Treatment
A narrative document that tells a film's story in prose form, used to pitch projects before a full screenplay is written.
Definition
A treatment is a written document that tells a film or television story in present-tense prose narrative, typically ranging from five to thirty pages. It reads like a short story, describing what happens in the project from beginning to end without dialogue formatting or technical directions.
Treatments serve as an intermediate step between a logline or pitch and a full screenplay. They allow writers to develop and present the story structure, character arcs, and emotional beats in a form that is more detailed than a pitch but faster to produce and easier to read than a full script.
Why It Matters
Treatments are essential sales tools in the development process. Producers, executives, and financiers rarely have time to read full screenplays for every project they consider. A well-crafted treatment communicates the story's potential in a format that can be read in twenty minutes rather than two hours.
For writers, treatments also serve as creative planning documents. Writing a treatment before diving into a screenplay helps identify structural problems, pacing issues, and character arc gaps early in the process, saving months of revision.
Examples in Practice
A screenwriter pitches a studio on a historical thriller with a compelling logline. The executive is interested and requests a treatment. The writer delivers a fifteen-page prose document that walks through the three-act structure, key set pieces, and character transformations, leading to a development deal.
An independent producer commissions treatments for three different approaches to a true-crime story before choosing which version to develop into a full screenplay, using the treatment stage to explore creative directions without the time investment of complete scripts.