21 Film Treatments and Outlines That Every Screenwriter Should Read

Outlines, film treatments, and scriptments are tools that the film and television industries have used for decades — with varying degrees of necessity and demand.

The problem with that is most screenwriters have never read an script outline, film treatment, or scriptment that went into production. A simple Google search on how to write film treatments will offer you endless directives and rules to follow, but the truth is that there's no single way to write an effective outline, treatment, or scriptment.

Outlines

Since outlines are often written solely by the screenwriter during their own process, they vary in size, shape, and form — depending upon the writer, as well as the needs of the team that they may be working with during the developmental phase leading up to the actual writing of the script.

The outline allows the writer to construct a general list of sequential scenes and moments in the order that they will be written within a screenplay.

This writing tool allows the writer to get an overview of the story beats and moments before applying them into the screenplay format of locations, scene description, and dialogue. Using this overview, you can make creative and editorial choices before you take the time to write those scenes their entirety. So if you find within that outline that certain scenes are redundant, repetitive, or unnecessary, you save the time of having to adjust or delete those scenes after you’ve already taken the time to write them.

The format that is used and the amount of detail that you put into an outline is up to you, the screenwriter.

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Film Treatments

Film treatments vary in length and cover the more specifics of the story, utilizing prose in the form of descriptive paragraphs that tell the story from beginning to end with all of the plot points, twists, turns, revelations, and character descriptions, but void of much dialogue.

Learn how to write great movie dialogue with this free guide.

Where a synopsis would generally cover the broad strokes of the story within one page, treatments cover every detail of story and character so that those reading it will be able to get an idea of what the movie may look like.

In these contemporary times, treatments are also formatted as a sales pitch, beyond just the telling of the story. You can include elements like a general overview — which details the genre and type of story — as well as character breakdowns and setups.

Read ScreenCraft’s How to Sell Your TV Series the Stranger Things Way!

They are even prevalent enough that the Writers Guild of America has negotiated them into the guild’s basic agreement. Guild signatory companies are required to pay minimums of around $35,000 for a treatment that you write on assignment, and around $53,000 for original treatments based on your original idea.

This doesn’t stop some companies from requesting you to voluntarily write a treatment for a screenplay that you are trying to market to them.

But treatments can also be a handy development tool to help screenwriters summarize the direction they plan on taking with their screenplays.

You could say that they are like outlines on steroids with more detail and more meat to the story and characters.

Thus, it doesn’t hurt to know how to write them.

Scriptments

Scriptments are hybrids of treatments and screenplays.

If you’d like to create a more entertaining and visually engaging treatment, you can blend screenplay format with prose. By doing so, you can effectively showcase some of the more significant moments within the treatment, ultimately crafting the hybrid format often referred to as a scriptment.

This term, "scriptment," is frequently attributed to James Cameron. Over the years, he has consistently used this approach for various projects, including Strange Days, Titanic, and Avatar. Additionally, Cameron applied this method to his initial pitch for Spider-Man when he was briefly attached to the project back in 1996. This unique combination of styles demonstrates how scriptments can be both creative and functional in the development process.

In the opening of his "scriptment" for Strange Days — a film he had a story credit on and produced — Cameron wrote,

"At the beginning of any writing project is the agonizing period in which nebulous ideas dance before the mind's eye like memories of a dream, and vaporous vague shapes take on human form and begin to answer to their names. Trying to will a world into existence. I circle around it, nibbling at the edges, writing notes about the social infrastructure and expounding to no one in particular about the themes of the thing. Then slowly a change happens. Without warning, it becomes easier to write a scene than to write notes about the scene. I start sticking words in the mouths of characters who are still mannequins, forcing them to move and to walk. Slowly their movements become more human. The curve inflects upward, the pace increases. The characters begin to say things in their own words... Any scene that I couldn't crack right away, I skimmed over and used the novelistic treatment form to sort of mumble through. What you have is at once a kind of pathetic document; it is as long as a script, but messy and undisciplined, full of cheats and glossed-over sections. But it is also an interesting snapshot of formatting a moment in the creative process... The value of [the scriptment] lies solely in it being presented unchanged, unedited, unpolished. It is the first hurling of paint against the wall..."

Scriptments, much like treatments, still tell the story from beginning to end; however, they often include additional elements such as scene headings, sluglines, and even screenplay-formatted character names and dialogue. These features distinguish scriptments from traditional treatments.

