The Hungry Hungry Writer

It’s going to be so fricken hot outside!

94 degrees is just too damn hot for November!

I wish I could stay home and in my air conditioned room watching…

LOST!!!

Donna and I have just finished the first season of LOST on DVD. Let me tell ya… watching it on DVD is the only way to go. Waiting for an episode week to week is just torture! That’s why I quit on ‘24’. And that’s why I’m going to now catch up on all the ‘24’s out there! We watched season one and two then just gave up due to all the other shows out there that weren’t so cliffhanger-y. We liked to watch it together and it started to stack up week to week and we could never just watch it so I deleted them from TiVo and always said we’d do the DVDs.

I’ve managed my NetFlix queue quite well making sure I have enough TV DVDs at my house that Donna and I could watch, a movie we could watch and a movie that I’d be interested in to watch alone. So I’m on the 4-DVD plan and am considering upping it to 5 a month.

But back to LOST.

The reason why this show is so good is because it’s about humanity and not just a plot driven show about some scary monster trying to kill people. Well, there is a scary monster but that’s just the backdrop to a show about people, who they are before, who they are now and hopefully, who they will become as the show progresses. It’s a character driven show believe it or not.

It’s Gilligan’s Island except a drama about people and their connection to each other and their connection to a mysterious island.

The development of characters is so right on with Peter Dunne’s Four Character Levels. It’s as if the writers of LOST took these four character levels and followed Peter Dunne’s way of introducing and developing a character. No, it’s not anything ‘new’ to character building, its just fits Dunne’s model so perfectly from Level One to Four. If you want to learn about character development, LOST can really be a great example.

From Dunne’s book, “Your story starts by finding your hero in an unsettled state.” Its basic screenwriting really. In Lost, a normal world is in the past for these characters. And even the past might not be considered so ‘normal’ but its normal for them. Lost starts off with our hero, JACK, in an unsettled state – he’s lying on his back in the middle of a bamboo forest after falling, and surviving, a plane crash. Talk about unsettling! He then rushes to the beach where others who have survived are walking around in complete disarray. It’s chaos. And Jack is motivated to help – why? Well, we don’t know anything about him really but he’s out there to help. He takes control, throws commands left and right, and saves people. He’s our hero right off the bat and we know it.

Dunne’s Character Level 1 is – Individual: Outer layer uniqueness. Character traits. Surface personality.

And that’s what we get from EVERY character in lost on the first episode. We don’t know anything about them except what they do now in the midst of a tragic event. Its what we see – their surface personality. They’re ‘outer layer uniqueness’.

Lost does a great deal of flashbacks and these flashbacks give us bits and pieces of each character’s back-story.

Character Level 2 is – Familial: Morality. Secrets. Sickness. Habituated belief system. The seat of guilt.

And if we stick to Jack this next step in his character growth is exactly this. Familial. His morality as a doctor. His guilt of not having that last connection with his father. This is his secret he is carrying and nobody knows about it except him. And other characters are then developed with these flashbacks. Secrets are revealed. Belief systems are established. Guilt, guilt, guilt!!! From a Korean couple’s secrets to a big burley guy’s million dollars to a cowboy living the life of someone he wants to kill. Character Level 2 is so apparent with every character in Lost. EVERYONE has a secret. Some are revealed and confronted, and some have yet to be revealed and faced. And everyone, as we discover, has a ‘familial’ back-story!!!

Then comes Character Level 3 – Social: Cultural. Otherated. Environmental. Deep-rooted yet changeable. Obligation pressures.

This is a new ‘social’ environment for all the characters in lost. There’s a cultural clash, the environment is completely new and they all have to deal with it and take on responsibilities as the days go by. There are obligation pressures. And I like the word “otherated”. Its not on dictionary.com but I found a definition. “Otherated” - doing our best to adapt, trying constantly read other peoples thoughts, feelings and actions as “emergency” survival information (ImaginationFreed.php). And that’s what LOST is episode after episode. Each character is desperate to adapt to something. Even if it means building a raft – they adapt to their environment. There are secrets and if there is a secret, somebody is trying to pry it out of someone else. It’s about what you know and how you deal with it and it’s used as “emergency” survival information. Sometimes the less you know the better you are but sometimes you need information in order to protect yourself. And Jack, at the end of season one, is trying to gain information, secrets, from people: from Locke’s secrets on what he believes why they are on the island to Sawyer’s sexually transmitted diseases.

And finally, Character Level 4 – Emotional: The real deal. How your character honestly feels whether he/she is aware of the feelings or not. Hidden behind neuroses. Dedicated to individuation and compartmentalizing.

This character level is where each character responds to their environment. It’s what Dunne calls, “the conscience response.” All that back-story, from Level 1 to 3 that molds a character all cumulates into the emotional level – as “every moment and every event of every man’s life on earth plants something in his soul.” This is how they respond and each episode continues each character’s journey revealing more and more so that as we revisit these characters week to week we get the emotional level and every week we tune in to see…

What’s next?!?!

Rent the DVDs and see what I mean. You’ll be hooked!