In fiction, a reaction shot is a brief portrayal of how your character reacts to something that someone else has done. In contrast to more direct character building, your guy doesn't initiate the sequence; he completes it. Exactly how he completes it can tell readers a lot about him.
There are technical tricks that may help you create more effective characters. My approach to characterization is not at all technical. I can't really analyze how I do it, but I am sure of one thing. To write convincing characters, you must possess the ability to think yourself into someone else's skin.
I've always wanted to act; I just didn't know how to get into it. It kind of just happened. Dance brought me into it.
Very few pilots even know how to read Morse code anymore. But if a pilot could read Morse code, he could tell which beacon he was approaching by the code that was flashing from it.
A man who dies, no matter how terrible his crime was, must be brought to burial.
How did I become a star? I don't know how it happened. When I look at my old pictures, I can't tell how it happened!
I view the work I've done related to statistics and economics as, roughly speaking, how to do something without having to do everything.
When I was brought up in Sweden, there was a great opportunity for young people to learn how to act in our municipal theaters with their small companies. You would be under contract for eight months and have the summer free to take other opportunities.
One of the things about being a law student is that the academic discipline of law is very often removed from the practical reality of law. How to complain, who to complain to, and whether or not you even need to invoke the law is very different in the real world from how it's examined in the lecture theatre.
We are not born knowing how to hate; we are taught how to hate.
I think George R. R. Martin made fantasy grow up. He brought a level of reality into the storytelling where you realize the good guys don't always win and anyone can die, because that's how life works. Bringing that level of reality into the story I think forced the genre to mature in a lot of ways that it hadn't prior.
We need to learn how to organize, not just to let our anger explode. We need to have organization for the long run, not for one issue, not for one murder, but for everything coming to us in the next 20, 30 years.
I was always interested in film, but I never knew how to go about becoming a filmmaker.
I was put in a position with a man that, whenever he would call me at work or at home, work-related, he would say jump and I'd say how high and I would jump.
If... many influential people have failed to understand, or have just forgotten, what we were up against in the Cold War and how we overcame it, they are not going to be capable of securing, let alone enlarging, the gains that liberty has made.
I've not worn a dress since about 1985. It always amazes me how there is still a fascination for it in England. The rest of the world doesn't seem to care. I'm not sure whether they don't remember or whether they've just moved on from it. I was brought up in the glam era.
As a gay man, I think the role of culture is central to how you change politics - culture is politics.
When it comes to my career and investing into myself, I'm going to be very particular and meticulous about how I'm doing things so that I can reach the level of success that I want. I'm also going to take some chances, because who better for me to invest in than myself?
In 2010, the night before we launched 'Instagram v1', my co-founder Kevin and I bet on how many people would download the app its first day in the wild.
I've always liked to learn how to do things - I'm a hobby person. So I'll learn something at a beginner's level, then usually move on to the next thing.
The Bar Association can do so much in teaching people how to resolve conflicts without knives and guns and fists.
I'm very unpredictable, but at the end of the day, I'm working. Sometimes things change in my life. It's like, 'Hold up - that ain't feel good. That felt good.' And that's how I look at anything I do.
We need more leaders in Washington who will do more with less - and that's how we engineer real change.
I have the opportunity, which most people don't experience nearly as much, of being in front of a mirror up to 10 hours a day. Staring at your body, you really get to know every little detail of how to make yourself look your best.
Most employees only want to know how much they get paid and how much time off they get - they probably don't have the mission in their souls.
Anybody can build a building, putting some doors into it, but how many times have you been in a building that moves you to tears the way Beethoven's 'Eighth' does?
I'm extremely particular how my look should be in a film.
In the old days, you dealt with one regulator. Now it's five or six. You all should ask the question how American that is.
I'd rather learn from one bird how to sing than teach 10,000 stars how not to dance.
No one will die if they don't know how old I am.
Truthfully, I don't know how those special effects people do it.
In my travels, which have been wider than ever man yet accomplished, I have seen many, many wild beasts of Arabia and India; but this beast, that is commonly called a Tyrant, I know not how many heads it has, nor if it be crooked of claw, and armed with horrible fangs.
What happened to me is I gained a little weight so I could be more accessible to people. They're not like, 'Oh my God, he's, like, a male model comedian; yuck, ugh.' It's like, 'Oh, he's a little squishy; He's like me. He's accessible.' And girls are like, 'Look how cuddly he is. I just want to cuddle up in his neck fat and go to sleep.'
We are still vulnerable to gender-targeted marketing no matter how carefully we edit our children's bookshelves.
I have been watching how Indian women are forced to do certain things, as the stories of sacrifice and devotion in mythology demand from them. And then there are inspiring stories about women like the Rani of Jhansi that offer women refreshing role models.
I'm naturally shy, so the social media thing is new to me. I haven't really figured out how my voice sounds on social media, you know? I don't want to tweet everyday just for the sake of tweeting. I want to make sure whatever I do there is honest. Social media can very quickly get fake, and I don't want to be that guy.
