More from the Screenwriting Expo: Adam Horowitz & Edward Kitsis

Aside from Lindelof and Cuse's extend Lost discussion at the recent Screenwriting Expo, series writers Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis also spoke about what it's like to write for the show.

A little background: most of the writers at least contribute a little bit to every episode, but here are the episodes Horowitz and Kitsis are officially credited with writing together:

1.22 Born to Run (Kate)
2.04 Everybody Hates Hugo (Hurley)
2.12 Fire + Water (Charlie)
2.18 Dave (Hurley)
2.22 Three Minutes (Michael)
3.04 Every Man for Himself (Sawyer)
3.10 Tricia Tanaka is Dead (Hurley)
3.14 Expose (Nikki & Paolo)
3.18 D.O.C. (Sun)
3.21 Greatest Hits (Charlie)
4.03 The Economist (Sayid)
4.07 Ji Yeon (Sun & Jin)
4.10 Something Nice Back Home (Jack)

Here's a summary of what they had to say at the Expo:

-The first thing they wrote was the subplot in the Season 1 episode "Numbers" about Locke building a crib for Claire. Horowitz went home and told his wife he wrote a story about Claire and Locke, but "Raised by Another," the episode in which Ethan kidnaps Claire, had just aired so his wife was mad at him for spoiling that Claire was O.K.

-They were surprised that "Fire + Water," in which Charlie alienates Claire and is punched by Locke, was "universally hated." (My explanation? It didn't advance the main story, so that's one strike against it, but that would've been okay if it had advanced the characters. It didn't -- it regressed them. The entire episode ended with nothing advanced and Charlie one step back.)

-They wrote "Dave," the episode about Hurley's imaginary friend, with Evan Handler specifically in mind for the role.

-It was decided the summer before Season 3, when the season is fleshed out in broad strokes by the writers, that Charlie would die at the end. He was originally slated to die in "Greatest Hits," but they decided he should have one last victory, and killed him off in the finale instead.

-Edward Kitsis's favorite episodes among the ones he has written is "Tricia Tanaka is Dead," in which Hurley fixes up the van. He particularly likes that it turns out to be the same van Ben gassed his father in, with "Roger Workman"'s bones still inside.

-"Expose," the show-within-the-show that Nikki starred in, was actually a running joke with the writers since Season 1, when they would come up with elaborate plots for the show while they had writer's block for Lost. Originally they had planned an elaborate back story for Nikki & Paolo involving "Expose" that would take place over the course of a few episodes, but had to condense it down to one when the decision was made to kill them off.

-More on "Expose": it was one of the most difficult episodes to film because they had to partially reconstruct the plane crash scene, and editors had to search through the show's archives to find unused angles from the pilot.

-The average Lost script is 57 pages. If it gets past 59, it's too long and things are going to get cut.

-They claimed that while they wrote "Ji Yeon," Lindelof and Cuse came up with the plot device of tricking the audience into thinking Jin's flashback was a flashforward. (I really hated that device. Way to throw your bosses under the bus.)

-Paul Zbyszewski (Day Break), Melinda Hsu Taylor (Medium), and Kyle Pennington (who started out on the Lost post-production team and co-wrote Season 4's Cabin Fever) are new staff writers, while previous writers Drew Goddard (who also wrote Cloverfield) and Christina M. Kim have left the show.

Source: DarkUFO

TAGS: Adam Horowitz, Charlie, Edward Kitsis, Greatest Hits, Hurley, Ji Yeon
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