The Trouble with "Up"... the Word, not the Movie

Just when I think that I'm done editing my new novel manuscript, The Dance of Rotten Sticks,  I learn of another abused or unnecessary word that can be expunged. If you follow my blog at all, you know that I'm a big advocate of the "find" function in Word for finding troublesome words. I call them "first draft" words, and they largely have no business in "nearing-final" drafts. I call them "nearing-final" because there's never a final. I remember a professor remarking once that Tolstoy did not read his own published manuscripts because he'd find, even on the first page, something he wanted to change. We abandon; we don't finish.

I have mixed feelings about the #WritingCommunity and even the use of Twitter for writers, but good communications have come out of it. I was very pleased to meet Leah Angstman of Alternating Current Press: here. Born and raised in Michigan, she is witty, generous, talented as a writer, and one hell of an editor. We usually have some pithy exchanges on Twitter, and this morning was no exception.

Angstman is also an accomplished writer, so keep an eye out for her forthcoming novel, Out Front the Following Sea, forthcoming from Regal House Publishing in spring 2022. Read more about the book (and join her mailing list): here.

In one of her tweet replies, she wrote: "I am a murderer of your Victorian 'up.' A character doesn't have to stand 'up.' He can simply stand. A face doesn't have to scrunch 'up.' It can simply scrunch. A plant doesn't have to shrivel 'up.' It can simply shrivel. Seriously, find your prepositions and vanquish them."

We had some playful banter about this, in which I told her to just "Shut" (as opposed to "Shut up." Yes, I know, I'm super witty and clever).

But, Angstman's thoughts on "up" got me thinking. Is it a word I have abused in my manuscript? 

Not possible. 

Over the last month, I've read through my manuscript 20 times. I couldn't have possibly missed anything.

Then, I put "up" into the "find" function in Word. After expunging 16 unnecessary "ups" I decided to write this blog post. Here's some more of what I found.

Here's the first one, and not everyone will agree with the change:

    Standing in water up to his knees,

I changed that to:

    Standing in knee-deep water, 

This next is more cut and dry: (some of these are just pieces of sentences, for brevity)

    open, he set the cooler up against the side of the wall 

Changed to:

    open, he set the cooler against the side of the wall 

I'm kicking myself as I find some of these "ups" because they are really stupid once you zero in on them:

    save for the rusty weathervane peeking up through the topmost branches. 

Changed to:

    save for the rusty weathervane peeking through the topmost branches. 

I am finding that quite a few "ups" go untouched, especially in dialogue. Since my novel is set in current times, I can get away with the colloquial "up" in my dialogue, but if you are writing a historical novel, you might want to know this about "up", via Leah Angstman regarding the use of "up" in speech (like "stand up" etc):

She writes: "Only in modern dialogue. People never said it (the unnecessary "up") until the late 1800s/early 1900s."

So, pro tip.

Okay, so I kept searching my novel... here are a few more examples of expunged "ups.":

    He slid the box from her loose grip and pushed it back into the backpack. Then he zipped it up. 

Changed that to:

    He slid the box from her loose grip and pushed it into the backpack, zipping it closed. 

Lots of changes going on there. I guess you get to decide if I made it better. (And, this after I edited the manuscript 20 times!)

Jesus, I even found one that Angstman used as an example!

    Adam stood up and walked over to the window. 

The obvious change:

    Adam stood and walked to the window. 

This one was serendipitous because Angstman had this to say about "over.":

"Yeah! All prepositions can be culprits. This story also repeatedly has someone 'walking 'over' to' something, instead of simply 'walking to' it. Death to 'over'!"

So, after "up" I will likely do an "over" search too.

(For the record, if you find an editor with Angstman's eye and ear, value everything that person says!)

Okay, maybe one more "up." Some of the point of line editing is to cut words that aren't really doing anything. Like, in this final example, you might think, "What was wrong with that 'up'?" Well, since its absence isn't felt at all in the rewrite, the "up" wasn't doing anything. So, death to it!

For instance,

    A jolt of pain shot from his knee up through his thigh and into his hip.

Notice the "up" isn't missed at all:

    A jolt of pain shot from his knee through his thigh and into his hip.

