Filter Words: The List, Why They Distance Readers, and When to Keep Them

Filter words are verbs of perception and thought, such as saw, heard, felt, noticed, realized and wondered, that show a character perceiving something instead of presenting the thing perceived. "She heard the door slam" filters; "The door slammed" doesn't. Most can be cut or rewritten to put the reader closer to the point-of-view character, but some should stay: the ones where the act of perceiving is itself the point.

This guide gives the full list, shows how to revise each family, and explains the cases where a filter is the better choice. If you are working on crutch words more broadly, start with our guide to overused words in fiction; this post goes deep on one family.

What filter words are, and why they distance readers

Janice Hardy, who runs the Fiction University writing site, defines them in a 2019 revision tip as "words that put an extra layer between the POV character and the reader," naming thought, knew, realized, felt, smelled and heard. She calls them "a form of telling" that "can distance readers from the story."

The idea is older than the label. John Gardner described the problem in The Art of Fiction as "the needless filtering of the image through some observing consciousness," according to a craft blog that quotes the passage. His example, as quoted there, sets "Turning, she noticed two snakes fighting in among the rocks" against "She turned. In among the rocks, two snakes were fighting." The same post attributes a neat summary of the effect to Janet Burroway, author of the textbook Writing Fiction: filtering makes us "look at rather than through" the viewpoint character's eyes (as quoted by Leslie's Writing Exercises).

That phrase explains the whole problem. When a sentence says "she saw the smoke," the reader is watching her see. When it says "smoke rose over the ridge," the reader is seeing it with her. The viewpoint is already established, so the filter adds a step without adding information. Across a chapter, those small steps add up to a narrator who reports experiences instead of a reader who has them.

The full filter-word list

Filter words fall into families, and each family needs a slightly different fix.

The sight family has the most members: saw, looked, watched, noticed and observed. Sound is mostly heard. The body and other senses give you felt, sensed, smelled and tasted.

The thinking and knowing family works differently, because it doesn't filter a sense; it labels a mental act. Thought, wondered, decided, remembered, knew and realized all tell the reader what happened inside a character's head instead of letting it happen on the page. Chuck Palahniuk made this family the subject of a 2013 LitReactor essay on "thought" verbs, asking writers to give up thinks, knows, understands, realizes, believes, wants, remembers, imagines and desires "at least for the next half year." His instruction in place of them: "show the physical actions and details of your characters."

Then there are the hedges. Seemed filters and qualifies at once: "the room seemed cold" is both a perception and a doubt about it. Sometimes the doubt is the point. Often it is a habit.

Phrases count too. "Could see," "could hear," "could feel," "found herself," "it occurred to him" and "she was aware of" all do the same job as a single filter verb. They are harder to search for, so add them to your list by hand.

How to revise sight and sound filters

The basic move is simple: delete the perceiver and present the perceived.

• "He saw that the gate was open" becomes "The gate was open."
• "She heard footsteps on the stairs" becomes "Footsteps on the stairs."
• "I noticed the clock had stopped" becomes "The clock had stopped."

That works because the reader already knows whose eyes and ears they are using. But deleting alone often leaves a flat sentence, so the second move is to spend the words you saved on detail. Once you are no longer telling the reader she saw the street, you can show what kind of street it is.

Look and watch are slightly different from see. They describe an action the character chooses, so they can carry character: who looks at whom, and for how long, often matters. Keep them when the looking is a choice worth showing. Cut them when they are only stage directions leading to "and saw."

Touch, smell and taste

Felt is the trickiest filter because it does two jobs: physical sensation ("felt the cold") and emotion ("felt afraid"). The physical kind usually rewrites cleanly: "She felt the wind on her face" becomes "The wind cut across her face." The emotional kind is a telling problem as much as a filter problem; our show, don't tell guide covers how to put the fear into the body and the action.

Smelled and tasted tend to turn up less often and are often worth keeping, because a single well-placed smell or taste can do a lot of work. If you have one smell in a chapter, "she smelled bleach" may be fine. If you want it to land harder, give the smell its own sentence: "The hallway stank of bleach."

How to revise thinking and knowing filters

For thought, wondered and realized, the fix is to let the thought happen on the page in the character's own voice. In close third or first person, the narration can carry the character's mind directly, so the question replaces "she wondered," and the realization replaces "he realized."

