(CNN) -- Washington appears to be run by screenwriters, where the rule is to get as close to the cliff as possible. Drive off, if it won't be too unbelievable. Then -- like young James T. Kirk in the J.J. Abrams reboot of Star Trek -- jump out as the car plunges to the bottom and climb your way back up. That's great Hollywood -- and perhaps the best-case scenario in Washington as lawmakers drive toward the fiscal cliff. There's an upside too. If you watch the news closely, you'll see our Washington leaders making the classic mistakes that bad negotiators make. You'll see when they should be changing direction, doing B instead of A. And you'll be improving your own negotiation skills along the way.
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Dave Logan: Fiscal cliff negotiations have the cooked-up suspense of a Hollywood movie
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Watch closely if you want to see how not to make a deal; real negotiation has rules, he says
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He says both sides should state positions, then reveal "core values" and build deal from there
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Logan: Don't go in with hands tied; don't confuse positions with core values
Notice the @placeholder ending that results: The executives and nurses both got more than they originally wanted, and both were invested in making it happen.