Filtering and Distance

Happy summer! I hope you’re writing under a deck umbrella or blue sky or even better, a leafy tree. I’m doing some leafy writing, but I’m also critiquing my college students’ short fiction, and this endeavor has prompted me to discuss “filtering.”

“See if you can reduce some of your filtering,” I comment over and over in the margins.

“Sure, Kendra,” they email me back to say. “I’ll do that. But… what the heck is filtering?”

Filtering is the process by which authors relate characters’ perceptions through a layer of narrative distance. Most writers have been warned against filtering because this distance can leave readers feeling disconnected from characters’ experiences. Occasionally, filtering can be useful, which we’ll discuss below. But filtering often results in overall weak and wordy writing, a lack of concrete language, and the overuse of passive constructions.

Here’s an example of a filtered experience. Our penguin hero has just mastered time-and-space travel — well, mastered it to a point. They’ve escaped their New England zoo but were unprepared for their Arctic excursion.

A: Flippy felt the glacial waters lap at her toes. She looked at the frozen edge of the ice floe and wondered if she could jump the distance from one to the next. That’s what these damned flappy appendages were supposed to be for, she reasoned. She heard the cry of a gull overhead, mocking her. Noticing the setting sun, Flippy realized the urgency of finding shelter. She felt so hopeless.

Most writers filter excessively during first drafts because they’re letting the scene unfold as they write — learning the staging, if you will. The trick is then to recognize the patterns and start weeding. I find this kind of micro editing fun. Perfecting and polishing our writing may be less absorbingly joyous that the initial story creation, but it can also be deeply satisfying.

Should all of the above filtering be removed? Perhaps not. But as an exercise, I’ll write each line without filtering (feel free to try first yourself).

B: The glacial waters lapped at Flippy’s toes. Could she possibly jump the distance from her ice floe to the frozen edge of the next? And what were these damned flappy appendages for, anyway, if not to help her fly? The cry of a gull overhead mocked her. The setting sun reminded the downcast penguin of the urgency of finding shelter.

I’m not saying option B is better than A. I kept it sparse. But a strong benefit to unfiltering (it’s possible that I made up this term) is that we can now position the “noticed” object as a grammatical subject. Even better, when we’re focusing on the stimulus and not the response, we’re more apt to replace vague verbs with active ones.

Option C: Glacial waters licked hungrily at Flippy’s toes. Feeling hopeless, she contemplated the distance between her own drifting ice floe and the slippery edges of the next. Could she jump it? If not, what were these damned flappy appendages for, anyway? Overhead, a gull wheeled, its cries mocking Flippy. The flightless bird stood frozen by the last warm rays of the setting sun.

Some considerations:

The omission of filtering also provides a more confident narration. Think of filtering as a qualifier. “Flippy felt hopeless” is less definitive than saying the bird was hopeless, which sounds like a judgement. Thus, using “feels” at times, particularly for emotions, is perfectly justified. Another consideration is narrative distance. An authorial question, in lieu of the protagonist “wondering,” can both increase or decrease narrative distance depending on how seated the question is in the protagonist’s voice. The key is consistency, because we don’t want our POV camera to wobble too much.

Clearly, not all filtering is needless. Sometimes we want to point out when or how a character notices something; this can ensure smooth transitions, enhance characterization, or signal a shift in their perspective. Just remember to trust your reader. Readers don’t need authors to remind them that the experiences are happening through a character’s lens. Saying that “Flippy heard the splashing of water under her feet” is likely an unnecessary filter unless the splashing was happening for a while without her noticing it. But saying that “Flappy watched the entire sunset, from the first pinking wisps of clouds to the last stubborn streak of orange as it succumbed to blue” is useful because it relates Flippy’s actions and hints at her state of mind.

Context is always the best determiner for our authorial choices! That’s why I enjoy posting scenarios to ponder. For a great RMFW blog from 2019 on this topic, click here! DEEP POV Lesson 4 – Filtering Words – Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers (rmfw.org) I agree with the author, Jax Hunter, about the value of noticing your patterns. I use Control F to find my troublemakers, then set about removing roughly three quarters of them. If you’re unsure which filtering words you rely on, start with a seek and find of the most common: feel, see, hear, think, look, realize, and notice.

If you have any thoughts on the concept of “filtering,” please reply to this post or send them my way!  

Featured photo from Canva