“This is not the amulet, Rose,” Montoya hoists up a necklace with chunky turquoise beads and a centerpiece of a carved flat stone. “This is the amulet of protection,” he purses his lips, “if the name were to be directly translated…”
Rose sniffs, crossing his sweaty arms. Around them, water drips from stalactites, and the hole they dropped down from allows some fresh air to permeate the muggy space.
“Toya, why would they make it this damn difficult to get to if it weren’t the amulet?”
“For the same reason you make it so… difficult to get a straight answer out of you.”
“Touché.”
“No, see, this can’t be the amulet…” Montoya holds it up to his face, and it gently sways back and forth. “It doesn’t add up—the records I looked into said it should be in a specialized area, like a throne room and this… is not…” He looks to Rose, who raises a barely visible eyebrow in response. “Besides, it’s not the right shape, or size, or… anything. And it was in the dirt! The dirt!”
“I was in the dirt and I’m still a prize.”
“That is what academics call, debatable. Now stop distracting me… there has to be a way to test it.”
“Put it on.”
Montoya looks at Rose like he just insinuated that Montoya’s mother works at a brothel.
“Dear God, no!”
“Why not? What is the worst it can do?”
“Do you want the list in numerical or alphabetical order?”
“It won’t kill you.”
“If you put it on, it certainly wouldn’t be me that’s dead.”
“It’s not my dirty necklace. Besides, if it were to curse anyone, it would be the man who touched it first and…” Rose whistles while pointing at his partner. “Go on, prove your absolute certainty it isn’t the amulet.”
“Why don’t you go and—” Montoya bites down on the last part of his sentence. With a flutter of a hand, Rose illustrates his point, then shifts on his feet.
“No good archeologist would run around and place something around his neck; it would disrespect the culture the artifact originates from…” He chuckles and thrusts the amulet to Rose. “Good thing you’re a treasure hunter and never cared about such blights.”
“That was one time.”
“And what’s one more?”
Looking as if he’s sucking on a lemon, Rose plucks the amulet from Montoya’s fingers, holds the necklace above his head, and makes noises that could possibly be classified as singing. Immediately after draping the necklace on, Rose collapses to the ground in a heap of sand. He lifts a pale hand as his eyes go wide.
“Goodbye, Toya,” he wheezes.
Montoya puckers his lips and raises a single eyebrow.
“I’ve always loved yo—your eyebags.”
“That’s the only thing you love about me? Rude. Inconsiderate. Have you ever considered my flabby arms?”
“Those, too, I guess.”
Montoya crouches down, knees popping. “What about my sarcasm in French?” He tries to pull down Rose’s lifted arm to take his hand, but Rose twists out of his grip, and barrel rolls into him. Losing balance, Montoya topples to the ground. Rose keeps on rolling until he’s atop Montoya.
“I’m dying!” He yells.
“Well you’re crushing me to death!” Which by Montoya’s standards, is not the biggest exaggeration he’s made, seeing as the majority of Rose’s weight is on his torso.
“I have to take you out somehow.”
“Get,” Montoya presses his palm into Rose’s forehead, “off,” he shoves, “me,” he keeps pushing, but Rose just moves his head to the side. “Argh!” He pulls his hands away and Rose rests his cheek on Montoya’s chest.
“It’s nice to die in your flabby arms.”
At that, Montoya goes to slap the top of his head, but his hand bounces away without even touching Rose. That answers that question.
“The amulet works, you oaf. Now get off.”
“Fine. But I had you convinced there for a second—don’t deny it, I saw the love in your eyes.” Rose rolls away and lays flat on his back, limbs spread out, grinning. Montoya’s expression mirrors his.
Then it falls.
“So, uh, how do we get out of here?” Montoya asks. They both stare at the hole in the ceiling, then at the closed-off, empty chamber surrounding them.
Originally posted to Instagram on July 11, 2021. Edits for clarity and grammar have been made.
What is filtering?
Filtering is when you add unnecessary words to your document explicitly telling the reader what the character sees, hears, feels, and thinks. It’s the most obvious in first person POV, but it occurs in third person POV as well.
