affiliates and employees.

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