True story: I was 800 words into a different Shelf Life article when I happened to touch on this topic and wrote the following line:
This probably deserves a Shelf Life of its own, to be honest.
And then I promptly stopped writing that Shelf Life, which you will get some other time, and started writing this Shelf Life, which you are now reading. This is not the first sign that I have ADHD and it will not be the last. A new topic appealed to me more than the one I was midway done with. While I could have been done with this and playing video games or whatever in half an hour, instead I will be done with this at some undogly hour because I started over from scratch halfway through. Fortunately, I can still play video games afterward because I’m a grown up and I can stay up as late as I want.
Do not concern yourself with that other, half-written Shelf Life. It will return to entertain you over your morning coffee another day. Hey you know what you use filters for? Coffee.
Filter is a funny word in it’s many contexts—I mean all words are funny if you think about it, but I’m thinking about this one right now—because in its verb form (to filter something) it means to pass something through a filter (nominal form), removing matter in suspension or removing elements in another way, physical or metaphorical, before letting the rest through.
A filter can be a porous object like a coffee filter that holds the grounds back and lets the water carry the dissolved coffee flavor compounds into the carafe. Or a filter can be a transparent or translucent object that allows some light to pass through while holding back other wavelengths of light, like a photo filter, changing the appearance of the light that comes through.
Back in the day when we used to take photos with film, I always had a UV filter on my SLR because it cut back on the UV rays that could cause distortion on film when shooting in high-UV lighting situations, and also it’s better to scratch your $20 UV filter than your $800 lens. My camera bag also had macro filters (cheaper than but not as good as a true macro lens), a soft-focus filter, and a set of contrast-control filters. These screwed onto the end of the lens (or you could screw it onto another filter to stack them!) to filter the light as it entered the camera and hit the film, to adjust the end result of the photo.
Filter also has recently evolved a new meaning in photo editing: To change the appearance of part or all of a digital photo by means of a software algorithm. It gets its name from the photo filters of yore that we used to change the appearance of the photo. It’s just interesting to me because filters in digital photo editing have the same effect but they don’t actually filter anything. Sort of like how we still say “hang up” to mean ending a phone call but we don’t actually “hang” anything up anymore, we just tap an icon on a screen.
The phrase “no filter” has two unrelated meanings in modern parlance. The first relates to the above photo editing filters; if a person takes a photo that is so good they felt no need to apply a filter to improve it, they might tag their photo #nofilter so you know it just naturally looks that good with no tampering. The other meaning is related to the coffee-filter sense of “holding back bad letting good through”: People will say “I have no filter” to mean they do not review their thoughts before opening their facehole and letting those thoughts spill out in the form of words. People with “no filter” say just what they think as they think it, without adapting their thoughts to the audience around them. In both cases, “no filter” is shorthand for: What you’re getting is genuine and real, neither touched up nor sanitized.
Today I am using filter in the camera sense; or maybe about half in the camera sense and half in a metaphorical sense. Or perhaps 100 percent in a metaphorical sense drawn from the camera sense. Today’s Shelf Life is about filter language (or filtering language) in writing: What it is, why it can undermine your writing intentions if used subconsciously, and how to find it and terminate it to make your writing more vibrant.
In writing, particularly in narrative writing (in other kinds as well, which I’ll cover later on), filter language is any language that places a metaphorical filter between the reader and the action going on in the text. In the broadest sense, that’s what I mean by filter language.
Now: All narrative writing is filter language. Right? All fiction is coming to the reader through the filter of the author’s words. You’re not telepathically inserting it into the reader’s head. I mean, it’s a close thing. Writing something and having someone else read it is pretty close to telepathic communication. But no cigar. Here’s what I mean.
When I write, I have a story in my mind. I’m a particularly verbal thinker on the very far end of the verbal–visual spectrum; I’m not at all a visual thinker. I do not have an image in my mind that I’m trying to describe for my reader. Instead, I have something like an internal monologue with stage direction. Visuals come to me as verbal descriptions instead of images. All this is to say I’m probably doing less “filtering” than many writers who have the capability of visualizing.
Hello, friends, we just hit 800 words, which is where I left off on the previous Shelf Life. Time is a construct. Only word count is real.
Even with a low level of filtering, I still translate the story in my mind to fixed verbiage. Then, I pass that to a reader who absorbs it and translates it back into story in their own mind, with actions and images (if they can visualize) and characters talking to each other. That is one level of filter: From my mind, to fixed words, into the reader’s mind.
There’s another level of filtering always taking place when someone reads: The filter of their understanding of the text. No two people will read the same text exactly the same way, because everyone brings the accumulation of their life experience to what they read. Different readers will interpret things different ways. As writers, we’re always working with and against the vast and unknown experience readers will bring to our text. To write something that cannot be misunderstood even as it is interpreted infinite ways by infinite readers, is mastery.
