This is a "Nice" story, although it needs a bit of explaining. I understand if you don't want to put it in the magazine because it sounds a little obscure, but strangely enough the memory of it always gives me a warm fuzzy feeling and I wanted to spread that around if I could. So here goes: My name is Whitney. My friend Marley (named after Bob) and I study Communications at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. We recently completed a Screenwriting unit this year. What has to be explained is that I am a Film Major and Marley is a Journalism Major. Don't get me wrong, Marley is a fantastic writer of both factual articles and creative stories, but she just wasn't getting over the hurdle of writing scripts as easily as I was. I chose to take Screenwriting because it's what I want to do for a living; She had chosen it because she loves to try new things and be challenged. Unfortunately, this was a challenge that she was finding hard to overcome. One day, we're at my house, each working on our major Screenwriting assignment- a complete five minute script worth a whopping 65% of our total mark.

Marley admitted she just couldn't seem to adopt the style of visual writing needed to create a script. She kept reverting to a literary style that works great on the page, but not on film. She was becoming very frustrated and worried that she wouldn't be able to pull it off and get the marks needed to get into Honours Year (another challenge that we had both set for ourselves). So here I am, looking at my best mate, who's on the verge of going slightly to pieces. It was killing me as much as it was killing her. But I knew what I had to do, as much as it was going to pain me to do it. I had to take the "cruel to be kind" approach. I looked her right in the eye and said: "Marley, you're my best friend and that's why I'm telling you, *deep breath* change how you're writing or you're going to get a bad mark". I'm not a fan of using shock tactics, and I especially don't like using them on my dearest friends, so doing this gave me a horrible, sickening feeling.

For a split second after I said it, I thought she was going to get angry and start yelling at me. But she just stared right back at me, looking very serious and saying nothing (and Marley is a very light and bubbly person, so this was freaking me out a little). Then, she just said: "Thanks. I needed to hear that", and got back to work. Marley walked away from that unit with one of the highest marks in the class and excellent praise from our tutor. Along with that warm fuzzy feeling, I still get a little queasy when I think about what I said to her and the look it put on her face. But now she's back to her old self and she probably couldn't stop smiling if she tried, so it was totally worth it.