How goes my treatment?

Quite well thank you very much!

I am now up to 17 pages. Still only half way to the 30 required but I'm quite pleased with what I've got. I have gone about this in what I think is the correct way. I had a 7 page full treatment. Start to finish. I went through expanding it to 10 pages. Then to about 13 and now 17. It feels much more organic to expand on what is written in this way. It's not like I have 10 pages, and that's my 10 pages, the first 1/3 of my treatment. 10 pages was the whole thing.

It was less daunting this way. I had everything figured out already, I knew where I was going with it, I just had to fill in the gaps. It was bit like zooming in on a map. Every time you x10 more details pop up out at you.

I stopped once to rewrite a second improved step outline. After having gone through and re-wrote one from the first treatment I then wrote an improved version taking into account all of the changes I had made during my first extension draft. Then I used this step outline as the guide to write my next extension draft". I think I'll have to repeat this step every time I expand out my treatment to take into account the "global changes" I'm making as I go. By global changes I mean things that need to be foreshadowed earlier and paid off later. Adding a scene in the middle might mean earlier and later scenes need to be altered and when this happens I need a new step outline.

It feels good doing it this way. It feels right. I don't know if this is what other writers do but it works for me and that's what counts.

So 17 pages and I'm up to my second turning point of this latest longer draft. It takes place about halfway down page 14. Extrapolate that out and I should end up with 20 pages by them time I have finished this latest extension draft. Pretty much where I expected I would be. Once I have that done I need to turn the treatment into a treatment. It pretty much reads like an outline rather than a treatment. Treatments seem to be a bit more entertaining than outlines do. Bill Martell has a couple of his own to download which is what I'm going off of. Add a few snatches of dialogue and really go into the scene and I should be well on my way to 30 pages.

It's really all about the page count so far. I just get the feeling that an insufficient page count will make it look like I haven't put the work in. I really have! I've come up with some really good stuff during these rewrites. A great sequence of scenes, almost a montage, of what happens to the characters after their big falling out. I've managed to end each scene or vignette with an image or sound to tie it into the next. I've got some great visual cues to indicate my protagonists changing mental state. A memento from his ex which he holds to be of less and less importance as the movie progresses.

Of course there must be something I've skimped over, right?

Yeah of course. I haven't really gone into detail with the customers of the place my characters work at. I know I want them to feature heavily and have an arc all of their own. You know like some mean kids who come along and are complete dicks to everyone who get their comeuppance at the end. I definitely want some people who come along, and enjoy themselves so much that later on when their help is needed they can really come through for me. It's just figuring out how to show that and keep it integrated with the main action.

I also haven't gone into any detail as to what happens when characters "play the game". That's all I've put. "they play the game". I mean these are kind of like action scenes so they should show character and character development. It's like a whole extra headache but at least I know it means the material is there, in my story. I just have to bring it out.

I've had a few of these headaches. How do I show this character's progression or how do I integrate this subplot with the main action. They cause many a furrowed brow but I always feel really good when I have figured them out. Solving these problems almost makes having them to solve in the first place seem worthwhile.

I haven't been bursting with any other ideas of late. No giant robots or mutant monster mayhem tales to distract me from the task at hand. Which is definitely a good thing. Although I have been having a few movie dreams lately. Dreams that seem more like a movie I'm watching rather than something I'm living through. Last nights was another zombie apocalypse.

I think when I've finished this treatment I'm going to go back to TOMB OF THE VIKINGS and extend that to feature length. It's a pretty good story and I could definitely see someone wanting to make it. It's an action adventure with supernatural elements featuring a strong "real world" female protagonist. I don't describe it as a horror because it's not one. The same way Underworld isn't a horror. In fact quite a few of the so called horror movies that have come out in the last few years are really just action movies with a few horror tropes thrown in.

In fact TOMB... is quite family friendly. It would stand shoulder to shoulder with a Lara Croft or Indian Jones movie, in fact I seem to remember when I wrote it I was very much thinking about THE MUMMY.

Anyhow, that's not for a few weeks yet, best to finish what's on my plate before ordering a second course.