THE SET UP

We have reviewed most of the LOST Writer's Guide, which was leaked onto the internet last year. This document was prepared to help "sell" LOST to ABC as a viable program after the original pilot episode was shot. It was supposed to be the outline for the show, and to calm questions from network executives. J.J. Abrams was the hot director/executive producer at the time, so he was given quite a lot of leeway in new show developments. But again, the writer's guide did attempt to answer direct questions about how the show would move forward.

The set up was fairly clear. ABC executives wanted to have a "real" Survivor drama (not like a "fake" reality game show). As such, elements of survival, character conflict and human nature and distrust would be foundational factors to write stories around 48 plane crash survivors. If one would put a formula to it it would be something like:

Survivor + Robinson Crusoe + Criminal Drama + Mystery/Adventure show = LOST.

The producers of LOST needed to convince ABC that despite the grandeur of the pilot and ensemble cast, TPTB could produce interesting episodes for an entire season.  Episodes, the guide said, would be self contained stories where an investigation, event, problem or mystery is concluded or resolved.

The guide stated:

These thirty stories are in no particular order. Instead, they are the basic building blocks for the FIRST TWELVE EPISODES. We've included smaller stories (five - eight beats) in addition to the "Massive A's" - - - larger and plot driven enough to carry an entire episode on their own. 

Many of these stories are worked out in much greater detail, but so as not to get too dense here, we're presenting them in their tightest form.

We will go through the 30 story outlines in the next few posts.

But it is interesting to note that the writers realized that at a minimum they would need to have 30 stories for the first 12 episodes, or at least 2.5 main stories to weave to a conclusion each week. As they said, there may be one story that fills the entire hour. Or there may be a main story, augmented by character flash backs, to fill in an hour. The writers were challenged to write two 30-minute episodes and weave them together each week's issues to a reasonable conclusion.

Recall, the writers were going to use Jack and Kate as the two leads. The episodes would then bring in the other 12 main characters in different episodes. The "filler" would include the background characters or guest stars (such as the appearance of the Others). But the basic premise was the struggles of leaders like Jack and Kate to gather a consensus and build a viable base camp so everyone who survived the plane crash had a chance to live.