Every writer has heard the advice—“kill your darlings” or some variation thereof (“kill your babies”/”murder your darlings”).

When I first came across the phrase, I took it to mean “cut your words.” Pshaw, I do that all the time, I thought. Heck, I just edited a paragraph down from five sentences to three. I even rewrote those two chapters before my novel’s climax.

Nope. Nope, nope, nope.

It took two massive 100+ page overhauls of my first completed novel to realize the truth: killing your darlings doesn’t mean cutting a few words here and there or tweaking a couple of chapters. It’s cutting the passages—perhaps even multiple chapters or entire characters—that you love, but that detract from your story.

It’s having the courage to put storytelling ahead of your personal feelings as a wordsmith, and the confidence that you can—and will!—write something as beautiful and moving and kickass as the passages you scrap.

How can you make it easier to kill your darlings? Try these five tips.

1) Don’t hit delete.

Cut and paste the passages you remove into a separate document and give yourself permission to poach phrases/sentences/paragraphs in the future. Maybe that gorgeous description fits better somewhere else in your story. Or perhaps a snatch of punchy dialogue belongs to a character in a completely different novel. As Rocky from Paw Patrol says, “don’t lose it, reuse it!” (Yes, I have a toddler at home…)

Even if you never open your “cut file” again, it’ll still be easier chopping those darlings from your story knowing they’re alive somewhere else and you can visit them whenever you want.

2) Tune in to that little voice inside your head. 

You know what I’m talking about. You’ve finished your first—or fifth—draft. You sit down to reread the story…and there’s that passage. The one you absolutely loved writing. The one where the words flowed like silk. When you finished, you fist pumped and scared the cat. But rereading the scene now, there’s a twinge in the pit of your stomach. “Something’s not right,” says that little voice in the back of your head.

Listen. To. That. Voice. It’s always right. Always. Trust your instincts, and don’t be afraid to act on them. If your gut is telling you that an aspect of your story needs work, it does. Murder that darling.

3) Practice visualization.

Still clinging to those passages that need chopped? Picture your mind as a waterfall, and writing as a snapshot of that waterfall. The water is always flowing; your mind is a constantly regenerating repository of brilliant ideas that are forever swirling, breaking apart, and coming together. When you write, you’re taking a photograph of that waterfall—capturing an impression of your thoughts at that moment in time. If you rip up the photograph of the waterfall? No problem. The waterfall is still there. Just take another picture.

4) Savor the adventure.

In my latest round of novel revisions, I finally took the plunge and substantially rewrote an important secondary character. I loved this character. She was my favorite to write. The problem was, she didn’t quite fit with the story I’m trying to tell. So I hacked her to pieces and rebuilt her from the ground up. And I discovered something thrilling: I’d only scratched the surface of this character in previous drafts. Revising this character meant delving deeper into her inner-workings and backstory, and you know what? I learned new, exciting things about her.

Killing your darlings can birth new ones. Savor the adventure that is storytelling and let yourself enjoy diving into characters or scenes that require major revisions. What you find might surprise you. And there’s a good chance it will make your story even better.

5) Write, cut, rewrite, repeat. The more you write, cut, and rewrite, the easier it becomes to trust your instincts, put your story first, and kill those darlings. Chop, chop!

How did you get comfortable killing your darlings? Share your own tips in the comments below!