Try an emotion. Yet too often the story reflects only the kick and not the pain. The Pain Take emotion out of the bottom drawer and put it with the action. In the movie, Unforgiven , Muny assassinates a man in cold blood. The man doesn't die immediately, and in a humanitarian gesture not typical of Muny, he allows the dying man to be given water.
People suffer when they die, but Muny had always hidden from it in the past with drunkenness.
Neither is our prospective audience numbed to emotion, so the writer can't leave emotion out and expect the movie to grab. If you identify with your characters, you can make them suffer. Or when they reach an impossible goal, you can make them blow the top off in celebration. The writer has to feel the character reaching for the goal and know that when he's reached it he's done something exceptional. I suspect many writers never identify at all with their characters.