Surprise

Surprise!

It's another product of contrast: you set an expectation, however small, and then produce something unexpected.

For instance, there's no way this woman was expecting this:

Terrifying goat jumps at woman in bedroom

How does contrast contribute to the surprise?

There are a couple of expectation vs reality contrasts that contribute to the element of surprise:

Bedroom vs farmyard animal.
Normal housepet vs goat.
Nice pet goat vs terrifying demon goat.
Girl relaxing at home vs being terrorised by goat.

Note that we don't see all these things in this image, we just have certain expectations based on the elements in the picture, and we can see that the goat is not following the rules.

That image is a big surprise, but surprises can be small. For instance, the surprise in this snippet from The Graveyard Book is tiny, something in passing:

"Miss Lupescu?"

The great dog-like head lowered towards him, and for one mad, fear-filled moment, he thought she was going to take a bite out of him, but her tongue licked the side of his face, affectionately. "You hurt your ankle?"

"Yes. I can’t stand on it."

The Graveyard Book(2010)

The contrast is simple, and hinges on the word 'but':

He thought she was going to take a bite out of him, but her tongue licked the side of his face.

(It helps to understand that Miss Lupescu is a terrifying werewolf.)

Here are a couple of examples that go for different types of surprise. One hinges on the word 'but', and one doesn't:

"I’m the captain," Jakob said, "and my order is we burn it, harpoon it, whatever we need to do." He felt a drop on his cheekbone, just below his eye. He dabbed it absentmindedly, thinking the roof was leaking again, but the droplet on his fingertip was not clear like water, it was black as tar.

He looked up, and directly above him the beast stared back.

Ivan came in with a tub of Sara Lee strawberry ice cream and said, "Check this out," as he handed it to Ainsley.

Ainsley popped the lid, took one glance and screamed in fright. Ivan caught the tub as she dropped it, then tossed it to me.

I caught it and turned it over. In the middle of the circle of lip-pink ice-cream, someone had planted an eyeball. The iris was brown and the eye seemed strangely intense, like it was trying to communicate something urgent.

"It’s glass," said Ivan. "I checked."

Imagine your characters and world, and pick out any moment that would surprise a character. It can be small!

Describe the moment leading up to that, establish the expectation, and then reveal the contrasting reality.

In the snippet and examples above, we had:

Scary werewolf but it's affectionate.
Leaking roof but it's a sea-monster.
Strawberry ice cream but it has a glass eyeball inside.

Come up with your own surprise!

Describe a moment in which a character is surprised by something.

For the next emotional impact activity, let's change the mood again, and see how contrast creates comedy.

Contrast & juxtaposition