Houses:
- People never answer the door until the doorbell or knocking has sounded at least three times.
- The hero lives in New York City working at some okay, but not particularly high-paying job, and yet he or she has a roomy apartment filled with nice stuff, generally with a good view, and sometimes a nice, romantic rooftop to go to.
- People never get out of the house when there is obvious danger there (ghosts, murderers).
- People who hear something weird outside will go OUT to look, even if they know there’s a homicidal maniac on the loose.
- At night, when someone’s in bed and hears a sound outside, he’ll get up and turn the lights on before looking out of a window, even if this usually guarantees that he’ll never be able to see anything going on (both because of the blinding effect and the fact that at night, when the room you are in is brighter than the area on the other side of the glass, the glass becomes like a mirror).
- When an intruder is in the house, the occupant will sneak along a wall with his back pressed to it tightly and his arms out a bit from his body, palms flat against the wall.
- When there’s an intruder somewhere in the house, the thing that jumps at the heroine in the dark turns out to be her cat, even if it comes from places cats wouldn’t be, like inside a cupboard! Cat will always shriek for no good reason. As soon as she relaxes, the killer will show up and strangle her.
- Any apartment in Paris will have a view of the Eiffel Tower.
- All serial killers have large, dimly lit, dungeon-like basements which contain a secret room hidden behind some shelving (how about passing a law where all houses with basements are subject to surprise basement inspections on a regular basis. What would serial killers do?)
- If a woman is to be killed in the house, the house will be two stories so the woman can run upstairs (to her doom)
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