If You Want to Write a Screenplay That Sells, Stop Trying

If at first you don’t succeed…

Stand at the edge of vast field of mown grass.

Throw a baseball onto the field as far as you can.

The sphere will sail through the air, land, bounce a few times, roll a little bit, and come to a halt.

Walk to the spot where the ball has landed. With a piece of chalk, draw a circle on the ground around the ball.

Pick up the ball.

You now have on the ground before you a chalk circle representing the ball’s location a moment earlier, before you picked it up, the spot where it landed.

Now go back to the edge of the field to where you were previously standing.

Throw the ball again, aiming for it to land smack-dab in the middle of that chalk circle, the precise spot where it landed when you threw it a moment earlier.

Never gonna happen.

Okay, maybe “never” overstates the case. Theoretically, if you throw the ball over and over again, hundreds, or thousands of times, eventually, just by dumb luck, it might land in the middle of that circle. Far, far, far more likely, though, it will land somewhere in the general vicinity of the circle, perhaps even very close to it. Indeed, on…