The Silent Treatment

That's what I write. Lousy treatments.

My screenplays may induce readers to send flowers to their mothers, write a sonnet to a lost love, or distribute dollar bills at homeless shelters, but my treatments are cold, clinical, and colorless. They are uninspiring and don't say what I want them to say so they are, basically, useless. So, you know what? I don't write them unless I'm asked to.

How does a good writer write such sorry treatments? Well, it's simple.

My background is in local government and press information. I'm a "just the facts" kind of gal which makes screenwriting a good fit for me. (1) Screenwriting follows a specific format and there are only so many variations in structure used to present the story. (2) Creation of the story is up to me. I can handle that.

Treatments are different. There is not a single widely accepted rule of thought on how a treatment should look, what the purpose of the treatment is, what it should accomplish, how long it should be, how much subtext to spill, whether to throw in bits of prose, whether you should single space or double space, tell the whole story or only hit the high points, and whether or not the treatment is a hybrid of an outline or a synopsis or a pitch or a narrative interpretation of a script.

Aaaacccckkk!

Too many variables. You cannot please everyone. No matter what you write in a treatment, it won't be a perfect fit for everyone who reads it and most likely, won't be a perfect fit for anyone at all who reads it.

Solution? There's not one. But you could try these. They won't work, but try them anyway.

(1) Study everything you can get your hands on regarding treatments - Even though every person, seminar, speech, book, and article tell you something that contradicts another person seminar, speech, book, or article, this is still a good thing. Kind of like taking driver's ed. One teacher will say it's okay to enter on yellow if you drive slow. Another teacher will tell you to slowly stop. They both know full well, you're gonna gun it the first time you hit a yellow light with no teacher in the car. But still, we take driver's ed.

(2) Study some treatments that have been successful - However, this only means that the treatment for that particular story was successful for a particular person at a particular point in time. Maybe the recipient of the treatment was having a good day and would have passed had he not just inherited an $80,000 car from a great aunt he didn't even know he had. Maybe the treatment would have been successful no matter what because this particular guy has been waiting years for a flesh eating Pokemon story and you happened to have one. Or, back to the driver's ed analogy, ask your friend how he passed his driver's test. Maybe he's a really good driver. But maybe, he slept with the officer giving the test or slipped a clerk a $50 bill.

(3) Study unsuccessful treatments - Well, first of all these are hard to find, but if you know writers who've dinked with a treatment, ask to look at it. You know what you'll learn from it? Nothing. Because you have no idea why it didn't work. Maybe it was poorly written. Maybe the execs who read it had just opted a similar story. Maybe it's a brilliant story but the style and format of the treatment rubbed the reader the wrong way. He likes Times New Roman and your friend used Arial fonts. In other words, maybe your friend was wearing offensive cologne during his driving test and the officer got ticked off when the window wouldn't roll down. Or, maybe your friend crashed his car into a telephone pole.

This is just one of those cruel uncertainties in writing. Everyone expects something different in a treatment and we, screenwriters, are supposed to give them exactly what they want. Don't believe me? Just compare what the experts say and also check out what Dave Trottier's Screenwriting Bible has to say about treatments.

Writing Treatments That Sell

Scripthollywood.com Re: Treatments

Creative Screenwriting Re: Treatments

How to Write a Film Treatment

Terry Rossio - "Proper Treatment"

So, why don't I just write the way I want to write, include what I think is important, leave out the superfluous stuff, and put it together the best way I know how? Well, that's exactly what I do... except it's called a screenplay.