A rough cut is a training log: everything that happened, in order, with no opinion. The edit begins when the opinions start. The first pass removes what is broken — the misfires, the moments where the camera arrived late. The later passes are harder, because they remove what is merely fine.
Somewhere in that process a sequence stops being a list of clips and starts having a pulse: a place where it accelerates, a place where it holds, a place where one frame of stillness does more than any movement. That pulse is the only target.
Music helps, but the picture has to carry its own tempo first; a cut that only works over a track is a cut that does not work. So the material gets trimmed until it breathes on its own — short where the energy is, long where the view earns it. When it plays silent and still holds together, the cut is done.