It was interesting to me to see how the script and the suggestions I made for it propagated through the making of Arrival. It reminded me quite a lot of how I, at least, do software design: everything kept on getting simpler. I’d suggest some detailed way to fix a piece of dialogue. “You shouldn’t say [the Amy Adams character] flunked calculus; she’s way too analytical for that.” “You shouldn’t say the spacecraft came a million light years; that’s outside the galaxy; say a trillion miles instead.” The changes would get made. But then things would get simpler, and the core idea would get communicated in some more minimal way. I didn’t see all the steps (though that would have been interesting). But the results reminded me quite a lot of the process of software design I’ve done so many times—cut out any complexity one can, and make everything as clear and minimal as possible.