BSA 204 W13 : Thoughts on Treatment Writing

So I wrote those treatments for I Saw Hell and SuperDad and that might not seem like much, but to me it's a very big deal. Allow me to explain:

So far I haven't been able to write what's in my head because I overthink things and create so much anxiety surrounding the things I have to write that I lose all passion for it and become so scared of actually putting it down on the page that I never do it. 

Last year this happened with pretty much everything, I have some serious hold-ups with expressing what's in my head and this results in me not making anything. It's been something I have struggled with since I started at SIT, and I think it is something everyone has to overcome, personally I have just blown it out of proportion. Having said that now that I have written those treatments I feel very differently, they may not be very good, but they gave me very good positive feedback, after writing I felt an elation that I haven't experienced before.

Now I am much more inclined to keep doing so and taking it further, the other thing I discovered was the artistic side of writing again, how I can play with the prose and things of that nature that I have not experimented with in a long time. It might not be that present in my output yet, but to me it has become a very big new element to play with. 

The treatment is a great bridge between the initial concept and the actual script, I have found it incredibly helpful, at times I struggle to write around the dialogue, but there has been plenty of occasions where it was easier to just outline what the characters say instead of writing it in their voice.

One thing about writing these is that its a lot about discipline and just forcing one self through it until the end, I am very impatient and once I have something in my head I hardly have the stamina to sit through the arduous journey of getting it onto the page. It just seems like too many extra steps towards showing what I already very clearly imagine. Finding the poetry in the words has helped a lot with this, but what has helped even more so is discovering the parts of the story that are alien to me at the start of the process.

With both SuperDad and now the lizard people thing, there are elements of the plot which I am unsure about - in these cases they are or were specifically the ending. Thematically I know how I want the story to wrap up, but often when imagining it I can't see the exact mechanics of how that should work. With SuperDad it came very naturally and is the first occasion in a very long time where it felt like the writing flowed. 

It was the most rewarding experience I have had in a very long time, the ending came together naturally and in a way that I could never have simply imagined in my head. It gave a solid reason for why it had to be put on paper and after writing I felt immense joy since the project finally seemed, in some form or another, complete.

All in all I have found Treatments an incredibly helpful and satisfying experience - thus the reason I have started doing it for other ideas (like that dumb lizard people thing).