Using cliché and common tropes to your advantage.

As a modern society, enamored with entertainment of all kinds, we've gotten comfortable with certain common things in our stories. Such as: bad guys wear black and good guys wear white, people eating apples are usually rotten, if there's a strange noise the ditzy victim will go investigate a dark room, and so on. I'm not saying these things are necessarily bad, but they are expected and audiences are wise to the tricks. However, if you upset the tropes you will throw your audience into a tailspin of guessing and never knowing what is actually about to happen.

It's all about expectation. Stories should delight and wonder, providing escapism and depth of experience. If your blithe victim waltzes into a dark room, then beats the daylights out of the bad guy, it's unexpected and triggers those great mental fireworks that audiences crave. Turn the tables on the common things. Keep abreast of current methods, see what you can do with them, and then change it up. If you allow your own creations to become dull and lifeless, then the stories will as well.

Personally, I love tripping up expectations and watching people flop around, with no good grip on what's going on. If you can accomplish that feat, then your audience will be locked into a struggle they are determined to win. That's the thrill of a great story! You want your audience invested in what's going on to such an extent that they will stay up all night to discover the truth. Finding books and movies which accomplish this is like discovering a perfectly cut gemstone resting on your wallet, with a note saying, "Take me, I'm yours."

- M