How to Eliminate Filter Words from Your Writing
Filter words and phrases put distance between the reader and the scene you are writing. They create a situation where the reader’s experience is “filtered” through the character’s point of view. You don’t want that. You want the reader inside the scene as much as possible, so you should eliminate filter words from your writing whenever possible.
According to this post from the Grammar Girl, filtering alienates the readers from the experience. Here are a few comparison examples:
Filtered: She wondered what happened to her dog.
Not filtered: What happened to her dog?
Filtered: Roger felt the black pepper burn his throat.
Not filtered: The black pepper burned Roger’s throat.
Commonly Used Filter Words and Phrases
Assume/assumed
Believe/believed
Can/could
Decide/decided
Experience/experienced
Feel/felt
Hear/heard
Know/knew
Look/looked
Note/noted
Notice/noticed
Realize/realized
Remember/remembered
See/saw
Seem/seemed
Think/thought
Touch/touched
To be able to
Watch/watched
How to Eliminate Filter Words from Your Writing
The easiest way to eliminate filter words and phrases from your writing is to become aware of which ones you use/rely upon the most often and practice cutting down on their use in drafts two and beyond. Notice, I said drafts two and beyond.
That’s because editing out filter words is really for the final polishing phases writing. It’s okay to fall back on them in a first draft, since you don’t want to get bogged down in polished writing at that time. But, the more you’re aware of them, the less you’ll find yourself use them, even when you’re in the “get it down on the page” stage.
When you get to that polishing stage, here’s a way to use the find and replace function in your word processing program to help eliminate filter words and phrases:
Go to the Home tab (or its equivalent).
Pick a highlight color by clicking on the text highlight color button (or its equivalent).
Now go to Edit and down to Advanced Find and Replace (or its equivalent).
In the Find What box, type your first filter word.
Then click on the Replace tab at the top of the box and type the filter word in that box, as well.
Click the down arrow at the bottom left of the box and a larger menu opens.
Click format, and scroll down and pick highlight.
Then click replace all.
Repeat for other filter words and phrases.
Now all of your filter words are highlighted and you can go back and determine which ones are filtering your reader’s experience so you can revise.
You can remove all highlighting with the search and replace function, as well.
What filter words do you commonly use as a crutch? In the comments, share an example of how you revised/removed them. Or, as for suggestions from other readers.