May

8

Kurt Vonnegut, Lost, and Season 4

Posted by lostfan

May 8, 2008 |

One of my favorite authors in Kurt Vonnegut. His writing was sardonic, witty, intelligent, and challenging. Besides being a great author, he was also a great teacher of writing. He outlined some rules for creative writers. Here are my favorites:

  1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted.
  2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for.
  3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water.
  4. Start as close to the end as possible.
  5. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
  6. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages.

So, what does this have to do with Lost? Season 4 is following Kurt’s Rules for great storytelling. We are finally getting to the root of people’s motivations and seeing awful things happen to good people. We are finding ourselves close to the end (and beyond) of the story. More importantly, we are finding answers, and receiving more straight-forward story lines. Want proof? Check out this interview from Attack of the Show. It features the Lost producers spilling some beans on Smokey, Christian and the Finale.


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