“There’s never nothing going on. There are no ordinary moments.”

I just started teaching a “Screenwriting as Scene-Writing” online class this week and already I’ve learned something of value. One of my students sent me a great quote from the movie Peaceful Warrior (2006):

“There’s never nothing going on. There are no ordinary moments.”

Isn’t that a perfect observation re a screenplay? It’s another way of saying what Hitchcock said: “What is drama, after all, but life with the dull bits cut out.”

Of course, we can turn around these observations as a challenge per every scene we write:

* Is there something of importance going on in this scene?
* Is this scene ordinary or extraordinary?
* Is this scene dull or compelling?

Even in the quietest moments of a screenplay, something should be happening. And while that something is happening in the observable world of action and dialogue, something else should be happening in characters’ intentions and subtext.

“There’s never nothing going on. There are no ordinary moments.”

The line also has another way of impacting us as writers. As we go about our daily lives, we can at any moment stop and observe what’s going on around us. In line at the grocery store. Watching our children play. An old couple shuffling past our house. Riders on a bus. Any moment avails itself of deeper meaning and import to us — if we just open our ‘eyes’ to see. By training ourselves to look deeper and go into the story of our own daily lives, we can use those same writing ‘muscles’ as we consider what’s going on in each of the scenes we write.

How about you? Do you resonate with the quote? If so, how?

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