[Film title]: a treatment

Replace the blue placeholders with your own words and delete the grey notes as you go.

Written by	[name]
Contact	[email and phone, or your representative]
Format	[feature, TV pilot, short, documentary]
Genre	[genre, in two or three words]
Running time	[about 100 minutes]
Draft	[number and date]
Based on	[original, or the source and who holds the rights]

Logline

[One sentence: the protagonist, the situation, the goal and what stands in the way]

See a logline

A home stager who secretly sleeps in the empty houses she decorates is caught by a widower, who keeps her secret on one condition: his house must never sell.

From the example treatment for an invented film, Move-In Ready.

Synopsis

One paragraph to one page: beginning, middle and end. Include the ending.

[Who the story is about and where it starts]

[What happens to change everything, and what they do about it]

[How it ends, and what has changed]

Characters

Name in capitals, then age, role, what they want, the flaw in the way and how they change. Two or three lines each.

Character	Who they are	Want	How they change
[NAME, age]	[role and one telling detail]	[what they're after]	[start → end]
[NAME, age]	[role and one telling detail]	[what they're after]	[start → end]
[NAME, age]	[role and one telling detail]	[what they're after]	[start → end]

The story

Present tense, third person: what the audience sees and hears, in order. Give the big turns room and cover the connective tissue in a sentence. Capitalize each name the first time it appears.

Act one. [Opening image] [the ordinary world] [the inciting incident] [the decision that starts the story]

Act two. [the new situation and its complications] [the midpoint: a choice that raises the stakes] [things fall apart: the low point]

Act three. [the final push] [the climax] [how it ends] [the final image, answering the first]

See act one from the example

A living room at dusk, perfect: lemons in a bowl, a throw folded just so. NORA checks the street and the lockbox, brushes her teeth in a staged bathroom and sleeps on top of the duvet so it won't crease. By six she's gone, her life folded into the trunk of a Corolla. … At 2 a.m. the front door opens. WALT has come to water the lemon tree, as he does every night since he moved out, and finds a stranger in his bed. … He doesn't call the police. He offers a deal: stay as long as you like. The house doesn't sell.

Film it, don't explain it. If a camera couldn't record a sentence, such as a thought or a feeling, turn it into something the character does.

Tone and look

How it feels: [the tone in a sentence, and how it shifts]
The world: [place, season, light, sound]
Scale: [main locations, size of cast, anything costly]

Why this film

For pitch treatments. Delete for a working treatment.

Why this story: [what it's really about]
Why now: [why an audience wants it today]
Why you: [your connection to it]

Before you send it

The logline fits in one sentence
The synopsis gives away the ending
Every act ends with a change in the situation
Everything in the story section could be filmed
Each lead wants something and changes, or pointedly doesn't
Character names are capitalized on first appearance
Your name, contact details and the date are on the title page
You have dated copies of every draft