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.
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