• "She wondered if he was coming back" becomes "Was he coming back?"
• "He realized he had left the keys inside" becomes "The keys. Still on the kitchen counter."

For knew, decided and remembered, ask what the reader would see if the knowing, deciding or remembering were dramatized. A decision can become an action. A memory can become a short scene. Knowledge can become evidence the reader puts together.

Notice that the revised version keeps one filter. That is deliberate, and it leads to the most important part of this guide.

When filter words are the right choice

A filter-word list is a search list, not a ban list. Gardner himself hedged, writing (as quoted by Leslie's Writing Exercises) that "no laws are absolute in fiction." Keep a filter when the act of perceiving carries meaning. Five common cases:

1. Perception is the event. A character hears something no one else hears, or notices the one detail that matters. The noticing is the plot point, so name it.
2. The sense is impaired or uncertain. "She thought she saw someone on the stairs" is accurate when she isn't sure. Stripping the filter would state as fact something the character doesn't know.
3. Attention shifts deliberately. A filter can slow a moment down: "He watched the second hand cross the twelve." The watching is a choice that tells us about his state.
4. Contrast between characters. When two people perceive the same thing differently, filters keep track of whose version is whose.
5. Distant or omniscient narration. Hardy notes that a distant omniscient narrator "isn't as affected" by filter words because the whole story is already told through an outside voice. Close first person, she says, "feels very told" when filters pile up.

Filter words and deep POV

Deep point of view, where the narration sits as close to a character's mind as possible, is where filter words stand out most, and where cutting them pays off most. But deep POV also has its own exceptions: when a character is dissociating, half-asleep, injured or drugged, a sudden filter ("she heard herself say") can signal that the mind has stepped back from the body. Used once, at the right moment, that distance is the effect you want. For the wider question of how close your narration should sit, see our guide to point of view in fiction.

Filters on other characters

The rules change when the filter verb belongs to someone other than the viewpoint character. In Nadia's point of view, "Tom saw the stain on her sleeve" is a problem of a different kind: Nadia can't know what Tom saw, only what he did. The fix is to show the evidence she can observe, such as "Tom's eyes went to her sleeve, and stayed there." That sentence still uses a looking action, but it is Nadia watching Tom, which keeps the viewpoint clean.

The same applies to knew and decided used about non-viewpoint characters. "Her mother knew she was lying" in a close third-person chapter told from the daughter's side is a slip into another head. "Her mother's mouth tightened" shows the same thing from the right side of the table.

Seemed and appeared

Seemed and appeared deserve their own check because they hedge as well as filter. Ask what the character actually perceives and whether the uncertainty is real. "The house seemed abandoned" is fine if the character is about to find out it isn't. If the house is simply abandoned, say so, and give the detail that proves it: boarded windows, a drift of leaves against the door. In dialogue, characters can hedge as much as real people do; this check is for narration.

A filter-word revision pass

Work one chapter and one family at a time. Doing all filter words at once tends to produce over-corrected prose, where every sentence starts with a noun and no one ever looks at anything.

Scan your chapter

Paste a chapter below to count the filter words it uses, per 10,000 words so short scenes and long chapters compare fairly. Words that have a page in the repetition library link to it, with alternatives and a note on when to keep the word.

There is no target number. A tense thriller chapter in close first person and a slow omniscient family saga will land at very different rates, and both can be right. What the count gives you is a map: the chapters and the words to look at first.

Three mistakes to avoid

• Find-and-replace. Every filter needs its own decision. Global deletion breaks grammar and removes the filters that were doing work.
• Swapping verbs. Changing "saw" to "spotted," "glimpsed" and "caught sight of" leaves the filter in place with a new label.
• Losing the viewpoint. Once filters are gone, make sure each detail is still something this character would notice. "The street was empty" works in Nadia's point of view only if she is the one looking.

What to do with your next chapter

1. Run the scanner on one chapter and write down the three most frequent filter words.
2. For each instance, ask the one question that matters: does the act of perceiving carry meaning here?
3. Rewrite the ones that don't, spending the saved words on a specific detail.
4. Read the chapter aloud. If a passage now feels like it's narrated by no one, you cut too much; put one filter back.

Filter words aren't errors. They are a dial for narrative distance, and revision is the moment you choose where each scene sets it.