Mostly, I would like people to ask other writers about the craft of their writing so we could learn from one another. We ask movie directors why they chose to use certain lights and angles and speeds of film, but most of the time, we ignore the craft of a writer.
I think in the end there are only 20 or 30 tenets of basic cooking. It's going at perhaps the same issue from different angles, from different points of view, from different presentation styles, that really makes things sink in and become embedded.
We did experiments with the Boston Symphony for many years where we measured the angles of incidence of sound arriving at the ears of the audience, then took the measurements back to MIT and analyzed them.
I've been working a lot on my lateral movement, and angles - it's coming natural to me now - and on different techniques, keeping my hands right.
The way you speak to a team is very important - both before a Test and during the game itself. If you try and do things on the run then people will quickly see through you. You're also never going to say anything that profound and so it's important to come up with new angles.
Whenever you're at a poker table - and you're betting all of your chips - you're worried, you're scared. Is it the right play? Have I thought through all the angles? That's what stinks about life and business in general. If I had to calculate 100% certainty on every deal I did, I literally would do zero deals.
Obviously, not the biggest guy in stature. Straight-line speed wasn't my forte either. But I play very fast because I know the game. I take proper angles and know all my assignments.
You can really walk around a song and completely, if it's a good song, look at it from a lot of different angles. Johnny Cash with Rick Rubin illustrated that perfectly.
With 'Captain America,' you might have three lines of dialogue the whole day. And there are just a million angles and a million set-ups, and it's tedious.
Steve Martin said that philosophy is good for comedy because it screws up your thinking just enough, and I agree with that. Being forced to see life's metadata is good training for looking for interesting angles on a topic.
