- Filter words narrate perception instead of presenting it directly.
- Common ones: saw, heard, felt, noticed, realized, watched, seemed.
- They add distance between the reader and the experience.
- Cutting them usually makes prose more immediate and tighter.
- A few are fine; the goal is removing the unnecessary ones.
Cut filter words by searching for the verbs that filter experience through the narrator — saw, heard, felt, noticed, realized, watched, seemed — and removing them where the perception can be shown directly. "She saw the door open" becomes "The door opened." This collapses the distance between reader and scene, making the prose more immediate. Keep the few that genuinely matter; cut the rest.
Chapter i·Why it matters
Filter words are a subtle distancing device: they constantly remind the reader they are watching a character perceive, rather than experiencing the scene directly. Because they creep in unnoticed, a draft can be full of them. Cutting them is one of the highest-yield line-edit moves there is — the prose gets tighter and more immersive almost automatically, often without changing anything else.
Chapter ii·What to include
- A search for saw, heard, felt, noticed, realized, watched, seemed.
- Direct presentation in place of filtered perception.
- A check that the cut keeps the meaning intact.
- Retention of the rare filter word that does real work.
- Attention to deep-POV scenes where filtering hurts most.
- A tightening pass on the sentences left behind.
Chapter iii·Example
A writer searches "felt" and "saw." "She felt a chill run down her spine" becomes "A chill ran down her spine"; "He saw the figure step out of the shadows" becomes "The figure stepped out of the shadows." The scene reads closer and quicker, and she has cut thirty filtering words from the chapter.
Chapter iv·Related questions
WriteLoom's Edit studio helps you find and cut filter words, so your prose reads immediate instead of narrated at a distance.
See the Edit studio