"No surprise for the writer, no surprise for the reader." A lot of bad writing just has no surprises. It's conventional. But every time a piece grabs you by the throat, you can tell it astonished the writer first. Dana Gioia says: "I want to create a sense of wonder. One of the primary things that literary writing does is to give you a sense of wonder, of awe, of joy, often from things that you see every day that you've never seen in quite the same way." — @DanaGioiaPoet