Potentially, very. Because no one's going to buy a screenplay they don't remember or like, and one of the ways you can make an impression on the reader is with writing style. Of course, style alone won't save a weak premise or thin characters, but the more we have going for us as writers, the better our chances. Got a good story, characters, etc? Add a distinctive, attractive style, and that 's one more weapon in your arsenal.

I agree, Debbie, all around. I'd love it if some script readers weighed in with an informed opinion, but I assume the case is: - voice can be very important for a spec writer, because your script needs to be great not good to stand out in the slush pile; - voice presumably wanes in importance for established writers, whose ability to sell a script depend on a wider range of factors (e.g., networking, pitching skills, professionalism, etc.)

This is almost like an overview question of the style issue ... the authorial voice and its relationship with the narrative voice and the reader. (I speak here of the reader rather than the audience, because I think the writer has to convey his/her ideas in words, and how well those ideas are received depends on the writing.) The writer's voice is his/her combination of words, turns of phrase, expression of detail, action and articulation through dialogue ... it is unique to the author. In The Fiction Editor, The Novel and The Novelist, Thomas McCormack says:

"Writing is, in a sense, a judicious compound of the familiar and the new. There must be enough of the familiar to make it comprehensible, but it's the new that makes it worth reading. Novelty alone is not sufficient, however; it must also work. It must have a reasonably sized ideal intended audience that approves."

Part of the challenge is that someone else is interpreting the 'reasonably sized ideal intended audience', and that someone is the reader. The problem is the author can't be sure what will work for a given reader, whether a reader will see the same connections the author saw in his/her moment of innovation. Decisions are at the core of the process, and the writer is faced with decisions he/she must weigh up on the scales of familiar vs new, how much of one will tip the scales into script oblivion. It's a balancing act, and a difficult one to master. Sharing the idea too early can be just as dangerous as sharing it too late, talking about what you're writing while you're writing can cost you innovation because there is always a voice out there who will tell you it'll never work. It's very difficult to get another person to see the full potential of an idea without the right balance of familiar vs new. McCormack quotes a line by John Barrymore: "You can only be as good as you dare to be bad." It means that you need to continue to take chances, but it also means you need to continually seek out the balance because no two readers will ever be pleased in the same way by the same emotional combat. The writer's voice comes to the fore when he/she takes a stand about an issue within the work rather than succumb to the pressures of change; it is when the writer stands up and believes in his/her sensibility about an issue and it proves to be worth it. The trouble with readers, by and large, is that they believe their response is the response and therefore every other reader will respond the same way. This is patently not true, but it's a rare reader who will consider the way a writer has phrased something, cached it as their telling voice, if it shakes their own sensibilities to be innovative and audience approved. Writing, by it's very nature, can only consist of one word following another, a structure punctuated by stops and starts and pauses, phrases and words that capture a kindred imagination and bring something fresh and vivid to it, forcing it to reconsider how the familiar can look from another perspective, carving out a space that is owned by the tone and its resultant emotional spectacle ... it is a dark space, because if it were light, it has been lit before by other writers and that's too familiar, thus the writer must open up the dark that lies dormant in the reader's imagination by using familiar techniques to trick the reader into thinking she/he is entering some known territory and then, once trapped, hooked to the point where there is no backing out ... the only way out is through. Then you have a reader who really notices, and a voice.