“It is good to have an end to journey towards; but it is the journey that matters in the end.”
—Ursula K. LeGuin
Author
Not too long ago, I was taking a yoga class with a well-known television actor. We started talking and after a while the subject, as always, turned to the movies, then to screenwriting. He told me that he had a great idea for a screenplay.
“What's it about?” I asked.
“Well,” he began, “it's about this guy in the Sahara Desert. We open at sunrise with a long shot of dust rising out of the desert. Then we see a Jeep racing across the sand. Suddenly, the engine sputters, coughs, and finally dies. The man climbs out of the Jeep, looks around, and jerks open the hood. Then we hear strange noises coming from behind a distant dune. Suddenly, several racing camels sweep down over the hill. They see him and stop. They look at each other surrounded by the silence.”
He looked at me, enthused. “Isn't that a great idea?”
“It's a great opening,” I replied. “What happens next?”
“I haven't figured it out yet. But it'll all come out later, in the plot.”
Sure. How many times have you heard that before? What plot?
I nodded in understanding. Yeah. Sure.
I can't tell you how many times I've heard that same scenario from aspiring screenwriters. Of course, they can't tell you any more about the story because they don't know any more about it. They haven't defined it to themselves yet.
What's it about? Briefly, in terms of describing the story line, what's your story about, and who is it about? Can you define it, articulate it in a few sentences? It's something I emphasize over and over again in my workshops and seminars:
“If you don't know your story, who does?”
Writing a screenplay is more about the journey than the destination. It is an ongoing, evolving process that changes day to day. You prepare the material in stages or steps. First, you need an idea, which is broken down into a subject, the action and character. Then, when you have your subject, you can structure it on the paradigm with the four anchoring points that hold your story together: the ending, beginning, Plot Points I and II. You really can't write anything with any degree of certainty until you know those four things; they are the foundation of your story line, the glue that holds your story together.
Only when you know these four elements can you begin to tell your story in a narrative fashion. In fact, the word “narrative” means an arrangement, or sequence of events or happenings, factual or imagined, and implies a sense of direction. The story progresses from beginning to end. And direction, remember, is a line of development.
Putting your story down on paper is essential because it's a necessary stage in fleshing out and developing your idea. How accurate it will be in terms of the finished screenplay five or six months from now, or how good or bad it is, is totally irrelevant.
That's why I think it's necessary to write a short, four-page treatment. A treatment is defined as a narrative synopsis of your story line. Some dialogue can be included if it helps to shed light upon the lives of your characters. I have my students write four-page treatments because it helps articulate and define the structural events that hold the story together.
Why is this necessary? Because it allows you to take those unformed, fragmented ideas that are running around your head and put them down on paper. It sharpens the details of your story and clarifies the relationships you've been thinking about.
I call this a “kick in the ass” exercise, because you're taking this amorphous idea, or notion, and trying to give it form. It's an important step in the screenwriting process.
It should be mentioned that in Hollywood, a treatment, any kind of a treatment, is only a writer's tool; it's just part of the ongoing journey of writing a screenplay. Writing a treatment and hoping it will sell, is only a pipe dream. A treatment is not a screenplay. Don't expect the treatment you write to be sold, or optioned, especially if you're a new or aspiring screenwriter. In television, it's a different story; there, treatments, or beat sheets, or outlines, may be developed in conjunction with the production executive and the network. But we're talking about screenplays here, and in Hollywood only a finished screenplay can be sent out to studios and production companies.
It's also a different story in Europe and in some Latin American countries. In Europe, for example, a treatment is often sold or optioned by members of the Film Commission or Ministry of Culture, and then the writer is given a nominal sum of money to develop the treatment into a screenplay. What happens to the screenplay after it's written, of course, is anybody's guess. Sometimes, the treatment is optioned, a screenplay written, and then it simply sits on a shelf somewhere gathering dust for whatever reason—a director is not available or doesn't like the material or the budget is too high or there's been a change in the policy or members of the Film Commission. Whatever. I hear this over and over and over again from European and Latin American screenwriters. The stories are legion.
Writing a four-page treatment is not something you have to do, but if you take the time to prepare your material correctly, it pays off during the actual writing process.
