Film Treatment Template (Copy, Paste, and Fill In)

A complete movie treatment format you can fill in tonight — plus how to do each section well.

The fastest way past the blank page is a structure that asks you the right questions in the right order. Below is a complete film treatment template: copy it into any document, answer each prompt in prose, and you'll have a working treatment by the end. New to treatments? Start with what a story treatment is, then come back.

What a treatment template must contain

A treatment is the whole movie in prose, so the template has to cover the whole movie. Anything less and you'll discover the holes when it's expensive to fix them — in the script. At minimum, a working treatment structure needs:

• The hook — title and logline, so a reader knows in ten seconds what they're holding.
• The promise — genre and tone, so they know what kind of ride this is.
• The people — main characters, each defined by what they want and what's in the way.
• The place — the world, and the one thing about it that makes this story possible.
• The story — all three acts, told as events, in order, including the ending.

That last point trips up more writers than any other: a treatment is not a teaser. It tells everything, ending included.

The template: copy and paste this

Each section header is followed by a one-line prompt in brackets. Replace the bracketed line with your answer, written in present-tense prose.

TITLE
[Your working title — short, evocative, easy to say out loud.]

LOGLINE
[One sentence: protagonist + goal + obstacle + stakes.]

GENRE & TONE
[The genre, plus two or three tone touchstones a reader will recognize.]

MAIN CHARACTERS
[3–5 characters, one line each: who they are, what they want, what stands in the way.]

THE WORLD
[When and where the story happens — and the one rule of this world that makes the story possible.]

ACT 1 — SETUP
[Ordinary life, the inciting incident that disrupts it, and the choice that locks your hero in.]

ACT 2 — CONFRONTATION
[Escalating obstacles, a midpoint that changes the game, and the lowest moment.]

ACT 3 — RESOLUTION
[The final plan, the climax, and what it costs.]

THE ENDING
[Exactly how it resolves and how your hero has changed. No teasing — spell it out.]

How to fill in each section

Title and logline

• Pick a working title and move on — titles change constantly in development.
• Build the logline around an active verb: someone must do something. "A grieving mother investigates" beats "a story about grief."
• Test it: if the logline doesn't suggest an Act 2 full of conflict, the problem is the premise, not the sentence. The shape you're after: A burned-out air-traffic controller must talk her estranged son's failing plane down through a storm — live, with the whole country listening.

Genre and tone

• Name the genre plainly — "supernatural thriller," "romantic comedy" — and resist hedging with three hyphens. A reader who can't shelve your story can't champion it.
• Tone touchstones do heavy lifting: "a heist film with the warmth of a family drama" tells a reader more than a paragraph of adjectives.
• Whatever tone you promise here, your act summaries must deliver — if you promise comedy, Act 2 had better be funny.

Main characters

• One line per character: name, a vivid identifying detail, what they want, what's blocking them. If you can't fill all four slots, the character isn't ready.
• Define your antagonist by their own goal, not by their opposition to the hero. The best villains think they're the protagonist.
• Cap the list at five. If a sixth character feels essential, they probably belong in the act summaries instead.

The world

• Anchor the reader in time and place in the first phrase: "Present-day New Orleans, hurricane season."
• Then give the one rule that matters: the thing about this world — a law, a technology, a social pressure, a secret — without which your story couldn't happen anywhere else.
• Skip geography lessons. If a piece of world-building doesn't create or constrain the plot, it doesn't belong here.

Act 1 — Setup

• Open with your hero's ordinary life, but show the crack in it — the want or wound the story will press on.
• Make the inciting incident a concrete event with a clock on it, not a mood. Something happens, on a particular day, that demands response.
• End the act with a decision your hero makes — a door that can't be unwalked. Swept-along heroes make for passive second acts.

Act 2 — Confrontation

• This is half your movie, so give it the most prose. Write the obstacles as an escalating sequence: each attempt to solve the problem makes it worse or raises the price.
• Plant a midpoint reversal — a revelation, betrayal, or victory-that-isn't — that changes what the hero is fighting for, not just how hard.
• End at the lowest moment: the plan in ruins, the ally gone, the flaw exposed. If your Act 2 summary reads "things get harder," you haven't found the act yet — list the specific events.

Act 3 — Resolution

• The climax should be impossible for anyone but this hero, changed by this story. If a stranger could win the final battle, the middle of the film didn't matter.
• Give victory a cost. Endings that are pure win read as false; what your hero gives up is what the film is about.
• Keep it fast on the page. Act 3 is usually the shortest section of the treatment — momentum, not detail.

The ending

• State the outcome in plain sentences: who ends up where, and what has changed since page one.
• Echo the opening image or situation. The distance between the first and last beat is how a reader feels the story's meaning.

Formatting conventions

The movie treatment format is mercifully informal, but a few conventions signal that you know the room:

• Present tense, always. "Ines breaks into the vault," never "Ines broke into the vault." Treatments describe a film unfolding now.
• CAPS on first appearance. The first time a character shows up, capitalize the name — INES (30s), a safecracker one job from retirement — then write it normally afterward.
• Prose paragraphs, not bullets. The template above uses prompts to get you started, but the finished treatment reads as flowing prose.
• Typical length: 2–10 pages, single-spaced, in a plain readable font. Shorter for pitches; development drafts can stretch to about 15. (More on this in how long a film treatment should be.)
• No camera directions, no scene numbers, and little to no dialogue. Those belong in the script.

4 common template mistakes

1. Filling it in like a form. The template is scaffolding. If your finished document still reads as labeled fields and fragments, you've made a worksheet, not a treatment. Once every section is answered, rewrite the act sections as continuous storytelling.
2. Hiding the ending. "And what happens next will shock you" belongs on a poster, not in a treatment. Readers use the ending to judge whether the story lands — withholding it reads as not having one.
3. A fog-bank Act 2. "Tensions rise and obstacles mount" is the most common sentence in failed treatments. Name the events: she loses the evidence, the partner flips, the deadline moves up. Specific events are the act.
4. Casting a crowd. Eight named characters in a five-page document means nobody gets enough ink to matter. Cut to the few the story can't function without; everyone else is "a rival crew" or "her father's lawyers."

FAQ

Is there one official film treatment format?

No. Unlike screenplays, treatments have no industry-mandated format. The conventions that readers expect are simple: present tense, prose paragraphs, character names in CAPS on first appearance, and a clear three-act shape. Any clean, readable document that follows those conventions is correctly formatted.

How long should my finished treatment be?

Most feature treatments run 2–10 pages. A short pitch treatment can be 1–3 pages; a development draft can stretch to about 15. Fill in the template completely first, then trim — it is far easier to cut a long draft than to pad a thin one.

Can I use this template for a TV pilot or a short film?

Yes, with small adjustments. For a short film, compress each act to a paragraph or two and cut the cast to one or two characters. For a TV pilot, use the three acts for the pilot episode itself and add a brief section on where the series goes after the pilot ends.

Should a film treatment include dialogue?

Generally no. A treatment describes what happens; the script is where conversations live. The exception is a single defining line — if one piece of dialogue captures a character or the climax better than description could, quote it once. More than a line or two and you are writing a script in disguise.

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