How Do Screenwriters Judge Screenplays?

A peek at Anora, Nickel Boys, and Conclave

It’s every industry nerd’s favorite time of year — awards season!

Before I tell you exactly how I voted in the WGA Awards, or how I would vote in the Academy Awards, I wanted to talk about how screenwriters judge the work of their industry peers.

Let’s establish some criteria.

How do writers rank screenplays?

During awards season, all guild members are sent a flurry of FYC (For Your Consideration) emails, in which we are informed of upcoming screenings for awards contenders, and are linked to the script pdfs.

The awards screenplays are typically cleaned up to match the final product, and usually aren’t a reflection of the shooting script. Not everyone takes a look at the pdfs, but I always try to do my due diligence and at least give a passing glance to each script, even if I don’t have time to peruse the whole thing.

When it comes to judging the quality of writing work, here are the two most important criteria that I look out for:

1. Structure, structure, structure

Screenwriting is all about set-up and pay-off.

The rule of Chekov’s gun states that if you have a character killed off with a gun in Act 3, that gun must be introduced in Act 1. You can’t have characters and objects flying in out of nowhere in the final 30 minutes like an avalanche of deus ex machina.

A good screenwriter knows how to bring something full circle; a great screenwriter is able to execute that pay-off in particularly delicious ways.

In the case of Challengers, screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes deployed Chekov’s serve.

As an example, the following sequence comes from the first screenplay I wrote under studio contract, for Netflix. This joke is first set up on page 5:

After two acts worth of conflict and character shifts, I have that set-up, planted in the audience’s mind all the way back on page 5, pay-off in the following scene on page 80:

The screenwriter in me in 2025 is itching to fix Betty’s line to be funnier and punchier, but you get what I mean. Even small moments, jokes, and lines all have the ability to circle back in a script.

A character’s arc should feel surprising, but also inevitable. The hard part is striking that balance.

2. Literary merit

There are two main types of screenwriting styles that I will give the following names to:

• BLUEPRINT SCREENPLAYS — these writers (often directors) will treat the script like the blueprint it is meant to be — a document that lays out exactly what is to happen in production. These scripts tend to be straightforward and a little dry, but they get the job done.

• LITERARY SCREENPLAYS — these writers treat the screenplay like a living, breathing literary document. The writing style is often “voice-y”, giving a sense of the screenwriter’s style.

Both styles function the way they are meant to, but I personally prefer the screenplays that treat the form in a literary way, that showcase more of the writer’s voice.

The following is the opening to 1917, written by Sam Mendes & Krysty Wilson-Cairns:

While the sentences are sparse, there’s an almost poetic, Hemingway-esque flow to the writing. Right off the bat, I can tell we’re in good hands.

Or, check out the following introduction of Beth Harmon from Scott Frank’s pilot for “The Queen’s Gambit”:

See what I mean? There’s a certain voice to a Scott Frank script that immediately lets you know we’re reading a Scott Frank script.

A long-heralded piece of screenwriting advice is not to give interiority to the characters, to only show what can be seen onscreen. But I love it when screenwriters give us a little more insight into what the characters are thinking and feeling (more on this later).

There are other criteria you can judge a screenplay on — dialogue, action description, etc. — but these are the two main ones I look at when flipping through a screenplay: Structure and Literary Merit.

With that said, how do some of this year’s awards season scripts stack up?

Anora, written by Sean Baker

Sean Baker has made a name for himself as a DIY filmmaker — he writes, directs, casts, and even edits his own movies.

As a writer, Baker is very practical on the page. Here is the opening scene from Anora:

Baker is clearly writing this for himself to direct — the attention to detail (“50 girls and 15 guys downstairs and 20 girls and 5 guys upstairs”) are notes for him to take into production later.

A lot of people say that screenwriters should never direct on the page — while I disagree with this advice, it matters even less when the director is the one writing. Baker leaves instructions for himself like “the camera dollies down a row of lap dances.”

Anora does not make for a fun read. It’s a good example of a Blueprint screenplay, one that is dry and plain. Even the ending, which is so emotionally impactful and gut-wrenching onscreen, is rendered clinically in Baker’s style:

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely LOVED Anora, and it’s my pick for Best Picture. Structurally, I did find it a little bogged down with glut, but I loved the way Baker moved us through the narrative with a pulse-pounding anxiety. In reading though, the dialogue sings, but the rest of the writing does not.

In all, I would not vote for Anora for any writing awards because it doesn’t meet my second criteria of literariness.

Nickel Boys, written by RaMell Ross & Joslyn Barnes

I’m starting to realize just how many of the awards contenders this year were written by their directors!

Nickel Boys, adapted from the Colson Whitehead novel of the same name, has the distinction of being shot from first-person POV. I was curious to see how Ross & Barnes would pull this off on the page and well, they simply call out the POV shots explicitly. Here’s a snapshot of the opening page:

This feels like a tiring task — in every scene, Ross & Barnes are forced to call out just whose POV who are seeing things from. BUT! Unlike Baker’s Anora, Nickel Boys gives us plenty of literary interiority. Check out the following from pages 48-49:

I’m not entirely sure if that’s Whitehead’s writing that has been incorporated into the screenplay, or all Ross & Barnes’ description, but either way, I love seeing stuff like this in screenplays. Again, I’m all for treating the screenplay form as an actual literary document, not just a blueprint. It’s for this reason that I rate Nickel Boys quite high amongst the Adapted Screenplay nominees.

Conclave, written by Peter Straughan

When Conclave won the Golden Globe for Best Screenplay, the group of friends I was with expressed surprise at this outcome. It makes sense to me though — Conclave feels the most “writerly” out of the screenplay noms this season.

Straughan is one of the few writing nominees that isn’t also a director of his film.

And boy, does it show in his writing. Straughan gives us an extremely literary document, rife with interiority. Here’s his introduction of Cardinal Lawrence:

I love that small detail — “Lawrence raises his chin, prepares his public face” — and I’m sure it does so much to inform instruction for actor Ralph Fiennes. In fact, as we go along, there’s plenty of hints that Straughan drops that show us how the character is feeling:

Straughan makes this script fun to read, even if there are a lot of dreary scenes of serious cardinals praying or moving stoically through the church. The last snapshot I’ll show is from much later on in the movie, when Bellini (Stanley Tucci) has resigned himself to not winning the papacy and has asked Lawrence what name he would choose if he were elected pope:

“Then, as if admitting to himself for the first time that the thought, the ambition, was always there” is not something that can be shown onscreen, but at this point in the movie, is something Fiennes will have hungrily portrayed and made clear to the audience. To me, it’s lines like these that make great screenplays stand out above others.

Overall, I can see why Conclave is getting so much love amongst screenwriters, because it feels like a document that was meant to be read by writers, not just a blueprint for production.

Obviously not everyone is judging screenplays on these criteria, but I know I’m not alone in appreciating a script for its literary merit. Each person may have their own preferences, but hopefully you can see what I’m trying to distill in the snapshots from the three scripts mentioned above.

Amongst these three, whose writing style do you prefer most?

Questions and thoughts? Let me know in the comments below!

More to come as the awards season rolls along.

If you have compliments, concerns, or corrections, email yuoughtaknow@gmail.com.