Screenplay changed all that. It laid out the principles of dramatic structure to establish the foundations of screenwriting. It was also the first book to use well-known and popular movies of the time to illustrate the craft of writing for the screen. And, as we all know, screenwriting is a craft that occasionally rises to the level of art.
WHEN I BEGAN SELLING, COLD-CALLING FROM OFFICE to office during the day, and from house to apartment during the evening, I was terrified of closing. Every day, I would sally forth to sell, unafraid to get face-to-face with prospects and enthusiastically deliver my sales information. Then, at the end, I would choke up and askhesitatingly, “What do you want to do now?” Invariably, the prospect would say, “Well, leave it with me and let me thinkabout it.” I learned later that the words, “Let me think it over” or “Let me think about it” are polite customer-speakfor “Goodbye forever; we’ll never meet again.” I convinced myself that people all over town were “thinking it over” and that my phone would soon fall off the hookwith eager buyers. But no one ever called. I finally realized that it was not the product, the price, the market, or the competition that was holding me back from making sales. It was me. More specifically, it was my fear of asking a closing question. One day, I decided tha...

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