Last week I learned something new about novel-writing. In a private conversation with Kat Heckenbach I learned about the concept of “Filter Words”. In short, this is a relatively new no-no since around 2002. The idea is that by including certain words like “see; feel; know;” you are removing the reader’s experience and placing it on the character.
SUPERBADWRONG
Celia felt the cold wind on her skin. She saw the vague outline of a deer creep through the distance.
Gold Star Approved
The cold wind stung the skin. A deer was just visible in the distance.
As a person who has read novels that are hundreds of years old as well as novels that just came out on Tuesday, I understand the concept behind the condemnation of filter words. I truly do. But to me I think that each story is different. Some stories, like folk tales, have that essential remove as part of the nature of their telling. Having filter words in the story is to me somewhat like writing a mazurka instead of a minuet.
I was thinking on it this morning after re-reading Jill Domschot’s post about removing the filter words from her own novel. I suddenly realised what it reminded me of.
When we bought our house back in 1999, wall-to-wall carpet had been the rage for years, as had white cabinets. We had our house built by a turn-key builder and those options were the more expensive, top of the line ones. When we’d lived here about three or four years all those shows about house-flipping suddenly became popular and I had a near-steady diet of them on the TiVo. You’d watch people go into an older home and try to ready it for resale. Suddenly hardwood and cherry cabinets were all the rage. And of course you had to have stainless steel appliances. I’d watch those shows and suddenly feel a rank discontent with my beautiful home–the home I had designed with my husband to reflect our tastes and enjoyments. For instance, neither of us likes stainless appliances. We prefer the sleek look of black; to us stainless appliances are a reminder of the industrial kitchens where we washed dishes in our impoverished college years.
Back then all the house flippers were putting in granite countertops. There wasn’t a house flipped without a seriously costly granite countertop, everyone repeating the conventional wisdom that “it will pay for itself with what it adds to the retail value.” If I were a more insecure person I would have pried up our wholly satisfactory plain counters just to feel better about myself. Now, not a decade later it turns out that granite is not the star anymore. Now there’s glass, steel,and other material you can actually cook on. (Granite, it turns out, isn’t so fantastic in a working kitchen.)
That’s exactly how I see these new types of rules. Like granite and stainless they have a place. They may be wonderful in your novel. But more and more I’m realising that the story trumps the remodeling trends in the writing world.
Just Another Pretty Farce 
OK, so I totally have used almost the exact same analogy–writing is like home decorating. You send a decorator into a sparse room and s/he’s going to add color and pillows and tchotchkes. Send another decorator into the room that was just decorated, and s/he’ll “de-clutter” and “tone down.” One decorator will carpet over the wood floors to “soften” the room–the next will rip up the carpet to uncover the very same floors. It’s all about trends.
Writing does have trends, just as home decor does. BUT they also both have certain standards that never change. While filter words can and should be used where they enhance the story and voice–just like you ought to always have a throw pillow and some artwork somewhere in your home for accent and splashes of color–you don’t want to smother your house, or book, in clutter. On the other hand, you would never strip a room bare, and neither should you strip your writing bare either.
Besides being clutter, though, the problem with filters is they can create too many same-structured sentences:
She felt the cold of the steel blade pressed against her back. She heard the heavy panting breaths behind her. She saw their shadows splashed against the wall in front of her. She knew she was going to die.
That kind of thing weighs a passage down. Even if it isn’t a tense scene, it can be annoying reading the same filter words over and over and over at the beginning of sentence after sentence.
And for the record, I’d probably structure the example you gave above this way: “The cold wind stung her face as she watched the vague outline of a deer creep through the distance.” The “felt” just isn’t necessary, but you need that “filter” of “watched” (variance of “saw”) to distance her from the deer. 🙂
Yeah, decorating also works as a metaphor.
Funnily enough, once I knew what filter words were I went through my ms. to double-check. I only found one, necessary for contextual reasons. So this isn’t a thing of sour grapes. It’s more that when the analogy hit my mind I had to put it out there.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
As the owner of a stainless steel fridge (purchased new as our home came without one), I’ll say I love the way they look… …On the showroom floor.
The bottom third of ours is perpetually covered in doggie nose prints, and the upper section stays finger print free for all of a day after being cleaned. I do love the way the clean stainless looks, but in a real house, it’s a nightmare.
And I realize that is a borderline off topic comment.
Not really. 😉
That’s exactly what I dislike about Stainless. If you’ve ever worked in an industrial kitchen you know how scuffed and print marked they get from being kicked shut, opened with grimey hands, etc.
Pardon the brevity and the typos. This was sent from my iPhone.
And that’s why (unless you’re a professional rehabber or flipper) house metaphors aren’t the best metaphors for writing. Because you want to live in your house, not sell it — until the time you decide to sell, you want the house to be to your (pl. you, for families) taste, not the market’s taste. You can ignore styles and trends except to the extent that you really enjoy them. But if you are writing with an eye to selling what you have written, you have to pay at least some attention to what the market wants. Pay too much attention and your work will (probably) start to stink, but pay too little attention and unless you’re James Joyce or someone at that level, most other people will find it too idiosyncratic to pay attention to. And even with Joyce … how many people have really, truly tried to read Finnegan’s Wake?
That’s the thing with me though. I’m realising as i get older that I write first for me. If someone else likes enough to buy, good on them. But I’m just not interested in writing something primarily to sell. If I were I would have gone ahead with that romance novel gig 15 years ago.
First I’ve heard of this, honestly. I think whoever is saying it needs to qualify it, because the use of those words isn’t always redundant:
Celia watched as they killed her parents.
They killed Celia’s parents.
Two different subjects emphasized, and removing that filter world would make emphasizing Celia much harder to do. If the goal is to show her reactions to a event over an event itself, filter words are perfectly fine. It’s just I’d think when you use them only to describe an event they become passive writing and removing them is better.
It’s not completely fashionable, but without context you wouldn’t see why those filter words might be bad. I’m not sure the stated reason for it is the best one either.
dm–you nailed it with this comment: “Two different subjects emphasized…”
That is exactly when a filter word *should* be used–when not using it shifts the subject in a way that doesn’t work. The example you gave is a perfect illustration.
And look in the comment I wrote above–I gave more qualification for why filters shouldn’t be used except in instances like you mention.
In fairness, I’ve read better explanations than mine from around the web. Since I was more using it as a lead-in to other thoughts I glossed over it. What it seems to go back to for me, Kat, is what I said the other day. It’s a difference between “trying to write” and “trying to tell a story”. The kinds of narratives that over-rely on those filter words are the ones that sound like someone Trying To Write. They tend to be completely annoying and have no flow at all.
Yeah, I composed the comment before anyone posted, but couldn’t post it right away and I saw your comment after the fact. Your expansion is completely right, and I think I needed clarification because this seemed more like a judgment call than other rules I know.
I was so consumed in my selfish tasks that I missed this post. And the fact that you linked to mine. I like black appliances too because, although they look dirty quickly, all you have to do is wipe them clean. Unlike that awful almond color I had for years on my stove/fridge.