I learned this the hard way. When I was making documentaries for David L. Wolper, I was a staff writer and wrote, produced, researched, directed, or was associated with more than 125 television network documentaries. After four and a half years, I felt it was time for a change. I left Wolper Productions and went looking for a job in feature film production, actively seeking a job as a production executive. But nothing was available at the time. Things were tight. Then, after several months, I was asked to rewrite a documentary feature, called Spree, directed by Walon Green, whom I had worked with at Wolper Productions. Now the Executive Producer of TV's Law & Order, Walon had co-written The Wild Bunch with Sam Peckinpah, the writer–director who was a mentor to me and who had been so instrumental in my understanding of the screenplay.
After writing Spree, I realized I could possibly earn a living as a writer while waiting for some kind of a production job. So, I became a screenwriter living the life of a freelancer—a job here, a job there, just enough to make ends meet. It went on like this for the next seven years, during which time I wrote nine original screenplays. Two were produced. The next four scripts I wrote were optioned, meaning a producer paid me a certain sum of money so he or she had the exclusive right to produce the movie for a certain length of time, usually two years. At the end of that period, the rights reverted back to me. The three others I wrote went nowhere. Everybody told me how much they liked them, but nothing happened with them and they still sit on my shelf. “Hollywood,” said novelist Dorothy Parker, “is the only place where you can die from encouragement.”
The way I worked was simple. I would get an idea and research it—get books from the library and talk to people about it until I felt comfortable with the material. Then I would do my character work, write character biographies, talk to more people, look at pictures, read any first-hand accounts from diaries of that period. Next I would sit down and start writing. I used to call it “hitting my head against the typewriter.” I always came up with a script, but the cost, both physically and emotionally, was very high. It was a slow and painful process, and after years of working this way, I began to look at screenwriting as something I had to do rather than something I wanted to do. There's a big difference between the two; one is a negative experience, the other positive. While it's important to see both sides, writing is too hard a job, too demanding a task, to color it with a negative or painful experience.
One of the scripts I wrote during this time was a painful, but ultimately beneficial experience. It was a western about a man named Balinger who rode with Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, an “unchanged man in a changing time,” as Peckinpah used to say. But when Butch and Sundance left for South America in 1902, my character, Balinger, refused to believe the times were changing. He stayed behind, pulled a couple of holdups, was caught, sentenced to prison, escaped, and continued to do the only thing he knew how to do: rob banks.
Balinger was a character who was at odds with the times. On one hand, he was born ten years too late; on the other, he was born ten years too early. That was the basic idea. He was a character who didn't belong.
In the back story, Balinger robs a bank, gets caught, and is sentenced to prison. I wanted to open the script with an exciting sequence of Balinger escaping from prison, having served four years of a ten-year sentence. After he escapes, he teams up with his old partner, adds a few young members to his gang, and begins to pursue his old way of life. But of course, times have changed. Banks have started using checks, stocks and bonds are negotiable securities, and with something called the telephone you could call from Denver to San Francisco. Balinger couldn't understand that. After planning a robbery, his expectations are thwarted because nothing works. In one job he gets a bundle of checks, along with a thousand dollar bill he can't cash. Another job nets only a few hundred dollars in coins and some stock certificates.
At this point, he doesn't know what to do or where to go, and the Pinkerton detectives chasing him are closing in. Balinger knows his time is at an end and talks about joining Butch and Sundance in Bolivia. One last job—a big one, he thinks—will do it. So, the motley group rides to a town in Washington State, on the banks of Puget Sound. They pull the job, but in the ensuing shoot-out, the money is left behind and Balinger chooses to end his own life by deliberately colliding with the Coast Guard cutter chasing him. His last words were something like, “Maybe Butch and Sundance had the right idea.”
That's about all I knew when I sat down in “the pit” and started writing. But this time, “hitting my head against the typewriter” didn't work. Or, I should say, it worked for about thirty pages, and after that I went into a state of confusion. I didn't know what happened or what to do or where to go, and after struggling with the story line for several weeks, I plunged into the infamous writer's block.
It was awful. To help me, I started doing a lot of drugs, but instead of finding my story I simply got further and further away from it. I became angry, despondent, and frustrated, then surrendered to a deep depression. It went on for several weeks, until I became frightened, and stopped taking everything. Cold turkey.
