This is a story about the screenwriting Oscars and who’ll probably lose them. But in order to tell it, let’s go back to the 1983 Oscars, when the five original screenplay nominees were “Diner,” “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial,” “Gandhi,” “An Officer and a Gentleman” and “Tootsie.” Even with no “Personal Best,” “Smash Palace” or “Shoot the Moon”: a good year! Although, I’d have no problem boiling the five down to “E.T.” and “Tootsie,” and I’m not going to choose between them, because I don’t have to. (O.K. Fine. “Tootsie.”) And yet, John Briley won for “Gandhi.” But how did anybody know that was the best screenplay? Who read it?

This is the central vexation of the original and adapted screenplay categories — along with the general moral confusion of the Oscars. (How does a person — a good person — vote for the script about the thing from outer space instead of the love letter to one of John Lennon’s heroes? Didn’t the posters call “Gandhi” “A WORLD EVENT”?)

But it’s also a real evaluative mystery. How do you know good writing that, as a moviegoer, you can’t see and, as Academy voters, you’re not obligated to read? (Consenting members can receive eligible screenplays and watch as they turn into furniture.) A scrupulous, perhaps even conscientious, non-voter might track down copies of the options. (Now, the internet makes that a cinch.) And then what would you have? The pages used to shoot the movie? Or a final version based on the movie everybody saw? Given what all happens to a film between a draft and a premiere, the shooting script (dialogue, descriptions of action, spaces, clothes, shots) might better be appreciated as a wish list — or a memoir. And the published thing based on the finished, edited, marketed movie? That’s really a transcript.

An Oscar voter in 2020, choosing among the movies of 2019, needs to be discerning in some other way, probably in the most predictable way. Basically, we have in the judging process no real ethical guidelines. And yet maybe you don’t need anything stronger than your gut. To state the obvious: Good writing is in a movie’s bones. You don’t always need to read something to know it’s there — although, please read screenplays; even a bad one can illustrate how well the rest of a movie works. A great one is its own work of literature. But movies win for all kinds of reasons besides great writing: consolation, sheer verbiage, momentum. (That “Gandhi” win was part of an 8-for-11 sweep.)