There are specific words that indicate filtering such as: noticed, saw, heard, felt, knew, wondered, believed, decided, hoped, smelled, watched, (and many, many more).
Examples of Filtering:
I see the birds flit from one branch to the other. I feel the humid, summer air wrap around me and I think about all the summers that came before this one. I hope that Grandma will be proud of what I’m doing… who I’ve become, but I don’t think she would be.
An example of filtering in the first person
He wondered about all the sorcerers that came before him—what they wanted him to be. He felt his stomach sink and the stave slip from his fingers. He heard it clatter to the ground, saw the oak wood split, and he tried to hold back a gasp and hot tears. He knew there was no going back.
An example of filtering in the third person
Here are the examples with the filtering bolded:
I see the birds flit from one branch to the other. I feel the humid, hot air wrap around me and I think about all the summers that came before this one. I hope that Grandma will be proud of what I’m doing… who I’ve become, but I don’t think she would be.
He wondered about all the sorcerers that came before him — what they wanted him to be. He felt his stomach sink and the stave slip from his fingers. He heard it clatter to the ground, saw the oak wood split, and he tried to hold back a gasp and hot tears. He knew there was no going back.
It’s super repetitive to read, right? It’s shocking how many times it crops up in those two short examples alone. Getting into other “good writing constructs”, you don’t want too many sentences starting the same way because it bores the reader (there’s more to it than that).
Now, let’s compare it without the filtering.
Birds flit from one branch to the other. Humid, hot air wraps itself around me. This is just like all the summers before: same warm yet chilled with loneliness days that never end. Hopefully Grandma will be proud of what I’m doing… who I’ve become, but she isn’t.
He wondered about all the sorcerers that came before him — what they wanted him to be. His stomach sank and the stave slipped from his fingers. It clattered to the ground, the oak wood split, andburning tears pressed against the back of his eyes. There was no going back.
I kept some filtering in the second example. Why? Because the third person is removed from the subject inherently. Generally, when it comes to thoughts/thought processes of the POV character, you can filter or place the direct thought in italics. Don’t filter actions or sensory details (there isn’t a need for it!). However, to push myself I’m going to eliminate all the filtering from the second example.
The disappointment of his predecessor sorcerers slammed down onto his shoulders and ripped the air from his lungs. What were they thinking? What were they going to do? His stomach sank and the stave slipped from his fingers. It clattered to the ground, the oak wood split, andburning tears pressed against the back of his eyes. There was no going back.
And still, the writing improves — there’s more details and a stronger sense of immediacy. Despite this being third person, we’re in his head. We feel what he feels. This dips into deep POV, which I adore.
Should filtering be used?
Like anything else in writing, it has its uses, but for the most part, ditch it. Filtering, at worst, alienates your audience and reminds them “hey, you’re not here”, and at best, it’s a drag and an eyesore. Sure, it’s grammatically correct, but it limits you as a writer. Most of the time you can cut it out and the sentence will be stronger for it.
First person POV has little to no excuses for filtering. The sentence doesn’t work without the filtering? Reevaluate the sentence. The vast majority of the time, you can cut out filtering and come up with more impactful, creative ways to convey what you need to. Removing the filtering in the first example shows me a lot of weaknesses within it, which I won’t edit for the sake of comparison. But in seeing those mistakes, I can work to make the deeper edits that need to be made in order to improve it.
Conclusion
Surface-level filtering is easy to spot and eliminate and it instantly cleans up your prose. However, there is more to filtering that’s deeper and more difficult to explain (which I’m in the process of learning about).
Want more examples and to do further research of your own? Check out Alexa Donne’s YouTube video titled “Filter Words and How to Fix This ‘Telling’ Problem”.
To be frank, I am heavily biased against filtering because it is one of my writing and reading pet peeves. Filtering annoys me because it’s such an easy fix but it clogs up a manuscript like nothing else. Once you see it, you can’t not see it.
Thank you for reading, and hopefully, you found this helpful.
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We’ve all been victim to picking up a book we really wanted to read and when we get knee deep into the story, there’s this dark wave of realization that the book is awful. Some of us love rant reviews. Others get really bothered by bad books and don’t want to talk about them. Some power through them and I never do.
