How to Write an Academy Award-Nominated Script

Note: This article does not guarantee your script will win the award, only garner a nomination. Actual wins are determined by: (a) punchiest title; (b) accuracy of costumes; (c) whether the star recently overcame a drug addiction and (d) payola.

Once you've established your bona fides as a screenwriter by dog-earing your copy of Syd Field's "Screenplay" and gathering a stack of rejection letters on prestigious letterhead, it's time to take the next step: building the awards section of your résumé. And nothing looks better above that East Lansing Film Festival Screenwriting Award Nomination of yours than a nod from the gold man himself. So let's go for a journey, to a place of glitz, red carpets, Joan Rivers, stretch limos, Worst Dressed awards and cinema magic. A place called the Oscars.

And we're all gonna be just dirt in the ground

There was a period when the Academy voter pool was believed to be comprised exclusively of octogenarian cyborgs running on a castor oil/liquefied granola bar fuel blend. This was the 1980s, when Chariots of Fire, Gandhi and Driving Miss Daisy received top honors. More recent intelligence suggests that this is wrong — they're predominately septuagenarian. Either way, Oscar experts now theorize that Academy voter response is reasonably similar to audience response, and everyone knows nothing gets an audience's emotions riled up like a good ritual execution of a main character.

Make sure to place your death scene — and I mean Scene with a capital S, with at least 10 minutes of existential inquiries that could be combined with bongos to make you a smash on open-mic night — toward the end of the film. If you kill him or her off too early, well, then they aren't really a main character, are they? One film that obviously missed the point was Executive Decision, where Steven Seagal's heroic performance as Lt. Colonel Austin Travis was wasted because the writers thought it was clever to kill him off in the first act. If the Academy hates one thing, it's cleverness. And that's not just me talking, it's statistics. (Fact: Executive Decision didn't receive a single award nomination.)

Another word of advice: While it's important to kill off a main character, try not to sacrifice your lead. That way he (or she, although how many Oscar winners have girls in the lead?) will be left to come to terms with the death. Sometimes "coming to terms" means "crying their eyes out as they sit next to the dead" (e.g. Midnight Cowboy). Other times it means "revenge via brutal mass killings" (e.g. Unforgiven). In either case, drown your star in grief for the last 10 minutes of the film. It gives the Academy voters a chance to get their tears out during the initial screening, before making the inevitable "first one to cry loses" bet when they see it with their friends. In addition, if the Academy likes anything, it's an unfair gambling advantage.

Take a ride on the short bus

If you don't think your script is good enough for a best picture nomination, and you have doubts as to whether your leads can deliver the goods, go ahead and write a retarded, or somewhat handicapped, sibling into the script. Undertaking these roles is frequently mistaken for acting, and you'll be there to reap the supporting role nomination benefits. Plus, if your script has a few typos in it, you can pass it off as "trying to get into character."

Plagiarism isn't always a crime

Why continuously strain your brain to come up with original characters, ideas or plotlines when there's so much material just waiting for you to exploit? Namely: famous people. No one's interested in your little quirky character — which is really just a manifestation of your personal hopes and desires. Yawn. Instead, pick up a history book — or, for writers on the go, an issue of Biography magazine. Flip open a page, pick a random person and start the research. If someone has been written about, they have intrigued at least a few people, so your audience is built in. All you need to do is find one moment in their life where they faced some type of "hardship" (racism, wrongful conviction, mental illness, exorcism, needing only a few more hits to guarantee a spot in Cooperstown) and your "grueling script session" turns into a "light-hearted cakewalk." Your only worry will be losing the excess pounds from the cake. (Note: Light-hearted does not mean light in calories.) Now you have your main event, just expand from there. Your introduction is already written (seeing as the famous person was inevitably born at some point). And, if you happened to pick a dead famous person, your conclusion is locked in as well.

For being the best medicine, laughter never cured polio

Is there a place for comedies during Oscar season? Sure there is. And it's called the Golden Globes.

At the Oscars, they know that life is too serious to be joking and farting around all the time. They see the evil that lies in the hearts of men. They don't get entertainment from watching characters laughing away at their bumbling mistakes or their romantic miscues. They want to watch people who are more miserable, more desolate and living more wretched lives than they do. It's respite by spite. And it's damned comforting.

There you have it. With these tips, your "personal" script will find its way onto countless entertainment shows and awards betting pools and into the two-week-long collective consciousness of thousands upon thousands of Americans, all of whom have never seen your movie. Years later, if you're lucky, you'll be known as "that writer who lost to (insert much better script than yours) at the Oscars" instead of just "a writer." In all honesty, which moniker is more flattering?

— Rick Paulas (rickpaulas at hotmail dot com)