A few days later a friend of mine, then the story editor for a major production company, called and we went out to dinner. During the course of the meal I shared the problem with him and he asked a very simple question: “What's your story about?”
I looked at him dumbfounded. In all my despair and pain and depression over my “writing block,” I had forgotten all about my story. It was the first time I had been asked to tell the story, to describe it out loud.
I stammered awhile, trying to remember what it was about, and finally managed to blurt out the basic idea. He listened, asked some pertinent questions, made some suggestions, and told me he wanted to see something in writing.
I agreed, and when I returned that night, I sat down and wrote a short treatment. I couldn't believe what happened—as soon as I knew my story, my writer's block vanished. That's when I suddenly understood: “The hardest thing about writing is knowing what to write.”
That experience taught me how important it is to know your story. In all my screenwriting workshops and seminars across the United States, Canada, Europe, Mexico, and South America, I continually stress the fact that you must know your story before you can write anything. And it all starts when you're able to take the four elements, the ending, beginning, Plot Point I, and Plot Point II, and structure them into a dramatic story line.
Why a four-page treatment and not ten or twenty pages?
Because at this stage you really don't know much about your story. You only have a general idea of an action and character, and a general basis for your plot, as well as the four anchoring points: ending, beginning, Plot Points I and II. That's all you know about your story at this point. You don't know what the purpose of a particular scene is or what part it plays in the story line. You probably don't even know whether it moves the story forward or reveals information about the character. Most of us don't have the answers to these kinds of questions at this stage. We have to frame in the story line, anchor it in the foundation of narrative.
The treatment helps set you up for the actual writing of the screenplay. So, when you're writing this short, four-page treatment, don't get carried away with excessive detail. Adding in too much detail now does not serve your best interests.
You'll always be able to be more specific later on, adding individual characterization, what kind of a car he or she drives, how his or her apartment looks, the paintings on the wall, and why he or she goes by train and not plane. You don't need to know that right now. Later on, yes.
That's why a four-page treatment is a good length at this stage for organizing your story line. It is not your story, it's just an outline of the story, a start point in the screenwriting process. So put all your expectations, your hopes and dreams away in a drawer somewhere where they're out of sight, and simply sit down and write the treatment.
Here's the assignment: you're going to write a four-page treatment, a narrative synopsis, of your story line. In the preceding chapters, we talked about isolating the idea and putting it into a subject. Basically, it describes what your story's about and who it's about. Then we took the subject and broke it down on the paradigm so we knew the ending, the beginning, Plot Point I, and Plot Point II. The paradigm becomes your structural anchor.
Now take the subject of your story line—the action and character—and lay it out in dramatic structure on the paradigm. Choose your ending first, then determine your beginning, then choose Plot Point I and Plot Point II. Do it the same way you did the structure exercise in the previous chapter.
As Aristotle says, we begin at the beginning. What's your opening scene or sequence? We're going into some brief detail here. Where does it take place? With your character arriving at the airport, like Vincent arriving in Los Angeles in Collateral ? Or does it take place on a deserted road, in a car, in the back country? Does your script open in a dream, or flashback, as in The Bourne Supremacy ? Or do you open on a crowded city street, or an empty elevator, or in a bedroom with an erotic sex scene like Basic Instinct (Joe Eszterhas)? At this moment you don't have to be too specific or precise; you don't have to know everything yet. Just deal with your story line in broad strokes. The details will come later.
If your opening scene or sequence takes place at the office, what is your character doing? Arriving at work on Monday morning? Leaving on Friday afternoon? Sketch it in, knowing you can change it all later. Remember that the purpose of this exercise is to define and synopsize your story line in four pages. It should either be double-spaced, or a space and a half.
Not eight pages, not five pages—four pages.
Once you've decided on what your opening scene or sequence is, we're going to break the treatment down into two distinct categories. The first category I call the dramatic recreation of the scene or sequence. It visually describes the action. For example: “Night. A car slowly weaves though the streets. It turns a corner, pulls over to the side. Stops. The lights go out. The car sits in front of a large house. Waits. Silence. In the distance, a dog BARKS. JOE sits behind the wheel, silently, a radio transmitter on the seat next to him. He slips on a pair of earphones, slowly turns the dial to pick up police calls. Then he listens. And waits.”
