To filter or not to filter?

 Have you heard of something called “filtering?”

I discovered a description of it this morning and laughed quietly to myself, for I have been trying to break the habit in my own writing for about a year now.

John Gardner describes “filtering” this way:

... the needless filtering of the image through some observing consciousness. The amateur writes: "Turning, she noticed two snakes fighting in among the rocks." Compare: "She turned. In among the rocks, two snakes were fighting ..." Generally speaking - though no laws are absolute in fiction - vividness urges that almost every occurrence of such phrases as "she noticed" and "she saw" be suppressed in favor of direct presentation of the thing see.

Janet Burroway explains: As a fiction-writer you will often be working through "some observing consciousness." Yet, when you step back and ask the readers to observe the observer - to look at rather than through the character - you start to tell-not-show, and rip us briefly out of the scene.

These days we are advised to Show, not Tell. So how we clear out the filters becomes important.  Having finally noticed this in re-editing my own books I am, to paraphrase Emma Darwin, at the point where “conscious craft has become intuitive craft.” 

The more straightforward, physical filter-words like "saw", "noticed", "looked round" "watched" "observed" are the first ones to look for, and then you can chase down phrases like "I remembered that", "she wondered if", "they decided that", "we considered whether" "he thought about", "He thought back to when", "to her it seemed as if" and if you think of more, follow them, too. You may be able to take out a great many of them and thus improve your writing. I know it improves mine!