I began writing the treatment for my screenplay last night. “Treatment” is apparently just movie slang for a five page synopsis of your film from start to finish. During this process, I continued to realize what I had already begun to perceive about writing prose/screenplays.
Writing in this format is much more about METHOD than it is about FEEL.
Granted, great ideas, creativity, etc are all things that can occur naturally – the actual formulating of these ideas into a treatment or script is very regimented. Where music was all about “feel” – you would hear the beat, it would inspire you to write the words, which would inspire you to perform the song, etc… This is very much a step by step lesson in formatting, screenwriting has to be visual and creative – yet precise and organized. Its a very strange tightrope to walk.
If I had never visited blogs like Artful Writer, or read any books on this – I wouldnt know where to begin. How would anyone inherently know that scripts must be written in 12 point Courier, as it takes the human brain one minute to process a page of words written in this font?? I wouldnt have, but Im glad to know now.
As far as the treatment goes, I have a fairly solid synopsis of my first act. I hope to have it done by the weekend so I can officially launch into writing the actual script. That is, if I can continue to resist the urge to color outside the lines…
Dustin
The synopsis, at least to me, was one of the hardest parts because it meant me actually organized everything that I wanted to say. Usually when I write I’m so scatterbrained that I usually bring things together last, but with this, it forced me to reverse my writing style.