An open forum question from jonathan:
Hi Scott, great blog.There’s lots of screenplays available online. I haven’t managed to find an equivalent resource for examples of treatments. There doesn’t seem to be too many pointers out there on how to write a good, exciting yet ‘professional’ treatment. Any advice would be great!
I’ve gone into this previously at various points of entry. There’ a discussion about a One-Sheet, general background re treatments, and a comparison of treatments and outlines.
Let me add a point. While many writers may consider writing a treatment to be… how shall I put it… a major pain-in-the-ass… there is at least one residual benefit you can get from the process:
Writing a treatment forces you to confront your story. Either you can wrangle the characters, plot, and ideas you’ve surfaced into some sort of coherent whole — or you can’t. If you can’t, then it’s probably a good indicator that you need to work some more on prepping your story.
If that logic doesn’t convince you, then what about the words of Ron Bass, one of the most successful screenwriters ever – at least in terms of box office results – with numerous hit movies including Rain Man (1988), Sleeping with the Enemy (1991), Dangerous Minds (1995), My Best Friend’s Wedding (1997), How Stella Got Her Groove Back (1998), Stepmom (1998), and Snow Falling on Cedars (1999). Here is what Bass has to say on the subject:
“Everything I write is in three acts, and I actually start with three pieces of paper. I have some notion of where each act begins and ends before I get to this stage. I know my people and I know roughly about how many scenes each act should be. I start from the beginning and end of an act, working forwards and backwards toward the middle. I know that somewhere there’s going to be a moment of this, a moment of that, and it’s like a matrix. I don’t work with cards, just one page per act. When I finish three acts, I page budget. I want to know I can tell the story in a distance that’s appropriate. And I’m rarely more than ten pages off.”
Basically Bass doesn’t start writing a script until he can articulate the story in a 3-page treatment.
So yes, writing a treatment is basically a pain. But if you want to know if you’re ready to write a script, working up a treatment is an excellent way to find out.
I will admit I am one of those screenwriters who never, ever wrote a treatment. Until I had a producer tell me,
“…you should have a treatment. the reason is because most producers in the industry know the movies they want to make and reading a treatment helps understand the picture you wrote so time is not wasted as it takes over an hour to really read a script and its a bummer when you read something that just isn't right for someone – EVEN if its great! Most producers know the stories they want to tell.”
Now, I’m in the process of writing treatments for ALL of my screenplays — both completed and in development.
Keep Writing! (and Reading)
I find it interesting that treatments are coming back around. I've seen it go from the days when treatments were a plus, sometimes expected, to when treatments were laughed at. Now, here they are again. Ken Atchity even wrote a book called "Writing Treatments That Sell," I believe. Treatments used to be much longer than what passes for a treatment today. They literally were a prose description of how the screenwriter would "treat" a pre-existing story or play or novel. They were the writer's "cinematic" approach to the narrative. I wriute treatments for every script, and they usually run 40 – 60 pages single-spaced. Mine have lots of dialogue and every detail I can think of. They are for my own internal use only. I never show them to anyone. But when it's time to do the screenplay, they are an inch-by-inch road map written when I can throw in anything and everything without worrying about page count. It allows me to find the best solutions to scenes and structure. I urge writers to do them as they are the best dress rehearsal for your movie you could ever have.
Treatments are lifesavers for screenwriters. Without them I would be doomed. And so would a lot of other writers. There will be SO MUCH you will run into while writing your screenplay that you will wish you had tackled in the treatment. It forces you to think about your story. It's a gift from God!
Screenwriter Reese