I’m getting a little tired of hearing that nothing happens in mainstream fiction. I just drive-by posted this at Bear’s aesthetics discussion, but . . . well, I’ll let somebody else take it.

McKee

Nothing happens in the real world? Are you out of your fucking mind? People are murdered every day! There’s genocide and war and corruption! Every fucking day somewhere in the world somebody sacrifices his life to save someone else! Every fucking day someone somewhere makes a conscious decision to destroy someone else! People find love! People lose it, for Christ’s sake! A child watches her mother beaten to death on the steps of a church! Someone goes hungry! Somebody else betrays his best friend for a woman! If you can’t find that stuff in life, then you, my friend, don’t know much about life! And why the fuck are you taking up my precious two hours with your movie? I don’t have any use for it! I don't have any bloody use for it!

— Charlie Kaufman, Adaptation

My buddy Andy’s imitation of this is better, but you get the idea.

All kinds of things happen in mainstream fiction. All kinds of things happen in real life. And if you write genre fiction without knowing that, you’re going to write genre fiction in which nothing happens except what proceeds directly from your genre conceit. It may sell. It may even win an award or two. But it’s going to bore me just as much as the lit-fic you haven’t read bores you.