There’s a difference between what a story needs and what a writer wants.

Now, if you’re a hobbyist or writing primarily for fun or self-expression, the difference doesn’t matter. You can write whatever you want.

For those who hope to write for an audience, it’s good to remember that anything holding you back from finishing your story or making it click the way you want to is something you can just move on from.

As the author, you have full control over your story. Stories can work in infinite ways. They don’t *need* to be anything.

For the most part, the only things a reader *needs* are to be able to understand the story and to be entertained by the story.

So if you’ve felt the following:

“This scene is boring, but it needs to be here.”

“I don’t know how to write this character perspective, but he needs to be this way.”

“This prologue is an info dump, but I need to explain this bit of lore.”

“My manuscript is 250K words long, but it needs every chapter.”

I’d say you can challenge yourself by making a hard distinction between what you need and what you want. That’s not to say cut everything you want. But the effect will be a story with the best, juiciest, most engaging narrative possible.