Treatments, Outlines, Beat sheets, oh my!

LogLines

• One-sentence summary of script. • Answers the question: What is your story

about?• You must learn to express the story concept in

one powerful sentence if you want an agent or producer to read your screenplay.

• Writing something short and exciting isn’t easy. It takes practice.

Three questions to ask yourself as you write your logline: 1. Who is the main character and what does he or she want?2. Who is the (villain) or what is standing in the way of the main character?3. What makes this story unique?

Use action words when writing your logline. Movies are about the actions of characters.

Use descriptive words.

Dull logline: A woman confronts her past when her illegitimate daughter shows up after twenty years.

Intriguing logline: A minister's wife confronts her long-buried past when her illegitimate daughter returns after twenty years.

Summary

• Like a treatment but shorter.• Usually 100 words to one page. • For industry purposes, summaries are usually

attached to scripts for people who don’t have time to read the whole thing. Professional readers create summaries when they do coverage.

• Often requested by screenplay contests.

Treatments

• In prose, tells story of your screenplay. • In present tense, like screenplay, but written in

paragraphs like a novel.• Usually doesn’t contain dialogue, except maybe

a few key lines. • Should include character development.• Length: More than two pages. Usually 12 – 25

pages.• Spark up the writing.

Outlines

• Can refer to any number of formats. • Usually refers to a “step outline.” • A detailed document that indicates every scene

in the planned screenplay with a few sentences on each, maybe even including some bits of dialogue in the prose.

• Includes a slug line for each scene. • Sometimes the scenes are numbered for easy

reference.

Screenwriting

• You are telling a story in visual images and dialogue.• All stories must have a beginning, middle and end.

Does not need to be in this order. • CHARACTER, PLOT, THEME, and CONFLICT!• Remember – we the audience/reader will not see

into the mind of your main character. Instead of telling us what the character is thinking – SHOW us clues that help us guess what the character is thinking.

Character

• The actions and reactions of your characters drive the plot forward.

• Characters create their own realities as externalizations of their inner worlds.

• Characters should have strong wants and desires.

• They should have obstacles to overcome.

Plot

• The series of events that happen in the story.

Theme

• Invisible underlying universal-controlling idea, moral message, concept, emotion, issue, essence, or soul of a story.

• May come out through metaphor or subliminal and/or subtle delivery.

• A theme that is too obvious can be a big turn-off for an audience. People like puzzles.

Conflict

• Obstacles that stand in the way of the protagonist achieving his or her goals.

Ethics

• What, if any obligations do we have as storytellers?

• Discuss the first reading.

Telling the Story in Shots

• Juxtaposing images to tell the story and advance the plot forward.

• Shot 1 + Shot 2 = New Idea in Shot 3.• Discuss Mamet Reading