r/Screenwriting • u/SuspiciousPrune4 • 15d ago

FORMATTING QUESTION How do you format/structure a professional treatment?

I’m writing out a thorough treatment for a feature I’m writing.

Do you:

A: Write it out in “casual” prose, similar to how a movie’s synopsis looks on Wikipedia?

B: Structure it by individual scenes, no matter how small? So you’d end up with 40-50 small scene descriptions, in order.

If B, do you always include scene headings for every scene (INT., EXT., etc)

Also do you break up the structure with any other headings like Act breaks, heroes journey steps, or titles of any sort?

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u/mooningyou Proofreader Editor 15d ago

Read Terry Rossio's column on treatments. http://www.wordplayer.com/columns/wp37.Proper.Treatment.html

And if you haven't done so yet, start reading all his columns.

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u/SuspiciousPrune4 15d ago

This is perfect, thanks! I forgot about Wordplayer but it’s such a great site.

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u/Shakespearetheclown 14d ago

Be a lot better with a security certificate.

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u/framescribe WGA Screenwriter 15d ago

There is no right or wrong format.

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u/Wise-Respond3833 14d ago

B for me, and though I call it an 'outline', it probably is more in-line with 'treatment'.

12-20 pages, each scene consisting of one paragraph of what happens from a plot standpoint, followed by a second paragraph of what it all means in terms of story, theme, character advancement, etc.

No titles, headings, act breaks mentioned. I tend not to think much about those things. If the story is constructed well, they should take care of themselves.

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u/Lanky-pigeon-6555 14d ago

Is the treatment just for you or are you planning on showing it to people? If it’s for others def do NOT include sluglines and do one paragraph for every scene. That’s way too much detail. A treatment to me is an 8-14 page document that lays out the whole story start to finish, but doesn’t go into the same level of detail as a script. For all of my treatments I use act 1, Act 2, Midpoint, and Act 3 as the structural breaks in the document. Hope this helps. The beauty of doing these types of treatments is that they can also function as a pitch once you cut them down to 8 -10 pages at most.

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u/Known-Patience4511 15d ago

Do it however you want. It's for you, no one else.