FILTERING
Or: He felt the knife slide across his throat.
The comments: "Your characters are boring." Or
"This feels very distant." Or "I couldn't get into it." Or
"You're filtering."
What they mean: You're filtering.
Since many people have just finished Nanowrimo's month of
intensive writing, let's focus on an easy blunder to spot and eliminate.
Sensory filtering.
The simplest way to describe it is you're using sensual verbs. No,
not smexy verbs, verbs that describe the act
of receiving information through one of the five senses, the most common of
which are: Saw, Heard, Tasted, Felt, and Smelled.
Here's why they need to go. In your super special work of
art, whatever genre it is, you've created a pocket universe. The main goal of
your descriptions is to immerse the reader so deeply in this universe that the
reader believes your story could
totally happen. Or better; the reader lives
your story.
When you use a filtering verb, you're reminding the reader
that they are reading a story, and not living it.
Have you ever sat in a theater, watching a Summer
Blockbuster, when something – a really stupid line, one of the actors is just
awful, or the explosion was a second later than it should have been – jolted
you out of the drama and you thought "Man, these chairs are f*cking uncomfortable."
A filtering verb does the same thing.
Example: A limited 3rd POV with Fey Hunter Jack
as our Main Character:
Jack and Priya
walked through the false twilight made by L.A. fog. The scant light cast a melancholy
orange glow to the hazy streets. Wavering purple shadows crawled out of black
alleys and clung to the skyscrapers.
"This
place smells like the boys' locker room," said Priya. Her voice sounded
husky in the strange air.
Jack
sniffed. "Sweaty feet, old piss, and backed-up toilets?" He grinned.
"Means we're in Fey territory. Oberon should be close."
"Good."
Jack heard
her load a can of soda into her modified shotgun. He looked at her and saw she
had a determined smile across her tired features.
"Fey
trails," she said, pointing at the broken pavement.
Jack
squinted and saw the faintly glimmering path as if a giant snail had meandered
down the street. He recalled the first time he'd seen such markings. Bozu, his
old mentor, had compared it to a trail left by a… well, it was a distasteful joke
and the desire to share it died under Priya's hard gaze.
"So we
gonna go get'em?" she asked. "Or is the brave Fey Hunter quaking in
his oh so rugged and stylishly hipster Hush Puppies?"
"I was
tacticionizing," said Jack. He started to insult her back but he heard a
growl come from a nearby alley.
Let's put our serious pants on
and deconstruct:
Jack and
Priya walked strode1 through the false twilight made by L.A.
fog. The scant light cast a melancholy orange glow to the hazy streets.
Wavering purple shadows crawled out of black alleys and clung to the
skyscrapers.
"This
place smells2 like the boys' locker room," said Priya. Her
voice sounded husky in the strange air.
Jack
sniffed. "Sweaty feet, old piss, and backed-up toilets?" He grinned.
"Means we're in Fey territory. Oberon should be close."
"Good."
"Fey
trails," she said, pointing at the broken pavement.
"So we
gonna go get'em?" she asked. "Or is the brave Fey Hunter quaking in
his oh so rugged and stylishly hipster Hush Puppies?"
"I was
tacticionizing," said Jack. He started to insult her back but he heard a growl come from a
nearby alley. "And
your boots are –"
A deep growl came from the alley to his
left.6
1. Recall my foreshadowing post? Whenever simply moving a
character, either make the movement count, or don't say it at all.
2. This was one of the words I listed as filtering. Am I
going to change it here? No. Priya, not Jack-the-POV-character, is the first
one who smells it. Since this is limited 3rd POV, Jack can't read
her mind. Therefore, she must reveal this information in dialogue. Maybe it's
significant. Also, what else do I show by what she chooses to compare it to.
What does that reveal about their world, their relationship. Their age?
3. The focus is on Jack hearing.
Not what he is hearing. Here,
filtering is doubly awful because it ignores something special about this
world. Guns that use cans of soda for ammo. Which is more awesome: watching
Jack hear something? Or hearing the sound the can makes as it slides into the
gun?
4. Redundant. Of course he's looking at her if he saw her.
More importantly, again, the focus is on Jack looking and seeing, not what he saw. The text reminds the reader
that s/he is looking at Jack looking at something else, not being inside Jack, seeing through his eyes.
Which would you think: The dog just ate that slug. Or: I saw the dog just ate
that slug.
5. "Recall" is another filtering word. You might
be trying to signal a memory or flashback with it, but it's unnecessary. When
remembering something, do you start the thought with "I remember this one
time…." Or do you just remember
it: "First time we roasted a giant…"
6. Whenever your character "starts" to do
something, change to just describing what the character is doing. The word
"start" reminds the reader of the story and not the action.
The equivalent of tapping a reader on the shoulder, it f*cks with a story's chronological structure and exaggerates that what's about
to happen was not happening before and might
be interrupted.
In your WIP: Seek and destroy (most) filtering words.
Caveat! Sometimes your Protags do
need to have a look around, remember something vital, or dialogue about
what they're experiencing.
"In the darkness, I felt around for my dagger."
"Through the telepathic link, I tasted the muffin."
"In the time portal, I saw myself as a young man, hitting on my own grandmother."
But! "He felt the knife slide across his throat." Versus: "The knife sliced through his throat." Or better: "The woman slashed. A hot sting burned across his throat."
Lastly, let's thank American author Janet Burroway for the term "filtering" in application to writing. For further reading on this and other techniques, her book Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft is available on Amazon.
Happy writing,
J
Coming up:
Details
Pacing
Robert Bevan
Characterization
Brian Mumphrey
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