Finalising my treatment has taken it’s time but has left me with a rewarding outcome that has greatly been a result of collaboration with the class throughout the semester. From all of our in class activities such as the Little Red Riding hood one early in the semester which allowed us peers in groups to rewrite the fairytale in a new way that focuses on the beats, or the activity where we watched a short film, identified the beats, and then in groups had to continue the story using Snyder’s model up until the end of Act 1, all of the activities assisted in how I developed my story as I learnt to creatively think about what could come next, or what could change to thicken my plot. Outside of class I was also able to collaborate, reading parts of my treatment and other works to peers who gave their opinions. This helped me to not get too caught up in my own thoughts and opinions, I was able to see things from other perspectives which inspired new ideas. The group activities this semester were definitely highlights about the whole class. Listening to other people’s ideas and stories was inspiring and even benefited my own creativeness as I would suggest ideas to them. While writing my treatment, I was very focused on minimising the amount of unnecessary parts that come with writing a story. I wanted it to be as concise and to the point as possible as this is what keeps people hooked and entertained throughout the treatment. In ‘What is a Synopsis? An Outline? A treatment?’ by Michael Brindley, he describes the treatment as the ‘selling document’, meaning this is what needs to convince the reader that there is a strong narrative, along with strong characters and plot points, and overall a good story. He highlights that ‘speech and environment descriptions’ are ‘neither required nor productive in a treatment’. I attempted to keep this in mind although a big struggle point for me that I found was keeping the speech to a minimum. It was difficult to describe what the characters were saying without dragging on the conversations to where it may become insignificant. Marie-Laure Ryan wrote ‘Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative designs’ which was one of the readings towards the end of the semester that I found most interesting. It is the most frustrating thing when you watch a good film, but as the movie finishes you realise that they never went back to a plot point that seemed significant at the time it was shown, or that something in the film doesn’t add up to something else that happens in the film. Under the subheading ‘Plot Holes’, Ryan describes it as “an inadvertent inconsistency in the logical and motivational texture of the story’. This was something I wanted to avoid in my treatment, however I definitely found it challenging, even as the writer, to make sure everything made sense in the end. Overall, I think I did well in constructing a logical structure. If I were to continue developing my treatment to a film, I would need to focus on the parts where my protagonist is alone, as it is difficult to express emotions and thoughts in a person without them speaking it out loud. Next time, I would like my treatment to have more exciting turns that this time I may have been too scared to attempt this time. I would hope that from my treatment, people are able to find an attempt at creativeness, while also having a very strong message within the film. Action is easily done, but having a purpose in your product is very important and I hope people will be able to take that away from my treatment.

Referencing:

Brindley M (2009) ‘What Is a Synopsis? An Outline? A Treatment?’ Screen Australia; 2009:1-11. https://www.screenaustralia.gov.au/getmedia/ae5708a4-05d9-4db0-b5fb-4f999fdfed57/What-is-a-synopsis.pdf

Ryan M.L (2009) ‘Cheap Plot Tricks, Plot Holes, and Narrative Design’, Narrative (Columbus, Ohio).17(1):56-75. doi:10.1353/nar.0.0016