Due to this added formatting, certain sections of a scriptment will naturally be longer, which contributes to the overall length exceeding that of a typical treatment. This makes scriptments a more detailed blueprint of the story while still retaining some flexibility.

It’s important to remember, however, that a scriptment is not a full screenplay. As Cameron explains, the majority of the writing remains in treatment prose, using paragraphs to describe the story and summarize character interactions. The screenplay elements, such as character names and dialogue, are included sparingly to highlight pivotal moments and bring emphasis to key parts of the narrative.

21 Outlines, Film Treatments, and Scriptments That Screenwriters Can Study

Since outlines, film treatments, and scriptments represent the pre-writing stage of the screenwriting process, you don't often find many online examples.

Here we present twenty-one outlines, film treatments, and scriptments from major writers and filmmakers that screenwriters can study and use as roadmaps to creating your own unique versions.

Note: Actually, it's twenty outlines, treatments, and scriptments. Number twenty-one is a very special and unique gem for one of cinema's most iconic classics. 

1. Avatar (Scriptment)

Written by James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, The Titanic, Avatar) 

2. Batman: Year One (Treatment)

Written by Larry & Andy Wachowski (now known as Lana and Lilly Wachowski). They are best known as the auteur sibling writing and directing duo behind Bound and the Matrix Trilogy.

3. Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1972 Story Outline)

Written by Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, Murder on the Orient Express, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes)

4. Big Fish (Sequence Outline)

Written by John August (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Aladdin)

5. Big Fish (Post-First Draft Outline)

Written by John August (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Aladdin)

6. D.C. (TV Pilot Outline)

Written by John August (Go, Big Fish, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Aladdin)

7. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial 2 (1982 Treatment)

Written by Steven Spielberg & Melissa Matheson (E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial)

8. Epic of the Planet of the Apes (1972 Treatment)

Written by John William Corrington & Joyce Hooper Corrington (The Omega Man, Boxcar Bertha, Battle for the Planet of the Apes)

9. Godzilla (1997 Treatment)

Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Small Soldiers, The Mask of Zorro, Godzilla, Shrek, The Pirates of the Caribbean) 

10. Halloween H20 (Treatment)

Written by Kevin Williamson (Scream, Dawson's Creek, The Vampire Diaries)

11. The Mask of Zorro (1994 Treatment)

Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Small Soldiers, The Mask of Zorro, Godzilla, Shrek, The Pirates of the Caribbean) 

12. Mr. and Mrs. Smith (Treatment)

Written by Simon Kindberg (Mr. & Mrs. Smith, X-Men: Days of Future Past, Sherlock Holmes)

13. My Own Private Idaho (Treatment)

Written by Gus Van Sant (Drugstore Cowboy, My Own Private Idaho, Good Will Hunting)

14. Planet of the Apes Revisited (1968 Treatment)

Written by Paul Dehn (Goldfinger, Murder on the Orient Express, and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes)

15. The Shining (Film Treatment)

Written by Stanley Kubrik (2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining) 

16. Short Circuit (Unproduced Reboot Treatment)

Written by Craig Mazin (Scary Movie 3, Scary Movie 4, The Hangover Part II, The Hangover Part III, Chernobyl)

17. Sinbad (1994 Unproduced Film Treatment)

Written by Ted Elliott & Terry Rossio (Aladdin, Small Soldiers, The Mask of Zorro, Godzilla, Shrek, The Pirates of the Caribbean) 

18. Spider-Man (1996 Scriptment)

Written by James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, The Titanic, Avatar) 

19. Strange Days (1994 Scriptment)

Written by James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, The Titanic, Avatar) 

20. The Terminator (1982 Treatment)

Written by James Cameron (The Terminator, Aliens, True Lies, The Titanic, Avatar) 

21.  Raiders of the Lost Ark (Transcripts of Story Development Discussion)

Transcribed development discussions of George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, and Lawrence Kasdan. 

Ken Miyamoto has worked in the film industry for nearly two decades, most notably as a studio liaison for Sony Studios and then as a script reader and story analyst for Sony Pictures.

He has many studio meetings under his belt as a produced screenwriter, meeting with the likes of Sony, Dreamworks, Universal, Disney, Warner Brothers, as well as many production and management companies. He has had a previous development deal with Lionsgate, as well as multiple writing assignments, including the produced miniseries Blackout, starring Anne Heche, Sean Patrick Flanery, Billy Zane, James Brolin, Haylie Duff, Brian Bloom, Eric La Salle, and Bruce Boxleitner. Follow Ken on Twitter @KenMovies

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