The story occasion is so important in a short story. The characters and setting can work, but I think the plot tends to fall flat when it's just not the right story occasion. I've experienced this and it was a pretty hard fix, but it was worth it when I sold the story. How do you pick the story occasions in your short stories? Ever pick wrong? I think this can be a hard one to figure out sometimes.
That's an interesting perspective, and it makes sense to me. Milking an inherently dramatic situation seems a bit like cheating, sometimes. Especially when you think about your own life, and realise that the moments when you felt the most drama or the most significant turning points in your life were probably NOT weddings, birthdays, funerals and other calendar occasions. Nothing wrong with a good wedding/funeral/birthday of course. But I suspect people can feel numb or detached during these public events, and more emotionally charged during more private 'ordinary' moments. And yes. The extramarital affairs trope. Argh. It's one of the reasons I stopped following British soap operas a long time ago. (I never followed American ones.) No sooner is a relationship formed and cemented than you KNOW somebody is going to start cheating. That's actually really boring. It's as if no relationship ever lasts, and all the buildup to attaining one matters not a jot. We know that's not true, but always taking this turn seems to be built-in to scriptwriting that kind of neverendum story. When a long-term extramarital affair takes place in another kind of story (novel or short story) I find myself quickly unengaged with the characters. It's not that I believe people who are married can't fall for somebody else. But if they do, for pete's sake, end the marriage and move on (and give your spouse a chance to move on as well.) I don't respect people who cheat on their spouses over a long period. It's a tad ...what? Cowardly? Extremely selfish. And speaks of a lack of committment to both the spouse and the lover which I don't find appealing in a character. So I'm not crazy about these stories, as a rule. Essentially, I don't care what happens to either/any of the characters who do this.
A story occasion is just the occasion during which the story takes place. If it takes place on a character's birthday, his birthday would be the story occasion. And I do think birthdays, deathbeds, weddings, etc. can make good story occasions because a story occasion is unlikely to mean the same thing as what the story is about. Does that make sense? An affair would not be a story occasion, but getting caught with a secret lover can be. This is probably the area I second guess myself the most.