Read 41 Oscar Contender Screenplays From 2015 Including 'The Hateful Eight,' 'Steve Jobs,' 'Carol,' And More

One of the most useful things a beginner screenwriter can do is to read great screenplays and absorb their style, structure, character development, and yes, even formatting. As someone who reads spec scripts for a living, I can’t tell you how many times I witness a great premise or story completely ruined by bad screenwriting. That’s why Go Into The Story’s annual upload of screenplays for awards contender films is very important to aspiring screenwriters, as well as to film buffs who want to get a closer look at how the sausage is made.

Go Into The Story, by Scott Myers, is the screenwriting blog of The Blacklist, a web site dedicated to matching great screenplays with great filmmakers. The blog is invaluable in the way that it provides film-school level education to screenwriters for free, and this collection of the year’s greatest produced screenplays might be their most important service. Here, you get 41 screenplays that can be accessed with a single click. If you only have time for a handful, let me recommend the screenplays for “Room”, “Steve Jobs”, “Ex Machina”, and “Carol”.

Of course it goes without saying that if you haven’t already seen these films, get ready to have their stories completely spoiled for you. Aside from the researching of great screenplays being important to the evolution of aspiring screenwriters, reading and studying terrible screenplays is just as important, just so we don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. So while you’re at it, I advise you to hunt down the screenplay for Adam Sandler’s craptacular “The Ridiculous Six”. That is, if it even actually had a screenplay. Check ’em out below.

99 Homes (Broad Green Pictures)

Beasts of No Nation (Netflix)

Bridge of Spies (DreamWorks)

Brooklyn (Fox Searchlight)

Carol (TWC)

Danny Collins (Bleecker Street)

Ex Machina (A24)

Far From the Madding Crowd (Fox Searchlight)

Grandma (Sony Classics)

I Smile Back (Broad Green Pictures)

I’ll See You In My Dreams (Bleecker Street)

Infinitely Polar Bear (Sony Classics)