When you set something up in your story, you’re making a promise to the reader.
A locked door.
A whispered secret.
A character who swears revenge.
A hint about the ancient ruin beneath the city.
The moment you place those things in the story, you’ve told the reader: This matters.
Anton Chekhov famously said, “If you show a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must go off in the second or third.”
That doesn’t mean you have to resolve every tiny detail, but it does mean that if you deliberately draw attention to something, it has to matter. Otherwise, it’s a broken promise. Readers will feel cheated if the “gun” never fires—whether that gun is literal or just a story question you raised and then abandoned.
Or maybe you had the gun there as a red herring. Something so the reader thinks they’re in this kind of story, with that kind of resolution.
But they’re not.
This is fine, if this is something you’re doing with intent.
Forgetting something though?
That’s a mistake.
The difference is intent. A broken promise feels accidental, sloppy. A red herring feels like craft. Readers can sense which one they’re dealing with—and they’ll forgive almost anything if they trust you’re in control of the story you’re telling.
If you never follow through—if the locked door stays locked, the revenge is forgotten, the secret is never revealed—you’ve broken that promise. And readers feel it. Even if they can’t put it into words, they’ll sense something unfinished.
Maybe the character makes a choice to not use the gun.
That doesn’t mean every thread has to end dramatically. Some promises are meant to subvert expectation. The locked door might open to nothing at all—if that nothingness says something meaningful about the character or the world. But it should feel intentional, not like you forgot about it.
The locked door could be there to menace, for the character to obsess over. To delay finding something too soon.
Check your draft. Every time you raise a question, plant a clue, or introduce tension, ask yourself:
- Did I resolve this?
- If not, does the lack of resolution serve a purpose?
Your readers are keeping track, even if you’re not.
It’s your job to make sure the story you’re telling is the story you promised.