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Week 1 Day 4 – Secrets and Reveals – LOST
1. Please watch this scene and provide your insights/breakthroughs into what makes this character great from a writing perspective.
2. Read the other writers comments and make notes of any insights/breakthroughs you like.
3. Rethink or create a scene for your script using your new insights and rewrite that scene/character.
4. Post the answer to the question, “What I learned rewriting my scene/character…?” and post it in the 5 PM daily post here.
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6 Replies
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Jack: Boy Scout, may be in love with Kate, caring, a “good guy”
Sawyer: bad boy (sexy), finagler (has booze), manipulative, dangerous
Kate: mysterious, vengeful in past, dangerous
Three totally different reveals – an interesting technique
Jack learns from a dying man (FBI agent?) that Kate is a criminal. He learns this by direction from the dying man to his own coat pocket, where there is a page of booking photos. What does this mean about the woman Jack has been falling in love with?
Sawyer: playfully sitting around a campfire, drinking the mini bottles found on aircraft. Says he’s got a lot more. Confident, clearly a finagler/bad boy. Starts a game of “I never” (never heard of the game), and there are some surprises there. Starts with “never kissed a man”, she counters with “never work pink” (he mutters something about the 80s); they’re opening up over the campfire. And eventually he says “never killed a man”. And Kate drinks, letting us know that she HAS killed a man. And then Sawyer drinks “I guess we do have something in common after all”. Intriguing, what more is there to learn about this guy?
The third reveal is for us, the audience, it’s backstory. In it we see Kate help her (husband) into the house, drunk. Puts him in bed as a good wife is wont to do, to let him sleep it off. But then she walks out the door, fires up the motorcycle and leaves. As we watch her depart, the entire house blows up. She has just killed that guy.
It occurs to me that the sequence in which the audience sees these three reveals can change how we react to all three characters. The drama comes from the fact that people are creating emotional attachments, there’s the instability of the love triangle, we want to root for Jack but now the object of his affection seems to be damaged goods in some way; and she has some attraction to Sawyer. Where’s this all going to go?
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Week 1 Day 4: Secrets and Reveals – LOST
cheryl croasmun November 12, 2021
KEY POINT: When a main character has a relevant secret, it creates many opportunities for conflict, drama, and intrigue. But the secret can’t be just anything. It needs to be something that will be a major disruption to the plot and/or the other characters. Then, you need to set up demand for the secret to be revealed.
SET UP: Jack, Kate, and Sawyer are in a love triangle. Both men suspect Kate of something, but don’t know for sure what it is. Jack has spent his life saving people in E.R. and could never forgive a murder.
Watch 1<sup>st</sup> time for:
How is Kate’s secret set up? What causes demand to know what the secret is? How is Kate’s secret revealed?
Watch 2<sup>nd</sup> time for:
What drama was this scene built around? What traits showed up in these character’s words and actions?
3 DIFFERENT REVEALS ABOUT KATE
DEMAND: Marshall dying, gives Jack the Wanted Poster on Kate.
ADMISSION: Sawyer gets Kate to admit her secret.
REVEAL: What Kate Did
<div>Daily Focus – Searching for Breakthroughs:
Please watch this scene and provide your insights/breakthroughs into what makes this character great from a writing perspective.</div><div>
Kate is relaxed on the surface but her secret is extreme and would be wildly upsetting for the rest of the people on the island. She is engaging but we don’t know to what end – will she kill again or is she just looking for romance. She kills premeditatively and without visible emotion. She is beautiful, so could act like a spider spinning a web for the individual attracted to her. Or maybe the dead man had it coming, and she just needs companionship. We have to guess at this point.
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Kate is young, beautiful and she is not a push over, her character is mysterious/secretive. She is alluring to the audience craves to know more about her character. Jack has the first reveal/breakthrough when when he is helping the dying Marshall – Kate is a fugitive.In the scene with Sawyer, he is an obnoxious guy, who figures he will sleep with Kate (if they haven’t already) and uses a drinking game to find things out about her. At this point she appears to find futility in the “Lost” situation and gives into this ruse. Eventually Sawyer discovers they have something in common – they have both killed a man. Now he can hold things over her head as his character does with other characters.Sawyer scene, also reveals that Kate wants to tell the truth. She is “guilty” but she is resolved in the fact that maybe she felt there was no other choice, but to kill him. The last scene shows what happened,that has made her a fugitive (killer). We assume when drunk says, what the hell is that smell?, that there is gas smell. Big reveal – the house blows up.The last scene also shows that Kate is tough, rides a motorcycle from the house, which then blows up. We don’t know exactly who this drunk guy is – I thought maybe it’s her father. There isn’t enough information in the scene to know, most likely her husband. But she has resolve on her face, that leads us to think that she has come to the point of no return with this relationship. She isn’t happy, sad or doesn’t appear angry. But resolved in that, this is the only way to get out from under this situation.
