Write your Spec. But first, write your treatment.

The Story and Plot Weekly Email is published every Tuesday morning. Don't miss another one.

The treatment has become a vital part of my screenwriting process. My process from idea to polished first draft is this:

1. Pre-Outline
2. Outline
3. Treatment
4. First draft
5. Polish

There are plenty of discoveries in between all the phases, but because of the process, I know which ones help tell my story and which would send me off on tangents.

I rely on each step now for various reasons, but this process gets me to that first polished draft faster than any other.

What is a treatment?

The treatment is essentially a narrative telling of your story. It's longer than a summary, and its aesthetic is more like a short story than a screenplay.

It's one paragraph of text after another with little to no screenplay formatting.

However, upon reading, it should feel more like a movie than narrative fiction.

You are describing scenes, after all. And like a screenplay, it is written in the present, active tense. The reader should envision visual action and narrative conflict.

There really isn't a standard format for treatments, so you're welcome to experiment and utilize what works best for you and your project.

First page of ANOTHER LIFE.

Here is Page 1 for a treatment I wrote with Kristy Dobkin for what would eventually be our screenplay ANOTHER LIFE.

I like the spacing, as it's meant to be a clean read. I am not sure how much I love the bullet points anymore. I doubt I will do that again.

My general approach is one scene, one paragraph. Sometimes, you need more space for a complicated scene, but it's rare.

This page resulted in the first 10 pages of the screenplay. One treatment page for about 7-10 screenplay pages is about par for my treatments, but again, there is no standard.

If I am writing for a buyer or an employer, I will spend time on more nuanced stuff, like theme, character, and a description of my approach before getting into the narrative.

The treatment is the proof of concept.

The treatment is where I find out if the story works or not. It's where I flesh out scenes, see if they flow together, and whether the narrative makes sense.

It lets me focus on the middle picture.

If the outline is the big picture, the treatment is the middle picture.

An outline is not always great at connecting scenes, and the treatment will reveal those challenges, especially logic problems and character motivation issues.

I am able to examine how each scene relates to the scenes around them.

It also allows me to focus on the small picture later.

Because of all this work, when I finally attack the screenplay, I can focus on one scene at a time.

I know the scene's place in the story, the ripple effect of the action, and the emotions, and I get to focus SOLELY on making that scene as good as it can be and nothing else.

That first draft comes fast, too.

When you work off a treatment, you never wonder, "What's next?"

You always know the answer.

That first draft is much more fun to write with a treatment than without.

It is also an essential document for others.

Early on, I only wrote treatments when a producer forced me to. I would resent it and give it half-effort, so it always took much longer than it should have.

I would then complain, "I would be done with the first draft by now if we had just gone to the script!"

The fact that it was my attitude and my foot-dragging that was making the process harder was lost on me.

But you know what? Those projects always ended up being my best work.

And I eventually noticed this.

The treatment is the best place to start if you work with me.

Lately, about 50% of my consultations are with professional writers. Many are repeats who know now to come in at the idea or treatment phase.

Why?

Because this is when the most efficient work happens. Putting in the work at this phase SAVES you incalculable work later.

If you want to work with me one-on-one, I encourage you to do the same. Don't wait until your first draft. So much of it will have to be rewritten.

To get the most out of my expertise, come earlier than that. Come with an idea or treatment. Yes, I am asking you to pay me less money.

But it's a significantly better use of your time in the long run.

Win the mental battles.

I lost most of the mental battles of my early career.

If I didn't like something, if I hadn't done it before, or if it made me uncomfortable, I found some way to convince myself it was a waste of time or a violation of my precious artistic integrity.

Yes, I was that insufferable. And that was before I was drunk at Birds or Daddy's.

Retire your limiting beliefs.

I've talked about these before. Identify them. Get past them.

Do the work.

I repeat in every class I have ever taught:

You are your own worst enemy.

And it's not even close.

I stand by this. :)

Do not combine the treatment and the outline.

Treat them as different phases and you will find them both more productive.

