Screenwriting Assignment: Write a Short Treatment – and a Scene

Hi everyone!

  • Your assignment for this week is to start writing a short WORKING TREATMENT for a full length movie — then write a short SCENE from it.
  • For more details and some notes about ACT and SCENE STRUCTURE, scroll down.

Part 1: Write a Working Treatment

A working treatment is just a quick summary of what you plan to put in your movie. No one will ever see it, but you, so you don’t have to bring it to class. You can write it however you want.

For this part of the assignment, try writing a treatment that’s 1 or 2 pages long. Spend at least an hour working on it. It does NOT have to be completely finished before you do part 2.

How to Start

If you’re not sure where to start, try answering these questions. You can just make up answers if you don’t have a movie in mind yet.… Make up a main character, tell us a little about their life, then start telling us what happens to them.

  • Who’s your main character?
  • What’s his or her life like at the START of your story? (The setup)
  • What’s your INCITING INCIDENT? (An event disrupts his or her life and present them with a challenge they need to respond to?)
  • What kinds of CHALLENGES does the inciting incident create for your character?
  • How do they RESPOND to those challenges?

For Example:

Here’s a kind of random story idea I just made up:

  • My main character is a guy named Michael. He’s in his late 60s, retired, a widower.
  • He has a quiet, mundane life.
  • One thing he likes to do is to take a walk early in the morning around sunrise in his quiet residential neighborhood.
  • One morning, he gets up for his usual walk and he hears a scream while he’s in the local park… He looks over and says a man’s body being dragged into the bushes. He realized that he has just witnessed a murder (This is the inciting incident.)
  • The rest of the screenplay will have to do with how seeing the murder disrupts his life, and the realization that the murderer also saw him.
  • (Your rough notes for the working treatment can be just like what I just wrote: short, not too detailed, just introducing your character and a hint as to where the story may be going.)

Part 2: Write A Short Scene

  • After writing all or part of your working treatment, choose a scene from it to start writing.
  • For the purpose of this exercise, it can be three or four pages below. I would suggest reading the section below about acts and scenes first.

About acts and scenes:

  • Full-length movies are usually based around a three act structure.   Each act serves a different purpose. Act 1 sets the story up… Act 2 develops it… Act 3 brings your movie to a conclusion.
  • Each ACT is usually made up of several different SCENES.
  • Scenes can be any length. Most are 1-3 pages (meaning that the scene itself would run for between 1 and 3 minutes). But some are over 10 pages long.
  • Each scene moves your story forward, as your main character (usually) progresses along a path to his or her goal.
  • Some genres, like action movies, tend to have shorter scenes with fast-paced sequences, while dramatic films tend to have longer and more emotionally intense scenes.

How long are ACTS?

  • ACT 1 is usually around 20 percent of your story. So depending on the length of the script and how much of it is dialogue, it might be anywhere between 20 to 25 pages long.
  • ACT 2 is usually around 55 percent of your story. It’s usually around 60 pages long in a 110 page script. (In a 90 page script, it might be around 50 pages long.)
  • ACT 3 is around the same length as ACT 1.

“Wait –– that doesn’t add up”

  • If ACT 1 is 20 percent; ACT 2 is 55 percent; and ACT 3 is 20 percent… that’s only 95 percent, not 100 percent.
  • Think of the other 5 percent (a few unassigned pages) as flexible. Use them as needed to move your story forward. Maybe you need to add few pages to ACT 1 to set up your story properly, or to ACT 3 to resolve some loose ends. 

“When should I start a new scene?”

Scenes end when they’ve served their purpose. This may relate to changes in:

  1. Time: One scene may end, and a new scene may begin, when there’s a time change, such as when your narrative moves from morning to evening.
  2. Location: When the location changes, a new scene is usually established. For example, if characters move from a gymnasium to a locker room, the locker room would be a new scene.
  3. Characters: For example, if your characters are a family with kids, if the story follows the parents for a while, that may be one scene; if we then follow what’s happening with the kids in another part of the house, that’s often framed as another scene.
  4. Objective or Conflict: The “objective” is what your character is trying to accomplish. If they are trying to rob a house, one scene might have to do with their breaking into the house. The next scene might have to do with their finding the safe they’re hoping to rob. The next scene might have to do with their trying to figure out the combination, or trying to force someone in the house to give it to them.
  5. Emotional Arc: Scenes can be defined by their emotional trajectory. A scene might start with tension and end with resolution, or it could start calmly and escalate into a dramatic confrontation.
  6. Purpose: Scenes serve different purposes in a screenplay, such as introducing characters, advancing the plot, revealing important information, creating suspense, providing comic relief, or delivering a climactic moment. Different purposes can lead to different scene types and structures.
  7. Shifts in Energy in Your Story: For example, an action scene with intense visuals and sound effects might be followed by a quieter, dialogue-driven scene.

Scenes vs. short screenplays

What makes a SCENE in a movie different from a short screenplay is that each scene is only a small part of your overall story. So it leaves some elements of your story unrsresolved.

Each scene moves your character forward. but it does NOT resolve the basic problem they’re grappling with in the movie. It may lead them deeper into the morass they’re going to have to eventually get through, to have a chance of succeeding at what they’re trying to accomplish in the story.

As an example – here’s the opening of my movie DEMEA. (It’s part of a web series, and has a long intro title sequence which you can skip The story actually begins at Timecode 1:08.

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