We all know what a bad book is, as in, when we hear someone say “this wasn’t a good book”, we know precisely what they’re talking about. I want to dive deeper into elements that make up a “bad book” or “poor writing”, then I want to explore why we’re so bothered by it.
This is one of the easiest problems to identify and one of the most irritating. It grinds gears because it takes the reader out of what’s being said. For example, a phrase that is poorly worded, there’s a run-on sentence the size of Moby Dick, words are misspelled, or any number of atrocities committed against commas remove readers from the work.
Most aren’t looking for excellent prose; it’s just that readers don’t want to be tripping over words in their own head. If you can’t properly word a sentence, then people aren’t going to take you seriously. Janky grammar and or prose is by far the most common mistakes made. Most fluent English speakers have taken an English class or have peeked into the wild world of grammar, so they recognize a mistake when they see one. Compare that to things like pacing or intreite prose rules, where most won’t be able to point a finger at why the sentence doesn’t flow (they’ll still notice that the sentence doesn’t read right).
You don’t need to be an expert in grammar, but you do need to be familiar with it. People aren’t stupid and they will notice. Maintain a grammar standard.
Note that I’m not referring to folks who are just starting to learn English/don’t have a fantastic grasp on the language. They obviously get a pass. This is more so directed at people who are native speakers or are extremely fluent.
This is the more artistic side of our previous prose problem. Voice is the extra little umph to a sentence; it’s what adds character and distinguishes one writer’s work from another. For example, word choice or general sentence structures. Voice isn’t the be all end all of everything, and if you don’t have a distinct voice just yet, don’t worry — soon you can also go through the anguish of finding your writing style.
It’s easiest to illustrate voice through examples. I’m going to be using a situation from Johnathan Stroud’s The Whispering Skull.
“Quill Kipps is annoying to the point where it reaches his looks, and it’s not like he has the skill to back up his smack talk. I would love to punch him then walk away.”
Me, in a tired daze
It’s not awful per se, and having a brief description like that can be useful shorthand — like reminding a reader of someone. However, this is the first time in the book that I’m using that the character Kipps is being described. It’s… fine. About as spicy as a cardboard box but passable.
Let’s now compare that to how it’s originally written:
“Being undiplomatic (but more precise), I’d say he’s a pint-sized, pug-nosed, carrot-topped inadequate with a chip the size of Big Ben on his weedy shoulder. A sneer on legs. A malevolent buffoon. He’s too old to be any good with ghosts, but that doesn’t stop him from wearing the blingiest rapier you’ll ever see, weighed down to the pommel with cheap jewels.”
The Whispering Skull, page 18
Found on Pinterest
This passage conveys so much sass, so much, well, voice. It’s oozing with it. My sentence is, again, passible, but you’re given only the barest, most brittle of bones. With the passage written by Stroud, you get a marvelous idea of: what the narrator thinks of Kipps, where they are approximately, how Kipps looks, and wee bit of world building. This is essential to making a story stick with your reader; giving them something to hold on to on a molecular level.
Before this excerpt, there was a physical description of Kipps, but that paired with the voicy description of him brings up the saturation of the piece. Lucy — the narrator — is filling these pages to the brim with her personality, and everything is through Lucy-tinted lenses. The book would be extremely different if it were told through the eyes of another character. A little bit of Stroud shines through in his writing (naturally), but this is all Lucy.
Voice can be polarizing. The enjoyment of prose isn’t entirely dependent on how it was created, rather, the reader. The example I presented to you is right up my dry-humored alley, but you may have thought that Lucy was being too harsh, or think that my mish-mash of words is entirely unpleasant to the eye (in which case I don’t disagree).
When it teeters into “objectively” bad territory is when the voice overwhelms what’s trying to be said, or, it’s blandness seems to suck up color like a sponge. You don’t need to be weighing down your writing with cheap jewels. Think purple prose (where the prose is so outlandish and insubstantial it overwhelms the reader). You want to use voice to accentuate the characters, or bring the world to life. Author and YouTuber Alexa Donne made an excellent video entitled, “Writing With Voice — Does it Truly Matter?” where she goes into detail about how important it is to be a voicey writer in today’s writing climate.