To illustrate this, think of a short story you remember reading as a young person in school. “To Build a Fire”? “All Summer in a Day”? “The Lottery”? “The Diamond Necklace”? Anyway, read it again now (go ahead, I’ll wait) and notice the ways your perspective changes your experience of the story. I reread my favorite novels every now and again for this specific reason.
Anyway, those two filters—the filter of the writer’s brain and the reader’s brain—there’s nothing we can do about those. They’re always in place. There’s no removing them. These two filters create the minimum amount of space between understandings. When you have these two filters and no others, I believe that’s the closest you can get to pure understanding of a narrative. That’s as close as the reader can get to the pure and unadulterated story that exists in the writer’s mind.
Now we’re getting to the good part. Writers, particularly those of us who are developing our craft, tend to put even more filters in the text, without intending to, that create further distance between the reader and the story. This can create unintentional narrative distance (see Going the Distance, which also has many camera analogies), the key word being unintentional. Don’t let narrative distance just kind of happen in your text. Choose the narrative distance you want to use for your story and write it intentionally.
One of the best ways to control narrative distance is to find and eliminate filter language during editing when you’ve used it accidentally or subconsciously. As you get used to doing this in editing and revision, you’ll begin to catch yourself while drafting and you’ll have fewer instances over time that you need to edit. Editing creates good writerly habits this way.
Okay so what do I mean by filter language? Consider:
I watched as he smiled sadly then turned away.
Versus:
He smiled sadly then turned away.
In the first example, the filter phrase is “I watched.” The narrator is telling you they watched some actions. In the second example, the filter language has been removed. The narrator describes the actions without filter language.
The first example is unnecessarily verbose, for one thing, although you could streamline it somewhat and still keep the filter language (“I watched him smile sadly then turn away”). More important, the first example filters the experience through the narrator two times while the second filters the experience through the narrator only one time. In the first example, you’re getting the narrator’s perspective and then on top of that they are telling you the action they witnessed through the lens of their own action:
I = the narrator
watched = did an action
as he = another character
smiled sadly et cetera = did an action
Reader: Is your coffee better if you put two coffee filters in the machine than if you put one? No it is not. It’s weaker.
In the second example, you’re still getting the narrator’s perspective but the narrator only describes the action they witnessed and not their own action:
He = a character
smiled sadly et cetera = did an action
In this example, the reader is one step closer to the action of the story; because the narrator describes the action they watched without the added filter of their own action, the reader receives this action as though they, themself, are witnessing it. In the first example, the reader witnesses the narrator witness the action. In the second example, the reader witnesses the action themself.
Filter language are any of these sneaky little key phrases that pull the reader back an unnecessary degree of separation from the action of the story. These phrases contain words like:
Felt—“I felt tears welling up in my eyes” versus “Tears welled in my eyes.”
Heard—“She heard footsteps coming closer” versus “the footsteps came closer.”
Saw—“She saw him ball up his fist to throw a punch” versus “he balled up his fist for a punch.”
Listened, tasted, and smelled belong in this category, too. If the narrator senses something, just tell the reader what it is. You need not explain that the narrator is experiencing it with one of their senses.
Bear in mind that these words and phrases are not always filter language. In the original example (“I watched”) consider:
I could only watch as he smiled sadly and turned away.
Not my best sentence, but here I’m communicating a slightly different meaning: The narrator is not filtering the experience of the man smiling sadly et cetera through the lens of their watching, but instead is describing a feeling of helplessness, powerlessness, or other inability to act. The word “watch” is still in there, but it serves a true purpose in this example, to add nuance to the action of watching. The narrator is not describing the action of watching but instead describing the inability to act other than to watch.
In the future I will work on a Filter Language Part Deux article to talk about non-sensory filter language—language that filters the experience through the narrator in ways that are not based in their physical senses—but I’m running short of time and words and you probably finished your coffee.
One more thing before I go—I promised to address filter language in non-narrative writing. A great example of non-narrative writing you’re familiar with is Shelf Life, in which I use filter language all the time. I like to think it’s part of my conversational writing style because this is just how I talk, but actually I’m super susceptible to it. For instance, consider:
I like to think it’s part of my conversational writing style.
Versus:
It’s part of my conversational writing style.
I don’t need to tell you “this is what I like to think”—everything in Shelf Life is what I like to think. Shelf Life is just a long as heck collection of things I think. Ladies and gentlefriends, there you have it: Unnecessary filter language in non-narrative writing in a nutshell.
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Was expecting examples involving profanity, but perhaps those are caught by the language firewalls before they get to the filters.