December 15, 2012 
I woke early this morning with an easy fix for many of the “distancing” words which invade our fiction, our nonfiction, and poetry. I’ve given examples of this before from actual Port Yonder Press manuscripts. The most recent blog post is here.
Here are a few new examples & the “easy fix” solution below, along with a list of those nasty filter words:
Before filter word removal: She looked (peered, gazed, glanced) into the night sky.
After filter word removal: The night sky spread before her.
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Before filter word removal: She watched the car go by.
After filter word removal: The car sped by or The car sped past her.
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Before filter word removal: He hears a cry in the distance – it sounds like a wolf. He wonders what to do.
After filter word removal: Something cries in the distance – a wolf. He’s not sure what to do.
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Many times the solution is simply to take the object of the unfiltered sentence and make it the subject of the filtered one. Sometimes it will be more difficult than that. In those cases, decide if the sentence can be reworded, rearranged another way, or should be removed entirely. In rare cases, the filter word may need to stay there, but I think the ratio should be very low – maybe only 5% of the time. The important thing is to avoid the redundancy and distancing of filter word over-usage.
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In the meantime, get the fabulously thorough Self-Editing for Fiction Writers through Amazon or your local bookstore. It’s a very helpful tool.
For great writing,
~Chila
P.S. Try to avoid all forms of the following:
- to see
- to hear
- to think
- to touch
- to wonder
- to realize
- to watch
- to look
- to seem
- to feel (or feel like)
- can
- to decide
- to sound (or sound like)
- to know
- to remember
- to imagine
I love this alternative! I’ve always tried substituting strong/specific verbs for distance words, but your solution is so much better–thanks!
You’re very welcome, Stephanie. Thanks!
Thanks for the tips. I enjoyed reading the rephrasing as well. It’ll take some practice since I can be the consummate analytic. I think the rephrasing will be especially helpful when having an extended beat that goes beyond describing facial expressions or hand gestures.
you’re very welcome. thanks for the note!
I get the idea, and what you suggest is okay to a point. You took sentences written in active voice and turned them into passive voice. There are perfectly good reasons to use passive voice, even though newbie’s (and everyone else) are often told to write in active voice. If you use too much passive voice your story becomes “unfixed,” like trying to listen to a music arrangement with too much harmony and not enough melody. What should go along with your suggestion is to, “vary the voices.”
If you use too much active voice (as per your examples) the effect is like reading a telegraph. “do this.” (stop) “then this happens” (stop). If you use too much passive voice all you get is a travel log. Use the active voice for the main points to move your reader through the story, but interject passive voice to keep the narrative from getting too thin, or “filtered.”
Well, of course, if you keep up with my posts, you’ll see that I definitely encourage sentence variety, but even so, most distancing words /should/ be slain where they lay. Let the rest of the manuscript offer the necessary variety. Hopefully every single line and paragraph won’t contain a filter word, so variety probably won’t be an issue for most, and neither will passive voice. Better some passive voice than the million filter words that usually fill a manuscript.
Thanks for this post.
identify yourself, alien.
and you’re welcome.
I see so many of these in entries for contests I judge. Actually, I wasn’t sure what they were called: filter words is as good as any. Love your rephrasing—I can use that in my judge’s comments.
Very good, Rich. Glad you found it useful.
I am so guilty of this in my first drafts. Thanks for the great post.
You’re very welcome.
Thanks for the awesome tips, Chila. One may not think of rephrasing the sentence but the above example sure make sense.
Glad you’re getting the hang of it, Renee-Ann. It takes a little time but the pay-off is worth it in the long run.
Helpful! Making the object of the filter into the subject? It’s like an easy button.
Yes, it’s an easy fix, Pauline, and one I’ve not seen put this way, so the revelation was quite dynamic for me.
There’s obviously different ways to filter, but I think a better word for filtering that you’re talking about is “telegraphing”. You see it a lot with first person POV. Where there are excessive amounts of “I” appearing in just about every sentence. For that specific type of filtering your suggestion works very well.