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ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN SCRIPTWRITER MAGAZINE ISSUE 7 NOVEMBER 2002 TREATMENTS By Lucy Scher
The Script Factory tries to respond to perceived gaps in industry training and develops events, training and services around them. There seems to be a need in the reading and development industry for some clarity about treatments. There is no definitive industry standard about what a treatment is for, how long it should be or what is essential within it, which makes it harder to develop an approach and methodology to the writing or assessment of treatments. Lucy Scher attempts to identify answers to these questions. The first question is, of course, what are treatments for? There are three main purposes:
The second question is: how does one arrive on my desk for assessment?
It could be that: If you ask for a treatment for either reason, or if it is an application for a programme, the more information you supply about what you want from it, the simpler the process of assessment is because you have created the criteria against which it is to be assessed. By the end of this article you will hopefully have enough information about what you should be looking for in a treatment to write your own meaningful guidelines. If we go back to the beginning, treatments tell a story which is intended to be rendered on screen so it is essential that we understand what a screen story is. My own summary is that it means something, it is entertaining and, importantly, it has emotional resonance (all of this has been discussed in the genre articles in previous issues of ScriptWriter). With these three fundamentals in place, the story should find an audience. In addition, I want to be convinced that its best place is on screen, which means that the story must be told in a concise and dramatic way. At The Script Factory we assume that the story comes from a place within the writer and a feeling that compels him or her to write it, usually without payment. The assessment is as much to do with the potential of the story as with what is actually written, and it can be, or should be, a creative process for the assessor as well as the writer. Writers often do not know what is expected of them in writing a treatment and there are some very common problems that can prejudice the assessor against their work. But the basis of this article is to try leaving those assumptions behind and apply a way of thinking that enables a writer to assess their work in its best light. Common problems with treatments are:
For example: John is in an unhappy marriage. Apart from this not being mind-numbing in the first place, it doesn’t indicate any drama. Think instead: John gets up and goes to the bathroom. The door is locked. He pauses, considers knocking, but then walks back to the bedroom and goes back to bed. After what seems like an interminable time, he hears the bathroom door open, so he gets out of bed and as he passes his wife in the hall, there is no acknowledgement between them.
In example one, as a reader I may be thinking, I hate blue eyes and pyjamas, which means that I am already at odds with the writer and bristling. None of the description has any impact on the story, except perhaps that he is handsome. In the second example I fill the gap with my own idea of good looking or, in other words, I have invested myself in the story by unconsciously doing some of the work. In terms of assessment, if the writer enables the reader to invest in the story by leaving this kind of space, it demonstrates true storytelling craft skill, which should be noted. The good thing about treatments is that they are unencumbered by script constraints such as the basic quality of the screenwriting, the skill in dialogue or visual grammar. They are also naked in terms of what can be achieved on screen: witty dialogue and spectacular effects can disguise an average script because the treatment should allow for the focus to be on the story. The ability to tell stories is not dispensed fairly. Some people are much better at it than others and if you listen analytically to good storytellers, you can learn a great deal about how to do it effectively. I believe that storytellers know at the start where the story is going and how to end it. They know where to start the story in order to catch your attention and they know how to heighten the drama at the right moment. Storytelling is a craft and if you do it well, you will command an audience; if not, you won’t. So in the broadest sense, the function of the treatment is to tell a story and the process of assessment is to decide whether it is a good story, well told, and/or whether it can be made into a better story. As a reader, if you are able to say yes or no on the basis of a quick read, then the assessment is primarily about whether or not the story hooked you, kept you interested and delivered a satisfying ending. I repeat the caution that if the assessment is negative, then because of the lamentable lack of clarity given to writers about the treatment format, you may miss a potentially good story and that it may be worthwhile looking a little more closely. If, however, a treatment has grabbed you then your thoughts are about how it can be made even better: the treatment has become a development tool. When reading a treatment and assessing it in detail, either for its author or for someone else, I would suggest that the process of assessment should begin with what is expected. This enables the assessment to establish what is missing and from this, to decide whether there is a format problem or a story problem and in either case, whether it can be rectified. My objective here is to create a format for a document (a little like the format for script reports which includes synopsis, premise, structure etc) that gives details of the assessment and I think it is a good idea to start at the end. What should the reader know at the end of a treatment? The reader should know:
What is the story about and can it be defined thematically? This is distinct from what happens which is what it is about, such as this is a story about a shark terrorising a seaside resort and the community’s efforts to catch it. Thematically it is about the fragility of life. This is harder than it seems but if there is any semblance of a story in the treatment, it should be possible to state what the story is about and the larger issue it explores. The protagonists and antagonists As the reader, are you interested in their situation? Are they characters we can relate to? What are they trying to achieve and why can’t they succeed: what is the main conflict in the story? Are their goals and motivations comprehensible? Do you understand the steps they intend to take in order to achieve their goals? How will this change them? From whose point of view is the story told? A film is someone’s story so a treatment should make it clear whose story the film intends to tell. Point of view gives meaning to the theme; for example, what is the writer trying to say about the fragility of life? The shape of the story Does it start in the best place? Could you explain to someone else why this story starts here? Does it end once the journey is completed? Drama has a beginning, a middle and an end. Is this basic journey explicit? Where and when it takes place Is it contemporary or of a period? Is it consistent in this? Is it set in a specific location for a specific reason? Could it be moved? The setting of the story is important. It frames a film and contributes to the story in that the setting works for or against (or both) the main character in their quest. Again, there should be a rationale about why the story is set where it is. The key dramatic moments Can the crucial scenes that heighten the story be defined? What happens to upset the plan? Why do we have to keep watching? Dramatic moments are about the management of information between the characters as well as between the audience and the characters. We know something is about to happen, or all