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Treatments

Outlines and Treatments

Episode - 245

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April 12, 2016 Film Industry, Follow Up, Projects, QandA, Scriptnotes, Story and Plot, Transcribed, Treatments, Words on the page, Writing Process

John and Craig look at the non-screenplay things screenwriters end up writing, most notably outlines and treatments. We discuss some of the ones we’ve written (with examples), and offer advice on writing your own.

Also, how do you deal with sudden success? And what should a writer-director say when talking to a Very Famous Actress about starring in his movie?

Our live conversation with Lawrence Kasdan is this Saturday! Find out more about the all-day Craft Day featuring many previous (and future) Scriptnotes guests in the links below.

Links:

  • Get tickets now for the 2016 WGFestival, featuring John and Craig’s interview with Lawrence Kasdan, and more
  • BuzzFeed talks to Karyn Kusama
  • Overnight on Wikipedia, IMDb and Amazon
  • ID Theft treatment
  • Original Big Fish outline
  • Big Fish sequence outline
  • Short Circuit treatment
  • D.C. pitch
  • D.C. pilot outline
  • Alaska write-up
  • Ops write-up
  • Ops Iraq outline
  • @TomSchnauz on Twitter
  • Watch the performances from MCC’s Miscast 2016
  • Tesla Model 3
  • Outro by Rajesh Naroth (send us yours!)

You can download the episode here: AAC | mp3.

UPDATE 4-14-16: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

Hardy Boys, in outline form

March 13, 2015 Follow Up, Story and Plot, Television, Treatments

Rebecca Onion looks at the typed outline for a Hardy Boys novel:

In this two-page outline for the 1927 Hardy Boys’ mystery The House on the Cliff, Edward Stratemeyer directed writer Leslie Macfarlane in the construction of the plot of the second book in the franchise’s original series. The book was officially published as the work of Franklin W. Dixon, a fictional author whose name appears on all of the Hardy Boys books.  

It’s fascinating to look at something so old yet so familiar. Most modern televison writing goes through an outline stage, at which point the studio and network sign off on the story — or send it back with notes.

TV outlines aren’t this rough, but they are similarly straightforward in their just-what-happens style. I find them hard to write, because my instinct is always to be fancy and clever. That’s not what outlines are for.

Based on what I read in Marvin Heiferman and Carole Kismaric’s The Mysterious Case of Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys, Macfarlane would have had a month to turn this outline into a book, for which he would be paid $100.

Beware of miserable success

May 14, 2014 Psych 101, Treatments

I really like Dan Harmon’s advice to young writers in the sidebar to THR’s showrunner feature:

Entertain yourself. Luck comes just as often (and just as rarely) to every writer. Don’t be the writer that got lucky doing something they hate.

Taking notes

April 23, 2013 Apps, Film Industry, Formatting, QandA, Screenwriting Software, Scriptnotes, Transcribed, Treatments

Craig leads the discussion on how to survive a notes meeting. As screenwriters, our instinct is to defend, deny and debate — but these are almost always the wrong choice. By reframing the discussion about the movie rather than the script, you can often end up at a better place.

From there, John opens the listener mailbag so we can answer questions about cheating scene description and romantic obsession. Plus we talk about Slugline, Highland, Final Draft and the plethora of screenwriting apps available to screenwriters today.

LINKS:

  • Slugline
  • Highland
  • Fade In
  • Final Draft
  • Screenwriting.io on page numbering and other basic formatting
  • Tweet your clams to @johnaugust and @clmazin with #CutItOut
  • Scriptnotes, episode 52 featuring Go Into The Story’s list of dialogue clams
  • Rentrack and BroadwayWorld
  • The Boys in the Band on Amazon
  • Internet K-Hole (Warning: NSFW!)
  • Sleep No More NYC
  • Slacker Radio
  • How to submit your question
  • OUTRO: Obsession cover by TERMINATRYX

You can download the episode here: AAC.

UPDATE 4-28-13: The transcript of this episode can be found here.

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Each week, screenwriters John August and Craig Mazin discuss screenwriting and things that are interesting to screenwriters, everything from the craft to the business to the best ways to actually get yourself writing.

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