Introduction to Sell Your Treatment

For the newbie screenwriter, an assortment of terms surface. One of them is treatment, short for film treatment. A treatment is a bit of writing, usually somewhere in between basic notes for a story and the first draft for a movie or television show. Selling your treatment obviously could be vital toward your success in ultimately selling a screenplay. Treatments are used routinely in the motion picture industry as documents aimed at selling a story. This differs from outlines, which generally are part of the development process, when multiple stakeholders are involved. To sell your treatment effectively, learn what it should look like, and what decision-makers expect to see.

Treatments are not always used the same way. Some screenwriters use a treatment to pitch a screenplay initially. Others may use a treatment to sell a concept before a screenplay is completed. Treatments are usually longer and more detailed than an outline. There are two kinds of treatments, the original draft treatment, and the presentation treatment. The original draft treatment is created during the writing process, while the other, as its name suggests, is intended to support a presentation. When you aim to sell your treatment, get to know how many pages it should be, and the format, to help increase your odds of moving to the next motion picture production level.

Selling Your Treatment – Types of Treatments

A treatment should come across as a short story, but sometimes with thoughts on the style you prefer for it to be directed. The original draft treatment is usually lengthier with more specifics. They can get up to 80 pages in length, though the norm is about half of that. They include full scene outlines. This is a rather all-conclusive synopsis of your story and movie idea, so you can imagine how important it is to do it correctly. To sell a treatment, you need to catch the attention of a key decision-maker with the quality of the story as well as how you plan to tell the story.

A presentation treatment is usually the story written out chronologically, with scene card descriptions. This form of treatment is shorter than your original draft treatment, including only essential and vital story events that comprise scenes. A format could be to start with the concept, then add theme, and then characters. Also usually included are up to eight pages of a summary of main scenes. The thrust is either to convey how the production notes have been incorporated into the screenplay, or have something to give after a sales pitch. If a script submission requires a treatment, you should send a presentation treatment, between three and 30 pages. It’s important to follow generally accepted practices in terms of length and format when you try to sell a treatment.

Vital Information to Help Sell Your Treatment

It’s been repeated over and over, but the key to getting a deal in Hollywood is getting someone with decision-making power to read a script. Often that person is too busy to read entire draft screenplays, so they ask for a treatment. Thus, your treatment is a huge deal toward getting a foot in the door. Your treatment needs to define your story, and offer a glimpse of its entertaining ingredients. In trying to sell a screenplay, it can be a useful tool to write it into treatment form, as it can help you better organize the story, or discover flaws in its flow.

To better sell your treatment, remember to include more details than an outline, which essentially is just a list of actions to occur. An outline might just state “Koufax pitched the ball … Aaron takes mighty swing … Crawford looks up to watch the arc of the ball.” A treatment, on the other hand, may contain dialogue to emphasize a particular scene or moment. Not that you should feel obliged to go too overboard – treatments as short as three pages have proved extremely successful. But handle the details with utmost care while you try to sell your treatment. The future of your screenplay can depend on it.

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