I mean, a pain can't go from one's knee "down" into his thigh, so the "up" does nothing. Kill it!

As I mentioned in the past, this doesn't mean kill every "up"... I think it could also lead to clunky sounding prose. At one point, my main character "held up a calming palm" toward his daughter. In this case, I think the "up" speaks to the raised action. Could it be "held a calming palm"? I suppose. Is "raised a calming palm" better? Maybe. Some might argue "held forth" but that sounds a little formal to me.

The big thing is to cut "ups" (and "overs") that aren't doing anything. Why? It's this kind of hardcore editing that can be the difference between publishable and just good.

If you find my blog posts instructive or illuminating, please consider purchasing a copy of my new book of short stories, The Neighborhood Division.

From the Publisher (preferred): here

From Amazon: here

Book Trailer: here

Slow Bear by Anthony Neil Smith: A Book Review

 

Since the quarantine, I’ve found myself reading more cop procedurals than I ever have. It started with John Guzlowki’s Little Altar Boy (reviewed here) and was followed up by Chris Geier’s Silt (reviewed here) and then Guzlowski’s Suitcase Charlie (reviewed here).

All really great books that I highly recommend.

Most recently, I finished the novella Slow Bear by Anthony Neil Smith.

This is a really great book for a lot of reasons. First, it’s novella, and I think the novella is an under appreciated form. The novella is almost the perfect length for a work of fiction. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve read a novel and felt as though it dragged in places… as though it was more concerned with word count than with reader enjoyment. I mean, if you consider that A River Runs Through It is a novella… well, clearly, the novella has some good company in its ranks.

So, yeah, buying this novella is the perfect way to experience a novella and how they function.

A better reason yet to buy it? It’s a really fun and wild read. In writing circles, you often hear the advice that plot should come out of character. This couldn’t be more true of Slow Bear. Our main character Micah “Slow Bear” Cross is a Native American ex-cop trying to live out his days on the reservation after losing his arm to a shotgun blast. He drinks at the casino and spends his nights on his trailer roof looking at the stars.

But, Slow Bear is a bit of a train wreck (the man, not the book). He’s the epitome of anti-hero, and his disjointed, illogical, impulsive approach to life is reflected in a disjointed, illogical, impulsive plot (the only kind of plot someone like Slow Bear could produce). Just when the reader (like Slow Bear) thinks the story is on a specific trajectory, the trajectory shifts, reroutes, changes… but in a way that makes sense because it’s happening to such a messed up person. 

Not more than a few times, I thought, “I know where this is going!” only to see the plot veer in another direction. Slow Bear doesn’t know the answer to what life is all about, and he certainly doesn’t know the answer to the question regarding what his own life is all about.

He just seems to get into one mess after another, often of his own making (but not always).

Train wreck or no, he is lovable. He’s sympathetic. He is fiercely loyal to those he loves when he can figure out who he loves.

I’ll say this much… as I was reading the first 50 pages, there’s no way I would have predicted the events in the last 25 pages… and that was a true pleasure.

Too often, because we’ve come to believe that fiction should end in redemption, much of fiction becomes predictable. The hero will get the guy or gal. The hero will find the wherewithal to defeat the villain. Etc, etc.

Slow Bear might start moving toward redemption at the end, but he has a long road ahead of him. I get the sense that Smith might not be done with Slow Bear.

One of the things that struck me about the plot was how it often changed because Slow Bear had been lied to in some way. He lives in a world of those with more authority and power lying to him. They make deals with him, he carries out his end of the deal (in his enjoyably haphazard way) only to find out that the deal was never grounded in truth. He honored his end of the bargain only to find out the others never had intended to honor their end… and they knew they wouldn’t honor it from the beginning. It’s probably the English professor in me, but I can’t help but think that Smith intended this as a metaphor for how Native Americans were treated throughout their history with encroaching white culture.

But, I could be wrong.

I often am.

Buy Slow Bear: here

          Jeff Vande Zande is an English professor at Delta College in Michigan. His latest collection, The                Neighborhood Division: Stories, is now out through Whistling Shade Press and available: here.