My Scriptwriting Plus

December the thirteenth – How I Write My Treatments

How I Write My Treatments

Why am I writing this Blog entry about writing scriptwriting treatments? There are several reasons why I’m doing it. One of those reasons is because that is what I have been doing yesterday at work. I have been working on finishing up the movie treatment for my Treasure Finders project. Also did the Teaser Act and the first two Acts for Episode One. At least I have the one-sentence or a few words lines for them.

Another reason why I’m writing about scriptwriting treatments is that I’m a strong believer in writing them and Outlines. Especially, when you are a first-time scriptwriter. I know there are a lot of writers who either don’t like to write them or they don’t do them, but I think that it’s important that you do. It helps me to write my scripts.

How do I write my treatments? That depends on if it’s an Action/Adventure or a non-Action/Adventure. All my movies are written in eight Acts plus one Teaser Act and one Tag Act. The length of those eight Acts is either twenty scenes per Act for non-Action/Adventures and forty scenes for Action/Adventure. Teaser Acts and Tag Acts are a little different. They are either ten or twenty scenes depending on which Action/Adventure type it is. The television episodes are a little different too. instead of eight Acts, there are only four, but they are all still twenty or forty scenes long. Teaser Acts and Tags Acts either five or ten scenes long.

I start each scene with a what I call Scene Headings aka sluglines. Then I write a paragraph for that scene. The length of that paragraph depends on which scene it is. If it’s an Establishing Shot, then it’s three lines. Scenes twos, fours, sevens, and nines it’s four lines. For scenes ones, three, six, and eights it’s five lines. The length of scenes fives and tens are six lines.

Why do I write my treatments like that? Is it because I’m crazy? A lot of people would say that I am. To me, I treat it like the days of the week. Mondays and Wednesdays are more important than Tuesdays and Thursdays, but Fridays are the most important day of the week. I know that it sounds crazy, but that’s just the way that I like to write my treatments. I’ll do another Blog entry about my Outlines when I get to them in a few days.

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What you are about to read (see) is true. Nothing needed to be changed. After all, this has already been translated into a language that we all know and understand - English (German, French, Italian, Russian etc.).