is not what it seems, or are we are shocked, humoured, enlightened at the same time as the character/s? The hook Why? Why are we expected to engage in this story? Does something happen that we would like to know more about? Has something happened that needs a resolution? This annoying Americanism is actually quite critical. It is all very well to create good characters and put them in an interesting place, but something has to happen to generate a story. Otherwise it is simply observation and that is not the same as a story. The intended market This matter is slightly beyond the scope of this article. Film is a global industry with established markets so although there is some room for manoeuvre in business terms, part of the assessment must be about its potential to find an audience. The question that helps illuminate this is what type of story is it? Is it a love story, a romantic comedy, a thriller or a horror etc? Basically, you are asking whether there is already a market. This is fundamental to deciding the development potential of the story for the screen. Each type of story contains a set of expectations that relate to our understanding of the emotional range it covers and the inherent questions and themes it explores. As a method, the process is simply to read the treatment and then try to answer the questions. You shouldn’t have to go back to the treatment to do this; they are general questions about story and the point is to be able to answer them quickly and easily. As you work through these questions you are necessarily responding in a way that highlights the weaknesses and strengths in the story, as well as areas for potential development. Depending on your brief, this could be the time to abandon a treatment if you have given it reasonable consideration, it has failed to cut the mustard in one or more of the crucial areas and you can explain this to the writer if required. However, if you are assessing a treatment in order to develop it into a screenplay or towards another draft of a script on which you are working, the answers to these questions are the beginning of a useful development document. Once you have done this basic thinking, it is worth spending more time on the themes that the film explores. Themes are suggested by the resolution of the conflict and can be described in pithy phrases that suggest a universal ‘truth’ in our time such as:
Theme is what the film is ‘about’ and it is important that you believe it to be a worthy meaning in that you think it is interesting and universal. You should also assess the writer’s interpretation of their theme because this is the ultimate meaning of the film. The importance of defining the theme is that the writer may not have done it. Theme requires schematic thinking – one of the roles of development – and the definition of theme/s is an incredibly useful development tool. Stories that clearly manifest their theme – usually very character-driven, ensemble pieces such as Lantana, The Ice Storm or Lawless Heart – still have to say something about their theme/s. For example, Lantana explores relationships under duress and ultimately champions the importance of trust. This is not everyone’s idea of what is important in a relationship. It is the interpretation of the theme that the writer is offering. The beginning and end of the treatment are simpler in many respects; the beginning sets up the story and the end resolves it. The middle section is often the territory of the antagonists and obstacles and these need to be made as compelling as possible. The more purposeful, intended and driven the obstacles, the easier it is to engage an audience. As with all story development, the bulk of the work is in the characters because what they do and say and how they change is the way in which we understand the story of the film. Characters can be distracting in an assessment process because they are so much more tangible and simpler to chart in the story. As with scripts, in assessing a treatment, the focus should be on the two or three main characters. Successful and favourite films are governed by our investment in a character within them. That character becomes a person to us and we care about them. To become such a person, the writer has to make that character believable in that there is a consistency of action, speech and re-action which we recognise. To do this the writer must invest an enormous amount of thought in any character, most of which will not be written in either the treatment or the eventual script but the thinking must still be done. The only way to assess character is to examine whether or not you believe in them. The key way in which this is done is by examining motivation. We instinctively want to know why someone behaves or acts or speaks in a certain way. We are uncomfortable with not knowing why people do things. If at any point in the assessment you wonder why a character is doing or saying something, it is worth noting. It is difficult to produce a sequence of events – or a plot – and fit characters into it in a convincing way. It is much easier, and obviously much more convincing, to create characters and allow them to act as a guide through the events. The impact that those events have on characters and by extension on the audience is what makes the events interesting. The order in which events unfold and the rate of information release are the tools by which writers engage and interest the audience. Understanding this allows us to understand the importance of character and how fundamental it is to make them convincing. In assessing the characters in a treatment you are looking for the kind of traits they exhibit which may enable an audience to recognise them and engage with them. These are subtle and so all the help you are given by the writer, in allowing you the space to create them in your mind, is valuable. Whichever way a character is presented, it is essential that the character grows. There is no story without growth and the way a character develops depends on with what conflicts and crises he or she is tested throughout the story. Conflict is the essential point of the story and it is manifested and made convincing through the characters. Most conflicts need to be personalised to be sustaining, so it is important how conflicts with ‘things’ are turned into conflicts with people. When conflict involves someone else, that person has his own response to the action that, importantly, requires the need for a resolution. This is drama and how to assess whether the story has been dramatised in the treatment. As a general rule, two opposing characters make stories simpler. The strongest conflicts are when a person wants something and another person doesn’t want them to have it, or wants something that makes it impossible for the other to have it. It is very common for early treatments to lack an antagonist but in most genres, the introduction of a character who is pitted against the main character, makes the dramatisation of the conflict much easier and stronger. A good treatment should indicate the action that a character takes so that the audience can understand what kind of person they are and what situation they are in. A treatment which tells rather than shows deserves rejection but if it should be in development, this can be a good place to start thinking about what could happen to reveal character and situation. Should a treatment be requested, it should be as clear as possible about what is expected in the following areas:
It may assist with clarity if it also states what is not wanted, such as:
The time spent on writing a treatment, particularly if that treatment is a really good one, will always benefit the script that follows. Lucy Scher works at The Script Factory that runs a range of courses about script developing, script reading and assessment and screenwriting. To receive current information on courses available, please email your postal address to training@scriptfactory.freeserve.co.uk or www.scriptfactory.co.uk .
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