There is also something called passive voice. Passive voice is when the subject of the sentence is standing by while the object of the sentence performs the work. This pertains more to my previous grammar section, but it fits snugly here.
“The chocolate cake was made by Sam.”
That’s an example of passive voice. The subject is Sam and the object is the chocolate cake.
You may hear advice that tells you to avoid passive voice. That’s because passive voice has a nasty tendency to be muddled and drags the sentence. It can be utilized tactfully when you want to make the sentence muggy (or other cases), otherwise, just use active voice.
Active voice is when the subject is acting upon the object.
“Sam was making the chocolate cake.”
Here’s an article you can read that goes into more detail about active and passive voice.
This a massive one for me — if I don’t enjoy reading about your characters, I won’t enjoy the story. Some readers love purposefully unlikeable characters (like Mr. Darcy), but all that backfires when it’s made apparent that this character was created to be likeable. This is evident in the way that other characters and story treats the protagonist: everything is too easy, they’re too well liked, or they act like an ass but no one does anything about it (but they can).
Let me introduce Mary Sue/Gary Sue. Mary Sues/Gary Sues are often overpowered, the world and other characters always bend to their will, and more often than not they’re beyond perfect. They lack a substantial personality, and most importantly, they hardly ever learn impactful lessons. These characters are plain annoying because they aren’t challenged in meaningful ways. Sure, a baddie may do a Bad Thing to them, but they always bounce back up like springs — never bothered and always winning.
Readers can’t empathize with these sorts of characters because they’re virtually flawless.
Crappy characters also appear when they aren’t fully developed. They can be unbalanced (ex: the hero without flaws, or the villian with no humanity at all), lack motivation, autonomy, or personality. No one wants to read about a potato sack being dragged around by the plot.
You can have a good set-up to a character, have them all lined up for a nice arc or what have you, but they never get fired off. Or, if they do, they’re a dud and land in the mud with a little splat. The main character(s) have to be dynamic, going from good to bad or vice versa is up to the writer, but they need to change in some way over the course of the story. If they don’t the reader is going to wonder what the point even was. Side characters need to be people in the sense they have their own lives, but they don’t need arcs all of the time. Pick and choose your battles because you don’t want to overwhelm your reader with too many moving parts.
They don’t always need to be good people or be the most well rounded, but they all need to have a point. Readers recognize pointless persons and they’re going to get bored.
There could be a lack of connectivity between the reader and character. Not every character you create needs to be adored by readers, nor does everyone need to have this deep connection with the fake people. But, there needs to be something there. That exact “something” isn’t for me to define. We all have read about characters that we just don’t give a shit about, find borning, etc.
If no one cares about the characters, they’re not going to care about the story. Simple as that. Character creation is complicated and I highly advise you to do further research. Here is a free MasterClass article entitled, “How to Develop Fictional Characters: 8 Tips for Character Development” to get you started.
Everything is moving at a gallop in the book, then everything stops for some info-dumping or a really windy dialogue scene. Or, we’re running at a breakneck speed and there’s no room to breathe. Pacing is one of the trickiest things to nail down with writing.
There’s two types of pacing, both of which play into each other. First, is line level pacing. This is when you have a super short, choppy sentence, or a sentence is long and windy such as this one. Massive blocks of text are an eyesore for me. No indentation? No em dashes or fun formatting? Come on.
The other type of pacing is the overarching one. This pertains to how bigger parts of the whole interact with one another. The length of a chapter, scene, and act/part. It’s the difference between the sprint that’s a battle scene, and the Sunday stroll that can be investigating clues for a mystery.
Here’s where it becomes a problem: When it takes too long to get to the point. Where we’re going scene after scene of just talking when this was supposed to be an action book. When it takes forever for obvious information to be revealed to the characters. When it feels like we’re just wandering around aimlessly looking for the plot. The reader could also be suffocated by how fast things are moving, and they can’t grow attached to the characters, or get invested in the story because everything is moving so fast.
Pacing is a delicate balancing act and one I’m not terribly familiar with. If you’re newer to the writing scene, don’t worry about this as much. But definitely do care. Take note of pacing in books you read, see when and why you’re growing bored, and all manner of different things. As always, do some further research.
