Read it through once

[3] Hardly anything is more important than this--to believe in your own story. Wherefore, let the student remember that, unless the characters exist and move about in his brain, all separate, distinct, living, and perpetually engaged in the action of the story, sometimes at one part of it, sometimes at another, and that in scenes and places which must be omitted in the writing, he has got no story to tell, and had better give it up. I do not think it is generally understood that there are thousands of scenes which belong to the story and never get outside the writer's brain at all. Some of these may be very beautiful and touching; but there is not room for all, and the writer has to select.