The outline is 90% thinking and 10% writing.

The treatment is 80% writing and 20% thinking.

You will clog both of them up by trying to do them simultaneously.

Let your mind focus on one. Then, let it focus on the other.

Treatments do not make the process longer.

They don't. It's just the opposite. I've been doing this professionally for 28 years. Please trust me on this. They make the process so much shorter and so much more enjoyable.

You might think, "But they're an extra step!" or "They're so hard!"

Treatments are hard because you're not used to doing them.

Like anything else, repetition brings skill, and skill looks an awful lot like talent.

Too many people try to write a treatment, struggle, and find it's not as satisfying as saying, "I wrote 5 pages today!"

They give up, telling themselves, "I'm not good at treatments," or, "It's not my process."

But you're not good at treatments because those muscles don't have that process memory yet.

And it's not your process because you haven't made it your process yet.

The key word for both of those is YET.

Once it is part of your process, it flows.

The discomfort falls away through repetition because it's not alien anymore. Your mind recognizes where you are, and you work the steps.

Remember, it's not writing a treatment that is challenging. It's good storytelling, that is challenging.

And it's supposed to be.

How to write a treatment.

As I mentioned, my approach is one scene, one paragraph.

I write the treatment for a third party as well—usually my manager and my agents. I want them invested in the project and have an early say.

Some of the things I want in each paragraph:

1. Who is in the scene?
2. What happens.
3. What changes.
4. What's the emotion?

Here are Pages 2 and 3 of ANOTHER LIFE, which cover Act 1.

I highlighted some of the essential things about the scenes—what needs to happen, what emotion affects the character's decisions, etc.

Obviously, that's just for the readers here. You would never do that in an actual treatment.

The more I am writing for someone else, the more I am going to sell these emotions in the narrative. Here, it's more matter-of-fact.

Notice the level of detail.

Like most of my choices, I tend to go by my taste. I hate excessive detail. Don't ask me to read anything I don't need to know or that doesn't make the read better.

So, I try to deliver that experience to others and only go with what is needed.

But don't put too little detail in, either.

Even if the treatment is just for you. Filling in the details is where most of the challenges pop up.

You will realize scenes don't connect like you thought, there is no momentum, or you haven't solved a problem like, "I need a clue here, but what is it?", or "How does he escape this room?"

You find these by addressing the necessary details.

Allow for discovery.

There will be a discovery when you move from outline to treatment, and there will be discovery from treatment to the first draft.

There is a question I often ask which is, "What makes this scene compelling to watch?"

This is absolutely necessary for the screenplay, but not essential for the treatment. In the treatment, the focus is on, "Why is this scene in the story?"

In the screenplay for ANOTHER LIFE, we added a scene to the first 10 pages, moved some scenes around, and made the whole thing more tense and emotional.

We wrote Sarah having a panic attack when Collin pulls over and screams the name Julia.

Most scenes had that kind of extra jolt.

At the bar, she doesn't steal the money. She thinks about it. Almost does it. But Collin returns before she can, and we never know if she would have or not.

Remember: have fun at every stage.

Label the acts.

Again, I like this when I read treatments, so I do it for others. Act 1, Act 2A, 2B and 3 are labeled so the reader knows where they are in the journey.

Writing a treatment is writing.

This was a massive hurdle for me. I was stuck on the idea that I was performing (what I thought was hard) labor that would never be read, never be helpful, and was just a waste of time.

I decided I hated it, and that was my relationship to it.

But once I embraced the writing, things changed.

Don't treat it like an outline. It's a treatment.

You break the outline. You write the treatment.

That's what broke it open for me.

I realized that I get to write the treatment. I get to have fun. And my treatments are 10-14 pages long. This is not some excruciating doctoral thesis here.

It is another chance to explore these moments and these characters. The story gets more focused. The choices get more decisive.

Most of all, the story gets better.

The Story and Plot Weekly Email is published every Tuesday morning. Don't miss another one.

​ Tom Vaughan
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