What is a treatment in screenwriting?
- Treatments are written in present tense prose, not screenplay format.
- Length ranges from a one-page synopsis to a 30-page extended treatment.
- A treatment tells the whole story, including the ending, unlike a novel query.
- Producers use treatments to evaluate a story before commissioning a script.
- Writing one is the cheapest way to find out that act two does not work.
A treatment is a present-tense prose summary of an entire film or episode, typically two to ten pages, that tells the whole story including the ending. It is used to pitch a project and, more usefully, to test structure before you spend three months on a draft that fails in act two.
Chapter i·Why it matters
A treatment costs a few days and reveals structural problems that a screenplay hides behind good dialogue. Reading your own story as flat prose with no craft to lean on is uncomfortable and diagnostic: if the summary is boring, the film is boring, and no amount of sharp scene writing will rescue it.
Chapter ii·What to include
- Present tense, third person, no camera or format elements.
- The complete story including the ending, told plainly.
- Every major turn: inciting incident, act breaks, midpoint, climax.
- Character wants stated, not implied.
- Tone conveyed through the prose itself.
- A length matched to purpose: short to pitch, long to diagnose.
Chapter iii·Example
A writer's eight-page treatment revealed that her protagonist made no active choice until page four of eight. She fixed the structure in the treatment across two days rather than discovering it after a 112-page draft.
Chapter iv·Related questions
In WriteLoom
Somewhere to actually put the words
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