Screenplay treatment writing & editing services.

By- Michael McKown

The purpose of a screenplay treatment is to give literary agents and producers a thorough but brief and easily readable version of your story. You send it when you’re ready to pitch your idea for a movie. It is the story of the film told in a present-tense prose, usually without dialog or technical information. It’s a Hollywood version of a book proposal, a sort of short-story version of the complete screenplay.

The goal of a film treatment is to gain the interest of someone in a position to order up a full screenplay (or to see the screenplay, if it’s already written). And with some luck, down the road, the studio or producer may buy the rights and greenlight the movie for financing and production.

The treatment is descriptive only

The basic treatment is descriptive only and usually ranges between 2,000 and 4,000 words. And it must leave the producers hungry for more. It must summarize the entire story, so the movie concept must be fully formed in detail before the treatment is written. It isn’t necessary that the full screenplay be completed when the treatment is written, but it is very much to the author’s advantage to develop the treatment alongside the actual script.

A treatment is structured in acts, from beginning to end. It must convey the story, conflict and emotion without hyperbole or amateurish mistakes.

The one who receives your treatment will likely be a script reader, which is a gatekeeper whose job it is to find commercially-viable, well-told stories for consideration. A treatment must be correctly formatted otherwise it will quickly end up in the reject pile. Readers are notoriously intolerant of improper formats, poor writing and unclear or confused storytelling.

Inside that ruthless reader’s head is a series of checkboxes. Your treatment must tic off each of them if it’s going to survive long enough to get to the next stage.

Impress the script reader & a producer may read it

We know how to put your movie idea in treatment form so that it will be judged on its merits by the script reader. If the reader is intrigued and thinks the story has film potential, then it will be sent on to a producer, who may then ask to see the full screenplay.

We can also write a plot synopsis, which is a bare-bones outline of your movie, usually two to three pages long.

Your treatment should be submitted to a literary agent, not directly to studios or producers to whom you are unknown. The reason for this is legal liability. They want a barrier to protect them from lawsuits over supposedly stolen ideas. Normally, producers and studios will accept unsolicited work only from licensed agents.

If you don’t have an agent, you can find many with an Internet search for “literary agents.”

Screenplay treatments, and synopses, are billed on an hourly basis. Go to our ghostwriting rates page for pricing information.