When we sat down to talk with Writer/Director Dionne Edwards about her process, the phrase “it’s hard to explain” kept popping up. It speaks to one of the hard truths behind writing—you really just have to do it. So much of the craft is an intuition you build over more than a few mistakes.
Writing is maybe the most difficult of all creative pursuits. There is no momentum. In fact, there are many things actively resisting anything resembling momentum, starting with that looming blank page. William Goldman once said, “The easiest thing to do on earth is not to write” and he was absolutely right.
It’s impossible to say what makes a film great. Useless to prescribe any rules, since often the best films break them anyway. A more helpful discussion, then, might be to talk about what makes a film bad — and what can be done about it (this is the helpful part).