One of my least favorite “harmless” tropes is the “very quirky and not like the others” kinds of characters. Ooh, they just annoy me to no end. You just really like comic books. Congrats. Don’t care.
A trope is something that is commonly used in genres (like a magic boarding school) and doesn’t necessarily have a negative connotation. A cliché is a trope that is overused and something most people are sick of seeing when not subverted (like some random kid stumbling into powers and becoming super powerful and is now adjacent to a god).
Anyhow, we all have those tropes that we could go on for ages about. Whenever they make a sudden appearance we roll our eyes or want to toss the book across the room. There is a time and place for all sorts of tropes and clichés, and just because one is being used that doesn’t mean it’s inherently cheap. I’m going to list some of the more vile ones out (in no particular order):
Pointless Racism, sexism (both ways), homophobia, transphobia, and ableism
Glorified abuser
Toxic Love triangle
The one useless best friend who’s only there to serve the protagonist
Sugarcoated relationship abuse
No one gets to be happy because this is dark and broody and super serious
Forced romance
Girl on girl hate for no better reason than to get the attention of a boy
A friendship must always turn into a romantic relationship
Men always have to fight each other and have sex because reasons
The female lead is a glorified sex object
Slut shaming
Fat shaming
The villainization of minority coded characters (LGBTQ+, people with mental or physical disabilities, people of color, and a whole host of others)
Stereotypes of minorities — especially racial
The savior complex
A character being outed for the sole sake of plot/the other person wants to be in a relationship
The glorification/downplay of sexual assault
I’m sure there’s so many that I’m forgetting. Now, these can be used if they’re utilized tactfully. They’re horrendous if it’s transparent that this is reflective of the author’s viewpoint, or there’s nothing counteracting these tropes, the characters don’t learn from these toxic viewpoints/actions, etc.
Here are some more commonly disliked tropes/clichés — though, these are far more subjective:
Chosen ones
“It was all a dream”
Here comes the calvary!
No communication whatsoever
The wise old person that always gets killed off (always)
Dead parents
Everybody has this terrible tragic past yet they don’t have any form of trauma
NO ONE GOES TO THERAPY NO ONE HAS TRUMA?? HOW? Y’ALL AREN’T OKAY
Bro I just met you but I’m so totally in love. Mm yes, true love.
Long, long descriptions of the characters examining themselves in the mirror
And you’re overpowered, and you’re over powered, and you’re overpowered, and…
This is how the human body works, oh yes, absolutely.
‘Yer a wizard Har—
Responses to my question of “What annoys you in books?” from my followers and friends on Instagram.
Obviously I’m a top psychologist in every field imaginable and know everything that has to do with humans. I’m just overqualified to speak on the human condition and why we do what we do.
Here’s what I think: when we notice faults in the prose, or we grow bored by the pacing, or any number of things I mentioned previously, we get taken out of the story. We’re reminded that this is all fiction and it ruins the flow.
We want to effortlessly be sucked into a new world filled with impossible scenarios and loveable characters, and when faulty writing interrupts, we lose that connection. This is especially true if it applies to published works that readers have paid for. With most online content, we’re more forgiving because we’re getting this for free and obviously it’s a work of passion.
Besides, mistakes can simply be annoying, and we don’t want to be annoyed while doing something pleasurable.
Being (presumably) human, we make mistakes; it’s inevitable. People aren’t expecting flawless work, but we do expect polished work — especially if we had to pay for it. I know I have made just about all of these mistakes in my own fictional work, but that’s okay.
If you think your writing is “bad”, that’s fine, but don’t let that stop you from trying to write and thus improving. If you think that your work is void of any mistakes whatsoever, then, well, I don’t know what to tell ya other than it isn’t as perfect as you think.
Naturally, all of these things have the possibility of being subjective, and what looks like a major flaw to me may not be a big deal to you. Taste exists.
Thank you for reading and I hope you get to have a buttery croissant later.
Please consider following this blog!
~ Jay
Oh dear, some of this advice is terrible! Nice blog btw 😀
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Oh dear, some of this advice is terrible! Nice blog btw 😀