I call that a dramatic recreation because it's a visually specific description of the action. Remember, we're setting up the opening scene or sequence here. Describe the action of the opening in about half a page. Use a few lines of dialogue if you need to.
Remember, this is not your screenplay; it's only a treatment, a narrative synopsis of your story.
The second category I call the narrative synopsis, and that's where you summarize the action in broad, general strokes. If your story is about the relationship between a recently divorced mother and her teenage son who wants to live with his father in another state, you want to summarize what happens during the rest of Act I. If your opening scene or sequence starts with a dream of the mother waking up to an empty house, the rest of Act I deals with setting up and establishing their relationship. For example, “the mother tries to communicate with her son but he continues to disrupt life by performing poorly in school, becoming defiant and disrespectful of his teachers. He criticizes her constantly, complaining of her physical inability to do ‘guy’ things like throwing footballs and lifting weights. It seems clear that the mother feels she's losing him. She vows to spend more time with him and puts him before her work and her own well-being. But her determination does little to gain his respect or appreciation. The mother doesn't know what to do anymore or what it will take to win back his affection.”
The narrative synopsis is a general description, a summary of the action that takes place during the rest of Act I. If you contrast this type of writing with the opening, the dramatic recreation, you'll see that the opening is specific, whereas the narrative synopsis is general. That's the tone we want to achieve in this four-page treatment. You want it to look like there's a full story, but the truth is there are only four points of the story line which are specific. It leads us directly into the next step, a dramatic recreation of Plot Point I.
What is the incident, episode, or event that is the Plot Point at the end of Act I? Is it an action sequence or a dialogue sequence? Where does it take place? What's the purpose of the scene or sequence? Remember, a plot point is always a function of character. Does it reveal character or move the story forward?
Next, in about half a page, in a dramatic recreation, write the Plot Point at the end of Act I. If you're writing an action film, and your character is setting out on a mission to avenge a wrong, wanting to discover who's after him and why by traveling to another location, it could be as simple as this: “He sits on motorcycle facing east. Packed for travel. Revving up the carbon. Dropping into gear. The waiting is finally over. It's time. The warrior is returning to do battle.” Remember, a plot point can be as simple as a change of locale or as complex as an escape from a prison. It's anything you want it to be.
Something else to take into account: if your character's dramatic need changes at Plot Point I, be clear on what the new dramatic need is. In Thelma & Louise, the two women start out for a weekend holiday, but after killing the would-be rapist, their dramatic need changes. Now, they are two women wanted for questioning who are running from the police.
With just three dramatic elements, the opening, Act I, and Plot Point I, you're up to a page and a half of a four-page treatment. Not bad for just two scenes or sequences.
We've completed Act I so now you're ready to move on into Act II. Act II is a unit of dramatic action that is approximately sixty pages long. It begins at the end of Plot Point I and goes to the end of Plot Point II. It is held together with the dramatic context known as Confrontation. If you know your character's dramatic need—what he or she wants to win, gain, get, or achieve during the course of the screenplay—you can create obstacles to that need and then your story becomes your character overcoming obstacle after obstacle (or not overcoming them) to achieve his or her dramatic need.
Remember, all drama is conflict. Without conflict you have no action. Without action, you have no character. Without character, you have no story, and without story you have no screenplay.
So think about Act II for a moment. Your character is going to be encountering conflict. Conflict means “in opposition to,” so what does your character encounter? It's important to note that there are two types of conflict: External conflict, where a force is working against the dramatic need of the characters, like being pursued or pursuing someone, being captured by an enemy, trying to survive during a natural disaster, overcoming a physical injury, and so on. Then there's internal conflict, such as fear, whether it's fear of failure, fear of success, or fear of intimacy or commitment. An internal conflict can become an impediment to the character's action. It is an emotional force within the character that interferes with his or her dramatic need.
Cold Mountain (Anthony Minghella) is a good example. Inman, the Jude Law character, is wounded during the Civil War and taken to a hospital behind the lines. In flashback and voiceover narration, we see and hear about his relationship with Ada (Nicole Kidman). She wants him to “come back to me,” so Inman deserts the Confederate Army and starts his physical and emotional journey back to Cold Mountain. The community of Cold Mountain is not only a physical town, but also an emotional place in the heart. Inman has to overcome all kinds of obstacles, including weather, enemy soldiers, capture, and being hunted by the Confederate Police to serve his dramatic need: returning to Cold Mountain and Ada. The obstacles he confronts during Act II are both internal and external, and bring drama and tension as he attempts to survive the journey home.
