Ask Dr. Format: Getting The Treatment
DAVE TROTTIER sold or optioned ten screenplays (three produced) and helped hundreds of writers break into the writing business. He was an award-winning teacher and script consultant, author of The Screenwriter’s Bible. Read more tips on the Ask Dr. Format page.
GETTING THE TREATMENT
QUESTION
I understand what the treatment is and what it is used for, but I'm getting mixed information about length. You once stated that most treatments are about two to seven pages, but there are some articles online that state that a treatment could be twenty-five or more pages. To add to my confusion, I came across treatments for ALIENS and TERMINATOR that were around forty-five pages in length. Could you please clarify?
ANSWER
Your treatment should be usually about 2-7 pages when it is used to sell your project; that is, when it is used to entice people to ask for your screenplay. My rule-of-thumb is to use as few pages as necessary to sell the material since Hollywood types don't like to read more than they have to.
Usually, your first contact with someone in the business is through a written query letter or an oral pitch. If the query or pitch does its job, then the agent, producer, or executive will likely request a copy of the script, but he/she could ask for a treatment first or for both the script and a treatment. If a treatment is requested, it's easy to ask the requesting party what he/she is looking for in terms of length.
On rare occasion, a producer may request that a treatment or synopsis be included with a query. In such rare cases, the page length will be implied or stated.
As you can see, with the above two scenarios, it's easy to determine about how many pages the agent or producer is looking for. Keep in mind that a treatment can be as long or short as the producer or agent who requests it wants it to be.
If you are an established writer or have some kind of track record, you might be able to sell a treatment or use it to get a deal to write the eventual script. In those cases, use as few pages as necessary to adequately "treat" the story. That will usually be 2-7 pages, but it can be longer in some instances. A friend of mine recently wrote two successful treatments; one was three pages in length, and the other was ten pages. He told me the first story needed fewer pages than the second to sell.
In the case of a development deal (where a producer hires you to write a script from scratch), you might be asked to write a 45 to 50-page treatment before writing the first draft of the screenplay. In your question, you referred to two 45-page treatments, one for ALIENS and the other for TERMINATOR; those projects were developed, and that’s the reason for the long treatments.
I mentioned earlier the term synopsis. Although a synopsis can be used as another term for treatment, a synopsis usually refers to a one-page story summary. Depending on who is asking for it, it could be written to inform or to sell. Whichever it is, keep writing!