The audience’s expectation is an invisible material the artist has to work with.

What an audience already expects is part of the material, whether or not the maker wants it to be. Every choice is heard against a background of assumptions about how these things usually go, and even a decision to ignore that background is a decision made in relation to it. There is no neutral surface to work on.

The same is true of anything you present: an idea at work, a change at home, a request. What people expect will shape what they hear more than your wording will. Spend some effort learning the expectation before crafting the message. Working with the existing background is usually cheaper than trying to make it disappear.