Writing on justpressplay.com, Neil Pedley made a great point about writing and especially about Juno, the independent film that was the media darling before Slumdog Millionaire:
"...Juno as a whole is a film that succeeds in spite of Cody’s screenplay, not because of it.
Great screenplays are a lot like sports officials in that the good ones stand back and orchestrate events, facilitating the flow of the action while doing their best to draw as little attention to themselves as possible. You know the referee has had a good game when you simply didn’t notice he was there and the same is true of a good screenwriter.
But if there was ever a case of the writer speaking directly out of the mouth of the characters then Juno is it. The impossibly named Juno MacGuff comes across as a great many things: brave, smart and compassionate. But one thing she spectacularly fails to come across as is a 16-year-old high school girl and it is a testament to Page’s great ability that she could carry the film off while weighed down by a screenplay littered with distractions and attention seeking dialogue. Diablo Cody seems so desperate for some sort of validation from her audience that she is completely unable to detach herself from the story she is telling and ends up sounding like the worst kind of writer - one whose material so insists on itself that she not only tries to tell the adults what all the kids are into these days, she tries to tell the kids, too."
Amen! To me, the best writer leaves you amazed or surprised or delighted or shocked by what you know, think or feel--not what he or she knows, thinks or feels.
(For help in writing your project, from idea through to publication or production, see my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey Publishing.)
