The previous chapter was quite complex. This should not be surprising because negotiation itself is complex but it means that negotiators need something a bit more straightforward to work with when trying to manage their way through a negotiation.

One of the ways used to present the research insights was to talk about negotiation in terms of a river, that has a broad flow and direction but is not constant from headwaters to estuary. In the early stages the water might be running quite fast over rocks and waterfalls; later it slows and meanders and all the while it eddies and forms other currents under the surface. Picturing a negotiation in this way helps a negotiator manage strategies and tactics at any point in the negotiation in the context of the broad flow of progress to an agreement. ‘Negotiation as a river’ is one image or script. All negotiators intuitively work to a script of some sort – the most common being a competitive one that reflects their understanding of the pay-off structure and tactics of negotiation. These mental models can be teased out by researchers using fairly sophisticated statistical analysis techniques (Van Boven and Thompson, 2003). However, practising negotiators need something more pragmatic, something they can use in real time to guide their negotiating. This chapter explores the idea of a negotiation script as a tool for negotiators to use to get the feel of where they are or ought to be in a negotiation.