Goodwill, The Story Needs It

There are all sorts of promises a storyteller can make to her audience, but one of the cardinal ones is, I think, "I won't come between you and the entertainment."  By which I mean, during a dramatic moment I won't break the tension with silliness; I won't ask you to believe six impossible things before you know who the characters are; I won't present my story as intelligent and undercut it with dumb; I won't drag you through fascinating-to-me-alone arcana and forget where I was going in...