Door Number Four

As per The Price is Right, you’re writing for an expectant audience. A character usually expects nothing to happen, which is door number one. The audience knows the aliens/global conspiracy/extremely bland unthreatening information about his dad having an affair with his other dad is coming. Door number four is the one that you didn’t see coming but is still a door. It still belongs.

Great movies have a few of these coming. When Keenu Reeves goes into the interrogation rooms with Mr. Hugo Weaving, you know he’s not going to talk. You don’t know that his mouth is going to seal shut, and you really don’t know he’s going to have a robot larvae injected into his belly button. That’s possibly door number five, but again, it fits. Think about what the character expects, what the audience expects, what the audiences thinks it might expect, then do something else.