The Art of Screenwriting: Phyllis Nagy

Phyllis Nagy is an underrated writer in the screenwriting world and a personal favorite of mine. Nagy is best known for Carol (2015), an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s novel The Price of Salt, for which Nagy received an Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay. Nevertheless, what can we learn from Nagy as writers? Let’s dive into it!

Photo license: Harald Krichel

Common Themes

Phyllis Nagy’s work reveals specific concerns and stylistic traits that recur across plays, adaptations, and original screenwriting, giving her a distinctive voice.

Queer Identity, Subtext, and Vernacular

Nagy often works with queer characters and relationships, but with nuance and sensitivity, which is what I love! Much of the tension and drama comes from what remains unsaid, from gestures, glances, rituals: coded communication. Try not to overthink it.

In Carol, for example, she works with a “queer vernacular of the time,” where much is expressed through tone, ritual, and what is observed rather than said outright.

She has spoken about how this was both a constraint and a freedom: a constraint because the era demanded subtlety; a freedom. After all, it forced her to rely on quieter emotional work.

Adaptation and Faithfulness to Source

A significant part of her strengths lies in adapting existing works, novels especially, and in doing so, respecting the original while shaping it for screen or stage. Carol is a good example: Nagy wrote the first draft in 1997, held on to it through decades of development, and made choices to preserve Highsmith’s tone and moral complexity.

She also adapts for theatre and has translated/adapted classics, demonstrating her comfort working across diverse source materials and transforming them while retaining their essence.

Patience, Perseverance, Long Development

Nagy’s journey with Carol is often cited, with the first draft dating back to 1997; however, the film was not made and released nearly two decades later. She usually works slowly, allowing material to rest or negotiating with rights or development issues. This long gestation is part of how she ensures fidelity to tone, character, and emotional truth.

Subtlety, Restraint, “Less is More”

Throughout her work, there is clarity about what should be shown versus what should be implied. Nagy often trims or removes elements that feel extraneous or slow pacing. She employs a few overt narrative devices–minimal voice-over, sparse exposition, letting the environment, gesture, and silence do the heavy lifting.

Moral & Social Issues Through Personal Story

Though her stories are intimate, she often embeds them in broader social or moral contexts: the workings of identity, gender, societal expectations, rights, and invisibility. She frequently asks: How do people live when society denies them visibility, agency, or freedom? What is the cost of that denial?

Complex Female Perspectives

Her central characters are often women navigating constraints, including social, historical, and emotional. She resists simplistic notions of femininity or motherhood; she allows her characters to be complex, contradictory, agentic, and vulnerable. Complex characters make great scripts.

Starting Long Before Production

Nagy often begins adapting or writing long before production is guaranteed. Carol’s first version was written in 1997, although production did not occur until much later.

Editorial Rigor, Pruning

She’s willing to cut sections even if they come from the source, if they don’t serve the screenplay’s structural or pacing needs. She believes in “less is more.” Not everything in the source needs to be in the adaptation. Some things are better implied.

Sense of Voice, Subtext, and Dialogues

Dialogues are often loaded with subtext, rather than overt exposition. The tone is restrained, quiet, but emotionally rich. Small moments, gestures, and what is not said often matter as much as what is said.

Collaboration & Alignment

Nagy emphasizes working with people who share her sensibilities. She also respects the roles of director, producer, and editor and knows when to fight for her vision and when to compromise.

Medium-Specific Awareness

Because she has a background in theatre, radio, stage, and screen, she’s aware of what works (or doesn’t) in each medium. She treats screenwriting as distinct from playwriting, respecting the different demands of visual storytelling and pacing.

Moral / Emotional Urgency

Nagy acknowledges that issues such as mortality, invisibility, and marginalized voices require urgent attention. Her writing is often sharpened by the stakes inherent in the stories she tells.

Notable Works & Their Evolution

Mrs. Harris (2005, TV film) - First move into screenwriting and directing. Demonstrates ability to handle narrative structure for screen, while maintaining depth. Shows her attraction to stories with a social/historical dimension.

Carol (2015) - Signature example: adaptation, years of development, care for tone, restraint with subtext, period detail, female perspective, queer love without cliché, omission of voice-over, cutting what doesn’t serve dramatic flow.

Call Jane (2022) - Evolution toward directing, tackling explicitly political/social subject, balancing seriousness with lighter touch, implying rather than sermonizing, keeping audience in a particular point of view, maintaining tension even when protagonist is off-screen in parts.

Strengths & What Makes Her Stand Out

Emotional subtlety and restraint: She evokes strong feelings without overstatement. Tension arises from internal conflict, ritualized behavior, and what remains unspoken.

Strong sense of voice and tone: She holds to a consistent tone, often elegiac, thoughtful, morally aware, and visually and emotionally attentive.

Moral complexity: She presents nuanced characters and situations, avoiding black-and-white narratives.

Historical & social consciousness: Stories engage with periods or social issues, such as gender, queer visibility, rights, and invisibility–embedded in character, not just the backdrop.

Adaptation skill: Knows what to keep, what to cut, how to translate interiority into images, and how to preserve tone.

Perseverance, patience: Endures long development processes, rights issues, and draft revisions.

Challenges & Criticisms

Long development time: Projects may take years to come to fruition.

Limited commercial blockbuster scale: Her stories tend toward intimate, morally and socially conscious narratives.

Balancing audience expectations and restraint: Her subtle style may conflict with commercial or sensational expectations.

Navigating adaptation rights and production collaboration: Adaptation is rarely straightforward; she must negotiate with collaborators to preserve vision while accommodating production realities.

Lessons for Aspiring Screenwriters

●     Persist with what matters to you.

●     Work with subtext, not exposition.

●     Be selective in adaptation: cut what slows narrative, preserve emotional force.

●     Know your point of view and stick to it.

●     Seek tone consistency; align with collaborators who respect it.

●     Balance moral or political weight with humanity.

●     Be attentive to historical and social detail.

●     Embrace multiple mediums to expand craft.