I Have tried what you are talking about, I think. When I First got on HF ham radio, I was confined (or so I thought) to 40 meters and up, due to the size of my parents yard. I really wanted to get on 80 meters, and, not having any real experience, I tried almost everything. Bending the ends of the dipole in the same direction to make a 'C' shape, failed to tune, and I have no idea what the pattern was, as I was never able to transmit on it. After some reading, and help from a friend, I tried a 'Z'shape. The feed point was in the center of the 'Z', with each end bent in opposite directions. This was also somewhat of an inverted vee. I had the feedpoint about 40 feet up on some 1.5 inch steel EMT tubing which I had welded end to end, the bends in the 'Z' were about 20 feet up supported by trees, and the ends were about 10 feet up. The antenna was a little harder to tune than my 40 meter inverted vee, but would load up well, and seemed to work well in all directions. It was no larger than the "'C' shape, but significantly better. Something to keep in mind, the bending of the legs into a 'Z' shape will detune the antenna, so if you are operating on a single frequency, and wish to not use an antenna tuner, give yourself plenty of extra wire, and tune the antenna in its final position, also, the less bend you can get away with, the easier tuning will be.