No Filter Words: An Easy Way to Improve Your Writing

I am always looking for quick and easy ways to improve my writing. I know there are plenty of long and hard ways: years of practice; studying writing of established authors; hours of self-editing and so much more.

So, let’s talk about a relatively quick way to give your writing more punch:

Get rid of filter words in your writing.

What are filter words? When you write your character or an object doing any of the following, you are using filter words:

Began (start), can (could), decide, experience (experienced), feel (felt), hear, know, look, note (noted), notice, realize, remember, see, seem (seemed), smell, sound, taste, smell, think (thought), to be able to (be able to), touch, understand, watch, wonder

. . . there are more, but these cover the most common ones.

I try to avoid these words because they plump up the writing. My writing should be as streamlined as possible. Here’s an example with a filter word:

Trey saw the weed emerge from someone’s pocket and the circle passed it around.

Instead, delete the filter word and go directly to the source:

The weed emerged from someone’s pocket and the circle passed it around.

Here’s another example of a filter word in use:

Jonathan felt the brazen stare of the old woman on him.

This can be rewritten in different ways, such as:

The brazen stare of the old woman hung over Jonathan.

The old woman stared at Jonathan and wouldn’t stop.

While these are not masterpieces, they are more interesting than the first sentence with the filter word.

Here’s an example from Janet Burroway’s Writing Fiction: a Guide to Narrative Craft with filter words in bold:

“Mrs. Blair made her way to the chair by the window and sank gratefully into it. She looked out the window and there, across the street, she saw the ivory BMW parked in front of the fire plug once more. It seemed to her, though, that something was wrong with it. She noticed that it was listing slightly toward the back and side, and then saw that the back rim was resting almost on the asphalt.”

And here’s the same paragraph without filter words:

“Mrs. Blair made her way to the chair by the window and sank gratefully into it. Across the street the ivory BMW was parked in front of the fire plug again. Something was wrong with it, though. It was listing toward the back and side, the back rim resting almost on the asphalt.”

See how much more direct and powerful the second paragraph is?

My advice is to write your rough drafts with filter words if they happen to come up. Try to avoid them if you can, but I know from personal experience they slip through. Then in the rewriting stage, do a search for them and find ways to rewrite the sentences.

Here are some links to other articles about filter words:

The latest episode of Oblivion’s Hope has been posted.

Oblivion’s Hope: The Observation

The Observation is the latest episode of Oblivion’s Hope.

Phia tries to trick Seeby in order to get data to prove the Questica species are sentient.

About Oblivion’s Hope

How far would you go to save your best friend?

His world turned upside down, Jad Cannon witnesses Seeby, his best friend, get kidnapped. Jad and his team of zoologists race from world to world trying to discover who is behind Seeby’s abduction. The more they uncover, the more they realize the fate of the whole galaxy intertwines with Seeby. Will Jad and his friends stop the insidious power about to unleash its plan for domination?

Oblivionshope.com

Photo by Mikechie Esparagoza: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-man-holding-paper-1660613/