This has been an interesting set of edits for me. I have a new editor and much as I love Angie—Hi Angie!—I’ve really enjoyed the process. Plus, new editor, new tricks!
We all have bad writing habits. Or we develop them as we go. Or we’re just lazy. But the crime is when we call those mistakes “style”. And one of the things I realized of late that I’ve been doing is “filtering”. That’s when you’re telling something through the eyes of a character, but you don’t have to.
This is a danger in the “Show, Don’t Tell” school of thought, and quite easy to fall into. You need to show someone else’s responses without head hopping. The temptation is to see everything through the eyes of your POV character.
Jenny watched George close his eyes, the lids tight with obvious pain.
But the rest of the scene is already in “Jenny’s” POV. It’s like adding an unnecessary dialogue tag or worse, putting the name of who you’re talking to at the end of every line. It’s not style. It’s not showing. It’s telling what you’re showing. You could just concisely say:
George closed his eyes, the lids tight with obvious pain.
So, to give credit where credit is due, I’ll quote the lovely Deborah Nemeth (who is rather bravely guiding me through the perils of grammar despite all my whining):
“(This) refers to words such as felt, thought, decided, wondered, remembered, knew, realized, figured, assumed, worked out, saw, watched, looked, and heard. These are all words which “tell” the reader information rather than “showing” it (i.e. giving them the impression that they’re discovering it for themselves). Of course, all writing is telling, but these words make the process a little more obvious. It’s often fine to use filter words—they can be an effective and economical way of conveying information. However, if they’re used too much, and particularly if they’re used in action scenes, they can distance the reader and slow the pace. This is because the reader gets the information through the “filter” of the character’s experience, thus reminding them that they’re being told about the scene.
So, if this tip helps you, Yay. It’s totally slicing and dicing my current word count, but in a good way. Plus, it means less editing later if you learn to do it as you’re writing. :)
Dee








