Advice

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A FEW THOUGHTS ON TREATMENTS

In one of the places that I visit online, someone asked what a treatment is, what it includes and how it's created. I answered:

I don't do treatments, but I read a fair number of them from my clients. Some of them do a treatment and send it to me before tackling the script. They want to know if they have a story, characters, structure, etc. before they commit weeks/months and 120 pages to it. And I can tell a lot from a good treatment.

All the treatments I read are done the same way. Present tense, tell the story in a narrative with little or no dialogue. The number of pages varies so greatly that I couldn't offer a ballpark figure there.

The best treatments are those that eschew dry "this happens then that happens" stuff and instead demonstrate the writer's abilities to weave a good tale, still making it an enjoyable read. They tell a story that someone will like reading, it's as simple as that. They make sure the basic ingredients are there, meaning the main and important secondary characters, the major beats of the story (structure is usually evident in them) and the major obstacles, reversals, barriers that affect those beats. Act three and the climax have to be included. This isn't a tease for an agent or producer. This is an account of what's involved in the story so it all has to be there.

And it should also reflect the personalities of the characters, what they want and what they need. And it should show us the writer's style, as well as can be done in the form of a treatment. It needs to be free of typos and misspellings, and the grammar should be correct. Punctuation. The usual things. We're judged on everything we submit, including presentation of the materials in a professional manner.

So, if you can do that in three pages, that's fine. If you need thirty pages, that's fine, too. And take the time to rewrite it, just as you do your screenplay, until it shines. It has to be a good read. Do whatever you have to do to make it just as much a page turner as your script will be.