Movie Story/Plot Writing?

Question by Tim: Movie Story/Plot Writing?
Hey. I’m not experienced in film screenwriting, but I’m planning to write a screenplay that obviously, I want to sell. But in order to sell it, I know that I have to write a story, the plot of the the movie. ( Every movie as I can see on IMDb has story AND screenplay, but not only script.)

So I want to know what a film story actually is? I mean it is just a plot? Should it contain dialogue, or only narration? And in what way should I write the story? A scriptment or a treatment or something else? I know about the screenplay but not the story.

It should be sth like this:
http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/sample_treatment.html
or this:
http://www.scifiscripts.com/scripts/Terminator_Treatment.txt
or sth else?

(http://www.wga.org/subpage_writersresources.aspx?id=171)

Thanks In advance

Best answer:

Answer by The Walster
Writing the story separately in a novel style format does not necessarily have to be done. Often in movies the basic story idea is thought up by one person and then converted into a screenplay by another, however writing the story first is probably a good idea as writing a screenplay from scratch is not easy.

What you have linked to are treatments, these are basic story outlines that are used to sell movies to producers. Sometimes they are produced before a completed screenplay exists, sometimes after.

If you think you can write a good screenplay without writing the story first then go ahead and do it. If it is really good then it will get picked up (with a lot of hard work) and if it is your own original idea then you will ge the story credit too.

What do you think? Answer below!