: Re: How do you know when there's something missing in your story? You always hear about what has to be removed. Usually unnecessary stuff that doens't contribute to the plot. How about the opposite?

@Deb2945533

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Best get someone to read it. Some seasoned writer is good, but anyone will do, except close friends and family who'd praise you no matter what abomination you produced.

You too, let your story sit for a couple months until you forget its key points and try to read it "as new". Still, it will never be quite as efficient at catching simple omissions: missing tags in confusing dialogue, too skeletal location descriptions, thought shortcuts, your assumptions about reader's knowledge, etc.

OTOH, there is a significant piece you can spot for yourself without external help: closures. List all characters; more or less significant. (include significant non-person actors too). Recall all more significant actions they performed. Think of their consequences, a week, a month past the ending of the story. Do they get away with their shenanigans? Do they receive honors? Do they recover? Did they learn something new?
Cull the ones that really, really don't matter, and check whether you included all the rest. Make sure every thread, every event received a closure.

Speaking from experience, as a reader - I often focus my attention at some background characters and really just keep reading to receive the closure on their specific thread. Say, two minor flunkies of the villain who happened to be exceptionally nasty jerks, and appeared early on, bullying the protagonist. Then I witness the rest of the story: the struggle, the growth, the challenge, the battle, the epilogue - but the two presented early on never appear again, their fate is never even implied. And I don't care about the ending. I didn't receive my closure and I'm disappointed!

So: Close all your threads, and you don't need external help with it.

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