Pre-Production Writing

When writing a story for a possible future production, there are three main pre-production steps that must be taken before the final script is written. The first step is the overall outline of the created story. The outline is normally a somewhat short, bullet pointed list of the main story beats in order. After the outline is constructed, the writer creates a synopsis of the story. A synopsis is a paragraph or two long summary of the story as a whole, including main characters, main story beats, and tone of the story. The final step in the pre-production writing phase is writing and creating a treatment for the story. A treatment is a somewhat "early draft" of the finalized story. The treatment could include final character names, locations, and even a final name. Before even writing the script for a production, these three steps must be completed first in order for the script writing process to be swift.