Lost Spec Script: "The Man Who Cried Wolf" by Mike Nelson (miken) - Series, Drama - While the survivors of Oceanic flight 815 celebrate their possible rescue, Claire deals with the death of Charlie. 55 pages - pdf, format

I wrote this script for and submitted it as my application to the Warner Brothers TV Drama Writers Workshop.

Let me know what you guys think of it.  I'd love to polish it up even more.  Even though I think it's pretty polished, I was under a time crunch when I was writing so you never know what slipped past me and my proof readers unnoticed.  Thanks in advance for taking the time to read it!

Hey.

I think some of the lines delivered here let the side down a bit - Jack's 'we've been found!' line felt off, as did Karl's bit about the brainwashing. Seemed a bit much to rush into straight away. That said, some of the stuff works - I think it's a case here that you've got most of the character voices down (Ben's great, for example), but some of the others don't fit (Jack). The dialogue's a bit overly formal in places too, so look to clipping that down a bit. There's also very little punctuation - people recite long lines without pausing! Try reading the dialogue aloud to see where stuff like that needs to fit.

The slight niggle I have is that the flashbacks don't lead in very organically - you have to physically move your focus away to Ben to get them to kick off, instead of timing them around scenes where he's more active. Also, your Act breaks happen at odd moments - like the one with Claire in Act III. Ending that part with Jack and Desmond's conversation (and the cryptic 'your girl' line) would have been better. Oh, and this is more just me, but I never like characters talking to themselves - it feels very forced.

Also, Ben forgetting to turn the fence back on? That seems like a pretty big error for a guy who plans things as carefully as he does - he'd have realised Annie was in danger the second McSmokey showed up. The loss of Annie is a good moment, though - you've built up the Ben/Annie thing pretty well in only a handful of scenes, so it has some impact when she croaks.

Locke also comes out of nowhere - you could do with a quick scene or two earlier on showing him making his way along, rather than him just appearing conveniently before Jacob's cabin. That said, there's merit in him popping up so late, but there isn't much passage of screen time between Ben's escape and his confrontation of Locke - I'd suggest moving that scene to near the end, just before the helicopter moment, to give Ben and Richard time to actually catch up with Locke.

That final reveal, though? Brilliant. Evil. I love it ^_^

So! Needs some work to trim the dialogue and tighten up some of the character voices, but overall there's a lot of good about this one.