[Watch the video interview on Youtube here]
Film Courage: Can you explain the difference between a beat sheet, a treatment and an outline?
Steve Harper, Screenwriter/Writing Coach/Podcaster/Youtuber: A beat sheet, a treatment and an outline. It sort of depends on who you’re working for, especially in the TV world. There are so many interchangeable things that we call different things. For me, the beat sheet is a very skeletal list of what the moments are in your script.
Joe goes to the gas station to get cigarettes.
Joe finds a turtle running down the street and goes after it.
Just a very skeletal kind of description listed on a page. To me, that’s a beat sheet.
A treatment (I think especially in the TV world) it’s more analogous to what we call two things. We have this thing called a story area in the world of TV which is a general description for usually the studio or network to say Here’s the overview of what we’re doing in this episode, here are some of the characters it involves this creepy town. Our protagonist is going to discover this and this about himself, these sorts of mysteries will get revealed and it gives kind of atmosphere and energy to invite them to say to us Go ahead and write that. That sounds really juicy.
That’s more of what I would call a treatment which we call story area in TV space and the outline is in the TV world. I often think of it and I’ve heard it called a narrative outline which essentially is you take the beat sheet and you write what I call the short story version of your story from beginning to end.
If it’s:
Joe goes to the gas station for cigarettes.
That first section of your outline is going to say…(Watch the video interview on Youtube here).
About:
STEVE HARPER’s TV writing includes Co-Executive Producer duties on Tracker and D.C.’s Stargirl and wrote episodes of God Friended Me, Tell Me Your Secrets, American Crime and Covert Affairs. His web series SEND ME earned a 2016 Emmy Nomination for series lead Tracie Thoms. Through his company Your Creative Life he coaches writers, posts advice on YouTube and co-hosts The Secret Writer Podcast – heard in 21 countries. He graduated from Yale, the A.R.T. Institute at Harvard and the Juilliard playwriting program.
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