We dispense a lot of practical advice on ReviewMyScript, sharing links and perspectives of which most should be of service to the work-a-day writer, assuming they’re stuck here or there, but they’ve got the inspiration and aspiration covered. But you’re different. You want your film to be more than a series of plot beats. More than the sum of the machinations of screenwriting. You want it to speak with the familiar register of great writing, picked apart and admired by an audience grateful that you’ve done more with the time they’ve given you then just allow it to pass painlessly. You’d like them to take your work home with them. But how do you put more into your script without pretention, without tripping over its oh-too careful calculation, like a hurdler with his eyes on the jump ahead.
Pay more attention. Think of what stirs a deep, unquestioning response to betray your singular view of something. Turn to professional calorie. Look to philosophy, engage with ideas so that they swim in your head, and you’ll find that they excise themselves into your work. Coding, allegory, all these devices that enrich writing and which can leave the audience with a stronger sense of a film’s place in their lives, are sometimes seen as valuable by a writer, who then sets about constructing their film with the goal of achieving these forms of expression. This is a mistake. To set out with the intention of springing these devices, that’s how you wind up with writing which, to paraphrase Tolkien, is disliked as far as it can be smelled.
When you bottle philosophy, experience, personal history, when you earnestly incorporate these things into your outlook on life, so long as you write honestly, they will find a way into your work. You’d be surprised how much you leave on the table when you follow a story as your intuition guides it. Without the interference of heavy hands, the space for or presence of artistic devices will make themselves known to you. Life and thought, when suitably unencumbered and nourished, have a peculiar way of resolving into an engaging, and generous screenplay.
It seems silly to point out, but these techniques were not thought up one day by folks keen to make a game of how clever they and their readership are. They came to be because somewhere along the way a story or poem or picture demanded to be expressed in just such a way. Emotional clarity makes room for all else. Always follow the story, and don’t get hung up on the rest.