I had never heard of “Filter Words” before reading this article by a writer who had never heard of filter words. Filtering filter words strengthens writing:
Are These Filter Words Weakening Your Fiction?:
What Do Filter Words Look Like?
Let’s imagine a character in your novel is walking down a street during peak hour.
You might, for example, write:Sarah felt a sinking feeling as she realized she’d forgotten her purse back at the cafe across the street. She saw cars filing past, their bumpers end-to-end. She heard the impatient honk of horns and wondered how she could quickly cross the busy road before someone took off with her bag. But the traffic seemed impenetrable, and she decided to run to the intersection at the end of the block.
Eliminating the bolded words removes the filters that distances us, the readers, from this character’s experience:
Sarah’s stomach sank. Her purse—she’d forgotten it back at the cafe across the street. Cars filed past, their bumpers end-to-end. Horns honked impatiently. Could she make it across the road before someone took off with her bag? She ran past the impenetrable stream of traffic, toward the intersection at the end of the block.
(Via Iain Broome)