Any Simple Scene Could Be Awful

Sometimes when I see stories, certain scenes don't feel real to me. They come off as an unnecessary extension to reach a proper page length or runtime. And in some sense, I will always feel that way because I know it happens. But I have been more forgiving of it lately because It represents life.

Sometimes we just have bad luck. Things don't go as we planned and we have to expend time and energy to get back to where we were.

In some sense, these scenes can show the humanity of the characters. It means they aren't perfect, but they're still impressive enough to be worth telling stories about, which you see when they handle their bad luck.

To put it another way, suppose you see a scene where a character is being sneaky to avoid detection, and knocks over a lamp. If you ever find yourself asking what would happen if he was more careful or succeeded in catching it, then you'd have a simple scene where he sneaks and avoids detection.

Similarly, any simple scene could be worse. You see a character walk down a hall and have nothing horrible happen? That character should thank their lucky stars. Countless atrocities could have occurred. That's the amazing thing about the unknown, unforetold future: anything is possible.