DECEIVE, DON’T CHEAT Audiences love to be deceived and surprised, but they do not like to feel cheated. This is an important concept: deceiving the audience is okay so long as the new path that the hero sets out on, or the solution that he employs, doesn’t come out of nowhere. It must clearly be the best solution for the problem, which could have even been masked up to that point. But if you cheat the audience by offering up a solution that has not been clearly set up as a part of the story, or is a “deus ex machina,” then the audience will reject the writer as being slipshod, and the result
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