10 Distinctive Voices In Film: Screenwriters With A Brand Of Their Own

Diablo Cody

We don’t have enough female screenwriters gaining traction in the film industry – so when it happens, it is incredibly noteworthy. When that female screenwriter delivers stories written in a voice that is more distinctive than most of the world’s male screenwriters, that is something worth celebrating.

Whether she ever intended to be or not, Diablo Cody is the personification of why female screenwriters are important. In her relatively short career, she has created powerful and original cinema, populated with strong and effective female characters. Her Academy Award winning debut script Juno centred on a pregnant teenage girl, navigating the options open to her, with a perfect balance of humour and drama. Jennifer’s Body features two female leads heading into conflict as one turns into an evil, possessed succubus, and the other must halt her killing spree. Young Adult sees a female ghost-writer descend into a mental breakdown as the prospect of confronting her past suddenly looms.

These are complex, flawed, female characters that exist in their own worlds, as opposed to being defined by their relationships to men. Even the teenager, pregnant with the child of her high school friend, is in control of her own destiny – making her own choices about her own body. But, it’s not just female characterization that makes Cody’s work distinctive. She has an ear for memorable dialogue that furthers the action without sounding like an attack of terminal exposition. Her characters – male and female, young and old – have their own voices and, as screenwriter, she conducts them in a lyrical symphony that communicates joy, pain, anticipation and apprehension in equal measure.