Keep 'Em Guessing
Then we came home and sat around looking at each other. My kids aren't the stellar event planners I'd always hoped they'd be. So we just flipped through Netflix looking for something to watch. None of us had ever seen the hyped-up series Lost and thought we'd take a peek at it.
Don't bother. Seriously.
Put your pitchforks down, Lost fans, and hear me out. Here's the deal...did you not expect the monster thingee wouldn't pull out the pilot through the window? Come on! I totally called that. In fact, that was the deal breaker. By that point in the show, I'd already anticipated several other events and turns of dialogue. Which brings me to my point...
Predictability is death.
Readers (and TV viewers) don't want their guesses to come true (unless it's a romance, but even then, the route to get hero/heroine together has to be riddled with chance happenings). When putting together a story, you've got to keep the reader on their toes. When they expect tale to be going in one direction, change lanes, shoot them on a totally different course. Keep your plot fresh at all times.
"...an artist should paint from the heart, and not always what people expect. Predictability often leads to the dullest work, in my opinion, and we have been bored stiff long enough I think."
~ E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushtrokes of a Gadfly