Questions:
- How does one decide what to cut or change in a story?

- How do I ensure I don't make my act too heavy and long? Everything seems important and I don't know how to effectively tell my story without cutting anything.
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Here’s some advice on how to make story changes / cuts easier:

- The most important thing to me is always to take back a step from your work and write down what the intention of each scene / story moment is; how does the scene start, how does the story point / emotional load progress towards the ending of the scene, and how does this intention fit in the bigger picture?

- Dare to kill your darlings; there may be certain moments or scenes that you know deeply need to get out, but that you are emotionally attached to; your darlings. This technique of looking at the bigger picture can help you to become ‘temporarily unattached’ to the emotional part, and make logical decisions whether that scene is really necessary or just ‘nice to have’.

- One more approach you can try, is to either show a video of your work in progress, or pitch your story to others (family / friends). The first one is an interesting approach when you already have a rendered video, but I would recommend the ‘live’ pitching approach (since it’s much more effective). You literally read your story out loud in which you basically can hear your own story. This way, you might hear certain problems quicker, which can help you in changing or cutting out scenes.