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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39973
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/39973
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

One way of going "off the rails" not yet mentioned here is to actually embrace the predictable plot, and then go past it. With your setup, _of course_ the hero is going to defeat the monster. **Let that happen by the end of act 1. What happens next?** How does the village respond to not having a monster caging them any longer?

@Amadeus says: something about the problem is not as it seems. (And I couldn't agree more, but I've got to add something of my own, right?) I say: **the consequences of solving the problem are not what they were expected to be.** It might well be that the consequences are not what they should be because the problem wasn't what the reader thought it was. But the perspective is different: having passed the expected end, you are already "off the rails". Anything that you do from this point forwards would be unexpected.

My favourite example of this technique is the Russian play _The Dragon_ by Evgeny Schwarts. End of Act 1, Lancelot slays a dragon that terrorises a village, and saves the girl who was supposed to be sacrificed to the dragon.

> Then in Act 2 it turns out that the villagers are so accustomed to living under a dictator, they don't know how to function without one - they don't know how to be free. So the burgomaster takes the role previously occupied by the dragon, and the girl whose life Lancelot saved is now forced to marry the burgomaster.

Original score: 14