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What does ‘subverting expectations’ mean?

Subverting expectations is a literary and artistic technique that involves surprising an audience by presenting outcomes that differ from what they expected. It’s often used in film, television, fiction, and video games.

How it works

Surprise: Subverting expectations can be used to surprise the audience.

Challenge: It can challenge preconceived notions about characters, plot developments, or story outcomes.

Engagement: It can enhance engagement by keeping the audience on their toes.

Emotional impact: It can create deeper emotional impacts.

Genre bending: It can play with genre to force the reader to reflect on their expectations.

Examples

A character may have a secret agenda that was hidden from the audience.

A narrator may be unreliable, and the audience may not realize it until halfway through the story.

A main character may die, even though they were expected to survive.

Why it’s used

It can be used for shock value.

It can be used to deconstruct a genre template.

It can be used to make a story more interesting and fresh.

This post is written with AI

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ABOUT AUTHOR
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Aishwariya Laxmi

I’m Aishwariya. I’m passionate about writing, reading, marketing communications, books, blogging, poetry and editing. I’ve donned several hats, such as freelance journalist, copywriter, blogger and editor.

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