He got up, went downstairs, and hailed a taxi

John Braine in his book Writing A Novel cites advice from Graham Greene:

The best example of how not to write is the one quoted by Graham Greene: ‘He got up, went downstairs, and hailed a taxi.’ You should memorise this and test every sentence against it: if it has that same flat, dead quality, rewrite it or cut it. You must always act on the assumption that one such sentence will ruin the whole novel.

p.51 

Lawrence Block has also written a book of advice for novelists, one in which he states 

From my earliest beginnings as a writer, it was always a relatively easy matter for me to write smoothly. My prose rhythms and dialogue were good. Just as there are natural athletes, so was I — from the standpoint of technique, at least — a natural writer.

 Writing the Novel from Plot to Print to Pixel

Block in one of his own mystery stories writes: “At 3:30 he went downstairs, walked half a block, and hailed a cab to JFK”