Decapitating Verbs

By Niki Fixtion

Filters are great for water, cars, and air conditioners. Creative writing? Not so much. Let’s talk about those pesky neck-up verbs that can create emotional distance between the narrative and your reader.

It’s homework time. Again. Check your manuscripts for occurrences of the following words:

·         See/saw

·         Feel/felt

·         Hear/heard

·         Seem/seemed

While the list goes on, these four are the most common culprits of creating a filter that can prevent your reader from being fully immersed in your story. It brings us back to that saying I’m sure we have all heard as writers. Over and over again. Show, don’t tell.

Let’s look at the difference between a sentence written with a filter verb and without:

Kennedy felt the rough sand beneath her back.

The sand chaffed Kennedy’s back like sandpaper.

Both sentences essentially have the same meaning, but the second one puts your reader directly in Kennedy’s head to experience what she’s experiencing. The first sentence gets the point across, but your reader will experience it as if watching from the outside.

Kennedy saw the sun dip behind the mountains, painting the sky orange and pink.

The sun dipped behind the mountains, painting the sky in shades of pink and orange.

Again, both sentences say the same thing, but we already know Kennedy is the main character. We know we’re watching the story unfold through her eyes, so by default, when we say the sun is setting, we already know it’s Kennedy who is seeing the sunset. We can skip telling the reader who is seeing it and instead show the reader what they’re seeing.

The most common of all these filter words, in my experience as an editor, is the word seemed. I see it mostly when a writer is trying to convey a deeply impactful emotion. In a romance novel, you may write or read something like this:

Our eyes met, and the world seemed to stand still.

Using the word “seemed” feels like the right thing to do since the world doesn’t actually stand still when you meet the love of your life. Or does it? It’s all about perception. To the people on the outside, no, the world keeps going as usual. But to those two people, the world does, in fact, stop. So by using the word “seemed” we’re placing our reader on the outside of that interaction. They’re watching the scene unfold as a third party.

Our eyes met, and the world stood still.

Without that filter, the world now stops for your reader as well. You’re allowing them to fully immerse in the moment and experience that quick inhale when their breath catches at the mere sight of the person they're meant to spend the rest of their life with.

By removing these filter words from your writing, you’re weaving a story your readers can actually feel for themselves. You’re not decapitating your readers and keeping the story above their necks, so to speak.

Now, go forth, and write that amazing story I know you have in you! Then come back here and tell me all about it!