I'm going to steal some tricks from the poetry kids.
1. Your first line needs to grab attention. I'm not sure if this is as critical in screenwriting as it would be in poetry, but I think the first page of a screenplay should be enough to keep the reader turning to the next page. Get straight to the point. Don't dilly-dally. Keep to four lines. Make your characters be quiet if they're being loquacious. Open it up in a different way. Thousands of people have had to read the same bloody nothingness. Avoid alarm clocks and other cliches. Put your characters inside a giant talking teddy bear that's about to explode! In media res it up. Don't wait for the action to happen, start on the action.
2. According to the poetry kids, you need to earn your fireworks. Make sure you are giving enough attention and development to the plot being developed. If you jump quickly from a death, there needs to be reason otherwise it could end up sloppy, or cause the audience to lose emotion. There needs to be connectedness from miracle to miracle. I mean honestly, that's what a script should be -- stars (miracles) being connected into a constellation. Don't just place something in a room to be cute, use the gun if it's been mentioned. And perhaps use it in a way that we the audience were not expecting.
3. Be fresh. Avoid stale language and cliches. These poor readers who are coming across your scripts have seen many of the same darlings you've dabbled with. Cliches are really placeholders that beg for better ideas to take their place. You could easily have your main character wake to an alarm clock, then upgrade it to a rooster, then upgrade it to a robotic chicken. I think going even bigger would be helpful. If we keep making the same boring product, we'll bore the audience. So get rid of the crusty ole' cliches. Astronauts in space? Try astronauts on go-karts. Or try astronauts in your house waking you up with robotic chickens.
4. The next is... was the audience actually moved? Was their a refusal to transcend or did it actually transcend? Regardless of the originating material, a piece should go well and beyond just the simplicity of someone's first relationship. Big Fish transcended what would we think of as normal reality, and yet it feels heartfelt (at least to me). One of my favorite scenes from this film is when everything freezes at the circus and the Ewan McGreggor character is the only one who can move and he tries to make it to his future wife, but time catches up and everything speeds away. It's relatable! Even if we know deep down that time generally (I'm keeping some hope here) doesn't move that way.
5. Endings in my opinion are the most important part. They are the payoff. They are the gift of it all. I've seen transformative endings that went well above the mark. Endings shouldn't feel like something was slopped together and taped at the end. They should be organic and yet well connected to the rest of the piece, as if it was always meant to be. No, everything doesn't need to be wrapped up. Anti-climatic is a big no-no. What tends to work is have the ending play off the opening three pages. It really is all in the ending, just as in our own lives it is all in the death. What is behind the door of death? Or have we even begun to live? Is this all just an epic prelude? A terrible ending can destroy the rest of what may have been seemingly perfect. Unless you're making a sequel, don't try to go a whole new direction at the end. I think knowing the ending before writing is important. If you don't know the destination, you may end up in the wrong place entirely with not enough gas to get to the real end.
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