Just Put that "Put" Down!

I'm in the process of slowly editing my new literary horror novel, The Dance of Rotten Sticks. Some early readers are getting back to me with comments, so I find myself fleshing out weak spots, but also doing some heaving line/word editing.

In previous posts, I've talked about how using the FIND function in Word can really streamline editing, especially when looking for a certain problematic word.

One lazy word I've noticed in my writing is the word "put." You know, like, "He put his glasses on." As a verb, "put" is pretty nondescript and, in a poetry writing course I took in college, I remember learning that the verb is your strongest type of word. 

I think in early drafts, I favor the word "put"... but I've come to see it as a placeholder word. I want to see if I can use the FIND function to do some "put"-replacements. I'm finding that if my characters are using "put" in dialogue, I leave it alone because I think it's a word we use a lot while speaking. But, I'm trying to cull it from my narration.

I do think while reading through our manuscripts, we can be forgiving or even unaware of those lazy words. Something about singling them out and looking for them specifically helps an author get focused.

Let's see what I find.

At one point I wrote:

    He put the cup to his lips.

I changed that to:

    He raised the cup to his lips.

Simple change, but stronger visually and a more accurate description of the action.

The nice thing about the FIND function is that it will find words like "putting" too.

One of my sentences started:

    Putting more ice in his glass,

I changed that to:

    Dropping more ice in his glass,

I don't know... I just see the "dropping" better than I see "putting"... which is just a vague verb.

Another instance:

    Isaac put an arm around each child...

Change to:

    Isaac looped an arm around each child...

Sometimes the changes I'm making are just to avoid repetition. In one instance, I wrote:

    He put his hands on his hips...

I changed that to:

    He set his hands on his hips...

Not a huge difference between "put" and "set" but I am seeing that I overuse "put" for those little moments. That could easily be overwritten to:

    He fixed his fingers and palms against his hips...

That to me feels overwritten, as though he's not doing something fairly mundane. The overwriting calls too much attention to this everyday action. But I do like "set"... at least for changing things up.

This next one feels like a good one for changing and getting the verb more specific.

    He put his hand down to her until she took it. 

I changed that to:

    He lowered his hand to her until she took it.

I see the "lowering" much better than I see the vague "putting," Plus, I can get rid of the word "down" since you can't really lower anything "up."

And another:

    She put her face in her hands. 

In this instance, my character is upset and sobbing, so I changed it to:

    She dropped her face into her hands. 

Incidentally, I liked the sound of "into" over "in."

I won't share all of them, but this next one was interesting:

    Moments later, they sat on the opposite bank putting their clothes over their wet legs.

I changed that to:

    Moments later, they sat on the opposite bank tugging their pants up over their wet legs.

This had a number of changes. First, "pants" is more specific than "clothes." I had originally changed "putting" to "pulling," which is better, but I still didn't think pulling emphasized the action of trying to get jeans on over wet legs. I thought on it until the word "tugging" came to me.

Holy cow, do I abuse "put"!

Just found this:

    She stood up from the table and put her hand on Emily’s shoulder.

Changed to:

    She stood up from the table and touched her hand to Emily’s shoulder.

These might seem minor or fussy, but I really think it's the kind of changes that make the prose more visceral.

One more:

    She stood up and put her arms around Carson. “Okay, Carson. It’s okay. Just let Dad—”

More accurate for that moment:

    She stood up and hugged her arms around Carson. “Okay, Carson. It’s okay. Just let Dad—”

Okay, you might be thinking that all of these changes are very fussy, but it truly is the difference between crisp prose and lazy prose. I certainly did not change every "put" in the manuscript. That shouldn't be the goal. But the changes I did make, I believe, made the overall manuscript a touch better.

I wonder what you'll FIND when you search your manuscript for "put."

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