Action is one of these things. You'll need to read the whole book. There are a number of things to read for when you do this read through and with practice you won't have to read and re-read until you want to throw the entire thing in the trashcan.
Action tells you if you have a story. Does page after page and chapter after chapter pull the reader forward. Become the reader fresh to the story and the characters. Is something going on that makes you want to turn the page? Are the characters' wishes, and dreams and how they go about obtaining them clear? Does the beginning lead to the payoff. Sometimes writers spend so much time on the beginning of their story that they neglect the end. This doesn't have to be big drama ending but it needs to flow from that beginning.
Have you given the reader enough information? having them not knowing something you as the writer knows about the character or the plot doesn't work for the reader. But, there's always a but. Don't give them sso much information they're bogged down in a swamp.
Makesure the major scenes are played out to the hilt> I know sometimes when I'm rough drafting, I leave blanks in the scenes that I have to go back and fill in. Make sure you've filled them in enough to let the reader know this is an important scene.
Are there scenes that merely repeat something that happened in a scene before. Think about cutting this out or making drastic changes like in viewpoint.
Once you find the action flows to make the story cohesive, you're ready to more on to more steps. The more revision you do, the less you'll leave for an editor to do and maybe make changes that don't fit your view of the story.
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