How do I shape raw footage into an actual story?

You can assemble the footage, lay the clips end to end in order. But turning that assembly into a real story, something that pulls a viewer along and means something, keeps slipping away from you. That gap is one of the biggest leaps in editing, and it stops many people. Assembling is about what happened. Story is about why it matters, and that is a harder thing to build. A story is not just events in sequence. It is a shape: someone or something wants a thing, meets obstacles, and changes. The clips you have are the events. The story is the meaning you draw through them by choosing what to show, what to hold, and what to cut. That meaning does not live in the footage. It lives in the choices you make about it. So stop arranging and start deciding. Ask what this is about and what should shift from the first frame to the last. Then be willing to cut good clips that do not serve that shift, and to linger on the moments that do. Story is built by leaving things out as much as putting them in. Choose a meaning, cut toward it without mercy, and the assembly becomes a story.