Write a Treatment

Having written a handful of stageplays, short screenplays, and two features in the works - organizing and planning is nothing new to my process. That said, I have ignorantly avoided writing "Treatments" for scripts. 

Recently, I was encouraged to write a two page Treatment for a script that has been giving me a lot of trouble and have never felt my eyes more open about a script. 

A Treatment, in my eyes, has always been  an elusive creature ready to tear my fingers off. And while that is an unchanged opinion, I am excited to embrace the Treatment. 

It is a document, whether one page or thirty, that tells your story from start to finish. Similar in style to a super short story, or novella, in that it's dramatic and feels like a very precise and detailed work of fiction. The reader should be able to see, smell, and feel, the world and characters involved with the story, and every word in the document is chosen with pitching the script in mind. 

It is quite common, and often requested, that a Treatment accompany a script so it can be read before opening the script's coverpage. For that reason, the Treatment should be revered as the first impression readers will encounter and the way it is crafted will determine if your script will be read or thrown away. 

From start to finish, Treatments provide an eye opening truth that tell you where you are at in the development of the story. Trying to organize characters, scenes, plots, refine dialogue, pacing, overall continuity, etc, can get overwhelming and your brains starts to fill in the blanks of where the bigger picture needs to get to. By doing that, it's easy to say, "I'll fix this later. I'll come back to this. I'll remember this hole and fill it in." And so on. 

By writing a Treatment you can stay on top of where a script is at instead of assuming you've got everything in place. These periodic Treatments expose the height of stakes, relationships, and how entertaining the story actually is. 

Long story short, a Treatment is a very detailed summary (not an outline) of your screenplay. An outline has bullet points and facts, a Treatment paints a well crafted picture of your script.

Treat yourself and the stories you want to tell; read some example treatments and make write one yourself.