How long to write treatment from script?

[RainbowDragon]

How much of a time investment is it to write a presentable treatment AFTER a feature script is complete?

Just wondering, thanks in advance for your responses.

[Hillgate]

Depends if that's what a prodco or agent wants. If they want it, let 'em have it.

Tip: avoid it if you can. Some are as long as 30 pages, and frankly if they're that interested in reading 30 pages of prose then they can read the whole 100 page script. Basically, it's better for you if you can get them to read the whole script, for lots of reasons, and assuming it's good!! :)

[RainbowDragon]

I agree, that's why I've never spent the time writing a treatment. I've only had one prodco request one, and I offered the script instead. We'll see what they say, if anything :) I don't have time to write a treatment now and frankly I don't think it would be worth the effort when I could be writing the next script instead.

[Plot Device]

I wrote my first screenplay from scratch--no outline, no synpsis, no treatemnt, just broke open my Final Draft and started writing. It was a 32 page thriller. I trimmed it down to 28 pages on my rewrite and that was it.

I have since learned the old-fashioned method of writing a script where you get the idea, THEN you sketch out a rough synopsis, THEN you make a step outline, THEN you write a treatment, THEN you write the scirpt. At first I balked at all that, thinking it was just a lot of needless formality. But then I found I was inadvertantly doing all of the above anyhow, and that I was doing it in that exact order. So the whole process turned out to be quite organic.

As for my own treatments, I usually start out writing them JUST for myself, and JUST as a tool to get to the actual script phase. But my treatments are a bit unconventional in that I tend to cram them with loads of dialogue. My scripts are usually very dialogue-driven, so it just comes out that way. When my pre-script treatment is done, I find it often exceeds 50 pages, and is very very dialogue-heavy.

Now, after I'm done with the script, I pass the script around to various friends for review, but not all of these friends are script-savvy. So, to appease the script-challenged, I go back to the treatment and re-work it into a literal short-story with formal dialogue and a distinct narrative. These treatments (or "scriptments") can easily exceed 100 pages. And my non-scripty friends like reading those.

Some of you might think that this overly long post-script treatment is kinda silly and alot of extra work for nothing. But I find that this re-working of the treatments can not only broaden the number of people who can read my story, but it also helps me spot plot details I would have otherwise missed. And the REALLY cool thing is, in the event I actually land a sale, I now have the novelization already finished.