We have reviewed the 14 "main" characters set forth in the original LOST writer's guide, prepared for the network executives to help green light the series after the pilot episode. TPTB made significant changes early on in regard to their set of main characters and their envisioned roles.
First, the review of the order of importance in the guide descriptions:
1. Jack
2. Kate
3. Charlie
4. Sawyer
5. Boone
6. Shannon
7. Locke
8. Sayid
9. Sun
10. Jin
11. Hurley
12. Claire (Aaron)
13. Michael
14. Walt
As proposed in the original guide, Jack and Kate would be the main, main characters and they would have interactive, self contained stories with the remaining main characters and the other secondary beach camp survivors.
But if you break down the guide's character descriptions as being morally good, average, bad or evil/dangerous behavior, the original main characters would break down like this:
GOOD: Jack, Hurley
AVERAGE: Locke, Sayid, Michael, Walt
BAD: Kate, Charlie, Sawyer, Shannon, Claire, Sun, Jin
EVIL/DANGEROUS: Boone, Aaron.
And the immediate bonds to be formed on the island were to be:
Jack and Kate, as leaders
Jack and Charlie, with Charlie being Jack's right hand man
Sawyer and Shannon hook up
Michael and Walt trying to become a family unit
The rest of the main cast were open ended on how their characters would evolve through the story structure.
And here is how the guide described the story structure for the series:
And now, on to the bread and butter.
Our greatest challenge on LOST is presenting compelling stories. Since the show is not serialized, our episodic structure demands fresh plots every week. While it is almost impossible to break down the specific anatomy of an episode, we can almost certainly reverse-engineer one by highlighting the ingredients.
Our greatest challenge on LOST is presenting compelling stories. Since the show is not serialized, our episodic structure demands fresh plots every week. While it is almost impossible to break down the specific anatomy of an episode, we can almost certainly reverse-engineer one by highlighting the ingredients.
So what TYPES of stories do we plan on telling?
paradigms... They are:
Character Conflict
Survival/Society Building
The Island Attacks/Forces of Nature
Flashbacks (as established in the Pilot)
"The Others"/Contact With New People
Character Conflict
Survival/Society Building
The Island Attacks/Forces of Nature
Flashbacks (as established in the Pilot)
"The Others"/Contact With New People
Well- we've boiled it down to five basic.
The beauty of these paradigms is our ability to mix and match. Some episodes may contain ALL
of the elements above (certainly every episode will feature character conflict), others may focus
squarely on one. Which brings us. to what may be the key ingredient for LOST- - -
Mystery.
The hope is that every episode will be anchored by some type of MYSTERY - an event or task that gives each episode a driving investigative thread, even if that mystery is as simple as figuring out why there is seemingly no fresh water on the island, why everyone is getting sick or where one of our characters has disappeared to.
Mystery.
The hope is that every episode will be anchored by some type of MYSTERY - an event or task that gives each episode a driving investigative thread, even if that mystery is as simple as figuring out why there is seemingly no fresh water on the island, why everyone is getting sick or where one of our characters has disappeared to.
As discussed previously, LOST's creative team promised that the show would not be serialized (one long story plot carried over from episode to episode or season to season). The writers would come up with a "fresh" plot for each week's episode, with a self contained resolution building on the main theme of survival and building an island society.
They put five basic building blocks on the table and said they would mix and match them to create compelling weekly stories. For example, there would be character conflict on how to build their beach camp. Then the next week, there would be a group reaction to a event in nature, such as a hurricane. Then the next week, there could be another character conflict over contacting strangers spied on recon mission. It is sort of a plan like graphing sentence structure in elementary school (noun, adverb, verb, subject, etc.) to form a plot.
Three things were placed on the writing table from the very beginning: character flashbacks as a means to fill episodes; the island would have "other" people who could conflict with the survivors; and "the island attacks" the group from time to time (whether it is the smoke monster or the island itself, that is not clear but open ended enough with the description of Claire to suggest that the island as an intelligent being capable of disrupting their lives.)
For reasons of probable convenience, the idea of stand alone episodes was abandoned for the sake of constant flashback story telling to flesh out character motivations, mental states or secrets in order to stretch out the main "survival" story as long as possible. To keep the serialization of the survival story going, the writers quickly began throwing in mysteries into the episodes without solving them . . . letting them linger in the characters (and viewers minds) until they were also abandoned, forgotten or dismissed.
But when you read the LOST writer's guide, you get the feeling that the producers and show runners were winging it with generalizations - - - a criticism that came to the forefront in later seasons when there were so many plot lines being juggled at the same time, people felt the writers were just making it up as the went, with no early defined ending in sight. Some fans still view Season 6 as the writers trying to get out of the corner they painted themselves into during the first five seasons.