What I learned rewriting my scene/character…
My character is compelling in that, like Kate’s character, is unexpected. Looks are deceiving.My character is also very devious and psychotic, where Kate can be devious, but she does have a conscience. I believe that the most important thing I learned is the importance of understanding this exercise to dig into the secrets that can be revealed. And one of many ways I can create those reveals.I got distracted from class assignments because I was writing on my script
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How is Kate’s secret set
up? The injured Marshall has Jack look at wanted poster of of
Kate Jack reads Kate is dangerousWhat causes demand to know what
the secret is? Never gameHow is Kate’s secret
revealed? She knows drunk man well. House blows upWatch 2<sup>nd</sup> time for:
What drama was this scene built
around?1) Marshall is dying urgently tells Jack to look in pocket. Jack pulls out paper and says dangerous
2) Never game – shows both characters have killed a man
3) Kate appears to take care of man. Something smells. She, puts him to bed. Man thinks he has a chance with kate. Kate leaves, house blows up. Kate does not look back.
What traits showed up in these
character’s words and actions?Kate has a cold-blooded streak
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Kate’s secret is set-up as a mystery. Someone recognizes something different about her and goes about tricking her into revealing the secret. They were very creative in having one mystery lead to another. 1<sup>st</sup> she is different than the others. Then we find out it’s because she has killed and then the next mystery is who did she kill and why? It is great story telling because many of the moments twist into something we didn’t expect. Initially, we thought he was giving her liquor to sleep with her. Then we discover it is really a way to expose her secret. That secret is extended into the next mystery. She has killed and then it becomes who and why. When they answer one question it moves into the next mystery they play with set-ups, expectations, and surprises with the new mystery. The smell of gas, the threat of sexual violence, the revenge murder. All her actions build a character that I want to know more about. We are hooked into these expertly placed devices and before we know it, we are voraciously running after the next mystery. I think one of the more interesting and difficult questions to address is What drama is this scene built around? This is a series of scenes that are connected on multiple levels. The 1<sup>st</sup> level might be the love triangle. He’s in love with a killer and all the ramifications there. The 2<sup>nd</sup> level is she is being chased by an FBI agent and another guy uncovers her secret so that could be a set-up for payoffs and misdirections down the road. In fact, LOST got to a point where it kind of imploded on itself with a mystery within a mystery within a mystery. Many of these storylines were connected on multiple levels, so a single drama would be connected many ways. Probably nothing in LOST was a single drama. You had to love her character. A woman who is not afraid to drink and has killed. She kills someone who has abused and then rides off into the night on a motorcycle. I’m in!
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Watch 1st time for:
· How is Kate’s secret set up?
· What causes demand to know what the secret is?
· How is Kate’s secret revealed?
Kate’s secret is set up by the marshal telling Jack that she is a wanted and dangerous fugitive. This creates curiosity in Jack, but also a need to know if this assertion is indeed a fact. Sawyer’s drinking game causes demand in the exchange between him and Kate to know what the secret is. The secret is she killed a man. Kate’s secret is revealed when we see the house blow up as she speeds away in a motorcycle. She was apparently in an abusive relationship she needed to escape from.
Watch 2nd time for:
· What drama was this scene built around?
· What traits showed up in these character’s words and actions?
The drama these scenes are built around is the wanting to know if Kate actually killed a man. This curiosity creates tension, intrigue and even conflict among the characters. The desire to know the truth builds not only within the characters, but in the audience as well.
Kate’s traits: playful, calculating, intolerant, cold (shows little emotion for the killing)
Jack’s traits: medic (first aide), sarcastic, curious, humorous
Sawyer’s traits: creative, probing, dangerous (withholds information), sexually driven
Insights/Breakthroughs:
Secrets can be used to create greater depth within and among the characters. The audience would naturally be intrigued to find out what is being withheld which adds complexity to the story.
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