Richard Dreyfuss, Roy Scheider, center, and Robert Shaw in a scene from “Jaws,” the subject of two scripts on the Black List.

Next Year's Screenplay Nominees? - NYTimes.com

Among the tightest contests in this season’s highly competitive Oscar race are the screenplay categories. For original stories, will the Academy favor ones based on fact, like “American Hustle,” “Inside Llewyn Davis” and “Dallas Buyers Club,” or wholly invented cinema, like the romance “Her”? On the adapted side, will voters go with historical epics like “12 Years a Slave” or reward long character arcs, as in “Before Midnight”? The Bagger will investigate, ponder and pontificate.

In the meantime, you can get a jump on future hopefuls with the just-releasedBlack List, the annual survey of the best unproduced scripts circulating in Hollywood. Films like “Argo,” “Margin Call,” “The Descendants” and “The King’s Speech” once made the list, before jumping to the big screen.