Ada's conflict is also both internal and external. She has been raised with the skills and qualities of a “lady”—she can play the piano, be a premiere hostess at church gatherings, read, and be a personable companion. But, she doesn't know the first thing about surviving on the farm after her father dies. She must deal with the internal frustration of not knowing what she has to do to survive, mending fences or planting crops or just fending for herself.
Most of the time we encounter both internal and external conflicts. So, as you prepare to describe the action that takes place in Act II, it's a good idea to sketch out some of the obstacles your character may confront.
First, take a separate sheet of paper, and list four obstacles your character confronts during Act II. Do you know what they are? Can you define and articulate them? Are they internal obstacles or external? Think about it and when you're ready, just list them. Ask yourself whether these four obstacles generate a sense of dramatic conflict within the progression of your story. If your story is about a botanist in the Grand Canyon, possible obstacles might include the dangers of running the white-water rapids; succumbing to the tremendous heat; or a physical hardship, such as a severe ankle strain or a broken bone. It could be the raft overturning, losing supplies, or friction between the other characters. Select four conflicts, either internal or external, or some combination of both, but always making sure they are obstacles that confront your character and that move the story forward to the Plot Point at the end of Act II.
When that's complete, go back to your treatment. In a narrative synopsis, summarize the action of Act II in a page, using these four conflicts as the anchoring points of the story line. Just follow your character as he or she confronts each obstacle, and then summarize the obstacle in about a quarter of a page. It's important to generate a dramatic flow to the material at this point. Focus on your character confronting and overcoming these obstacles and simply describe the action—that is, what happens—in broad strokes. As mentioned, you'll find that if you spend too much time on the specific details of the action, you'll wind up with something like eight pages, not four. So, keep the material general; at this stage, too much detail is the enemy.
When you finish, you should have written about two and a half pages, and you're ready to write the Plot Point at the end of Act II. What is Plot Point II? Can you describe it? Dramatize it? In a dramatic recreation, write Plot Point II in about half a page. If you want, use a few lines of dialogue if necessary. How does the Plot Point at the end of Act II “spin” the action around into Act III? Keep the story flowing smoothly without regard to the specifics of the narrative. Again, your tendency will probably be to add detail, so watch for it and don't get caught up in it. You'll know when you're starting to overthink it because you'll find yourself spending time trying to decide exactly how it happens, what the character's specific motivation is, what kind of car he's driving, or which job or location to use. Just let it go. You don't need too much character motivation for this exercise.
This now takes you into Act III, the Resolution. What happens in Act III? Does your character live or die, succeed or fail, win the race or not, get married or not, get divorced or not, kill the bad guy or not? What is the solution of your story? Do you know what has to happen to resolve the story line? What is the solution? Not the specifics, only the generalities. In about half a page, write up the narrative synopsis of what happens in Act III. Describe the resolution simply.
Now we're at the ending. You know what the resolution is, so in half a page, write the dramatic recreation of the ending. It could be an action sequence, like a rescue, or an emotional scene, like a wedding. It doesn't have to be perfect, and feel free to change anything you want to regarding the ending at a later time. The end scene or sequence is only a dramatic choice at this point and can be changed, heightened, or exaggerated during the actual writing process. When you complete the exercise, you'll have your story line written up and dramatized in four pages:
To recap:
In half a page—write a dramatic recreation of the opening scene or sequence;
In half a page—write a narrative synopsis of the action summarizing what happens during the rest of Act I;
In half a page—write a dramatic recreation of the Plot Point at the end of Act I;
Then, on a separate sheet of paper, write four obstacles—either internal or external, or some combination of both—that your character confronts during Act II. Then:
In a page—write a narrative synopsis, summarizing the action of Act II by focusing on four conflicts that confront your character. It could be as simple as a couple of sentences describing each obstacle. Then, write:
In half a page—a dramatic recreation of the Plot Point at the end of Act II;
In half a page—a narrative synopsis of the action in Act III, the Resolution;
Then, in half a page—write a dramatic recreation of the ending scene or sequence of the screenplay.
That's a four-page treatment. It looks like a story, reads like a story, but it's only a treatment of what your story line is about. It's something you can register at the Writers Guild of America, West or East, and it is the “proof of authorship.” You can register it online at www.wga.org and click on registration. As of this writing, it costs $20 for a nonmember and $10 for a member. Registering the treatment allows you to claim authorship of your story as of the date it's registered. It's not necessary to copyright your material. If you want, you can also send the four-page treatment to yourself, certified, with a return receipt requested, but do not open the envelope when you receive it.
Writing these four pages is what I call “the kick in the ass” exercise; they may be the toughest pages you'll write during the entire screenplay. You are taking an unformed and undefined idea, arbitrarily choosing an ending, and structuring it in terms of beginning, middle, and end. It's tough, because you really don't have too much material to work with. Your characters are not defined, and there's no room for specific detail. If you do put in too much detail, you may end up getting lost or confused. It may take two or three times to write up your story line and edit it down to four pages. Your first effort may be eight pages long, which you'll reduce to five, then finally cut to four.
You might experience all kinds of internal resistance when writing the treatment; you might get angry or bored, and the chances are that you'll probably make a lot of judgments and evaluations about what you're writing. Your critical voice may tell you “this is the most boring story in the world!” Or “I hate it! It's simple and stupid.” Or “I've heard it all before.” Or “Why did I think I could write this?”
You may be right. At this stage, the chances are that your story may actually be boring.
So what? It's only a four-page treatment. It's only a first words-on-paper exercise, nothing more. You can't lose sight of the fact that you're just writing four pages. It is what it is. These pages are not going to be carved in stone or written in gold. Just write the treatment. It's okay that it's not perfect.
Bear in mind that this four-page treatment may have little or nothing to do with the way your final screenplay turns out. It's only a start point, not the finished product. Your story is going to change and evolve and grow during the writing experience, so don't expect these pages to be flawless. Forget your expectations. You don't need to make too many critical evaluations. Save them for later! Writing is experiential—the more you do, the easier it gets.
One last note of caution: when you complete the treatment, the chances are that you'll be uncertain about whether it works, or whether it's good or bad. Your tendency may be to get feedback, some kind of affirmation about what you're writing.
Don't.
Don't let your wife, husband, lover, girlfriend, boyfriend, brother, or sister read it. They'll want to, I'm sure. They may even beg and plead to read your four pages. Don't let them. And here's why: I've had many students show these pages to the significant people in their lives looking for feedback and affirmation. One woman, in particular, was insecure and showed her treatment to her husband, who happened to be in the movie business. Out of his love for her, out of his concern to “really be honest” with her, and because he cared so much, he told her what he truly thought about it. His “truth” was that the material was dull, the characters weren't fleshed out, plus as an afterthought he mentioned that there might have been a similar film made several years earlier. Needless to say, she was devastated. Not only did she put the treatment in a drawer and bury it, but what's worse, she never went back to writing again. She had a wonderful sense of comic potential but she chose to listen to her husband because she thought he knew more than she did, and she never recovered.
I've seen this happen over and over again. It's why you have to understand that this is only a four-page treatment. It's not your screenplay. It's only a starting point exercise, not an end point.
Don't write these four pages thinking you can sell it, either. This is an exercise to clarify your story in your own mind. Just do the exercise and tell the story. Don't get caught up trying to sell the treatment or thinking about how much money you're going to make when the movie is made.
Focus on getting your story line down to four pages and don't worry about what happens after it's written.
The way the ancient Sanskrit text, the Bhagavad Gita, puts it: “Don't be attached to the fruits of your actions.”
Structure your four story points on the paradigm.
In half a page, dramatize the scene in a dramatic recreation.
In half a page, write a narrative synopsis of what happens in Act 1.
In half a page, write a dramatic recreation of Plot Point I, like you did in the opening scene or sequence.
On a separate sheet of paper, list four obstacles your character confronts in Act II. These obstacles can be internal or external or any variation thereof.
In one page, in narrative synopsis, summarize the four obstacles the character confronts.
In half a page, in dramatic recreation, write what happens at Plot Point II.
In half a page, in narrative synopsis, write what happens in Act III.
In half a page, in dramatic recreation, write the ending scene or sequence of the story.
