There are some dangers inherent in working to “see” your scene with its movements and sensory input.

One of them we’ve already covered in a previous lesson, that of giving too much detail that will distract the reader.

Another is the temptation to rely on filtering.

A third is over-reliance on descriptive dialogue tags and adverbs.

What is filtering?

Here’s a definition, courtesy of Claude:

Filtering is a writing technique where an author interposes a character’s perception between the reader and the events of the story, often using words like “saw,” “heard,” “felt,” “thought,” or “wondered.” This can create a barrier to immediacy and direct experience in the narrative.

The operative word here is “can.” Like all writing “rules,” you must exercise judgment when applying them. There are times when filtering is necessary and appropriate. But nine times out of ten, you can just eliminate the filter phrase and your text will be more immediate.

Here are some examples of sentences that use filtering. As an exercise, rewrite any you feel need it to eliminate the filter words:

• Gabriel heard a loud noise that stopped him in his tracks.
• The maid realized she’d forgotten to turn off the iron and felt a stab of fear in her heart.
• She perceived a foul odor when she entered the room.
• While waiting on the train platform, Adam watched a mother and daughter arguing on the other side of the tracks.
• She could feel the sweat trickling down her back as the day grew hotter.
• She noticed that the crowd grew more and more restless as she listened to the politicians speaking.
• He felt sharp pain shoot up his arm when the robber twisted it behind his back.
• The cop stopped the car in front of me and I heard her ask for the driver’s ID.

Doubtless many of you already know about filtering, but even advanced writers (like me) sometimes let it creep in. It’s always a good idea to read your work with that lens, to be aware of those unnecessary distancing elements.

Descriptive Dialogue Tags

Much of the work in this course is designed to help you convey the emotional content of your scenes, to enable your reader to enter fully into them as if they were there, feeling what the characters feel, moving through the scene with the characters.

We haven’t yet spoken about dialogue. Scenes often contain dialogue, of course, and what people say to each other outside of the merest commonplaces (which generally have no place in fiction) carries an undercurrent of emotion that is essential to a scene. Getting the manner in which characters express themselves across in a scene can sometimes tempt a writer to use descriptive dialogue tags, like these:

1. Whispered
2. Shouted
3. Mumbled
4. Grumbled
5. Hissed
6. Snarled
7. Chuckled
8. Growled
9. Stammered
10. Chirped
11. Sighed
12. Snapped
13. Mused
14. Bellowed
15. Croaked
16. Purred
17. Drawled
18. Quipped
19. Muttered
20. Gasped
21. Gushed
22. Blubbered
23. Squealed
24. Barked
25. Deadpanned

There are certainly occasions when you would want to use a descriptive dialogue tag for emphasis. But they are like very strong spices and can quickly overwhelm the flavor of your prose.

Here’s an example of the overuse of dialogue tags, once more courtesy of Claude.ai. It had me cackling:

Emma gazed across the candlelit table at James, her eyes sparkling. “You know,” she purred, “I’m glad you chose this restaurant.”

“Oh?” James murmured, leaning in closer. “And why’s that?”

“The ambiance,” Emma whispered, her fingertips brushing his hand. “It’s… romantic.”

James chuckled softly, catching her fingers in his. “I had hoped you’d think so,” he breathed.

“Always the charmer,” Emma teased, arching an eyebrow.

“Only for you,” James quipped, bringing her hand to his lips.

Emma’s breath hitched as he kissed her knuckles. “James,” she sighed, her cheeks flushing.

“Yes, darling?” he drawled, his eyes never leaving hers.

“You’re making it very hard to concentrate on dinner,” Emma mumbled, biting her lip.

James grinned, releasing her hand. “My sincerest apologies,” he said, not sounding sorry at all.

“Liar,” Emma giggled, playfully swatting his arm.

“Guilty as charged,” James admitted, winking at her.

Emma hummed contentedly, sipping her wine. “What am I going to do with you?” she mused.

“I have a few ideas,” James murmured suggestively.

“James!” Emma gasped, her eyes widening in mock scandal.

He laughed warmly, raising his glass in a toast. “To us,” he said softly.

“To us,” Emma echoed, her voice tender as their glasses clinked together.

A challenge: Rewrite that cringeworthy scene without the descriptive dialogue tags and adverbs—which is something else to be sparingly employed.

So how do you indicate how characters are speaking?

This is not something that’s easy to do in an elegant, non-distracting way. Certain of those descriptive tags are sometimes essential, specifically those to do with volume. (Whispered, murmured, shouted, etc.) So what can you do if you want to say, for instance, that your main character spoke angrily?

body language and interiority

By contrast to that ridiculous scene above, here is one from Bonnie Garmus’s Lessons in Chemistry. Note that she most definitely uses descriptive dialogue tags here, but they are sparing and well chosen compared to Claude’s version of a scene:

“Mr. Pine,” Elizabeth said, sweeping into the local television studio and past a secretary on a Wednesday afternoon, “I’ve been calling you for three days, and not once have you managed the courtesy of a return call. My name is Elizabeth Zott. I am Madeline Zott’s mother—our children attend Woody Elementary together—and I’m here to tell you that your daughter is offering my daughter friendship under false pretenses.” And because he looked confused, she added, “Your daughter is eating my daughter’s lunch.”

“L-lunch?” Walter Pine managed, as he took in the woman who stood resplendent before him, her white lab coat casting an aura of holy light save for one detail: the initials “E.Z.” emblazoned in red just above the pocket.

“Your daughter, Amanda,” Elizabeth charged again, “eats my daughter’s lunch. Apparently, it’s been going on for months.”

Walter could only stare. Tall and angular, with hair the color of burnt buttered toast pulled back and secured with a pencil, she stood, hands on hips, her lips unapologetically red, her skin luminous, her nose straight. She looked down at him like a battlefield medic assessing whether or not he was worth saving.

“And the fact that she pretends to be Madeline’s friend to get her lunch,” she continued, “is absolutely reprehensible.”

“Wh-who are you again?” stammered Walter.

“Elizabeth Zott!” she barked back. “Madeline Zott’s mother!”

Garmus, Bonnie. Lessons in Chemistry: A Novel (pp. 4-5). Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.

The emotions felt by each character are crystal clear, through body language (see bolding) as well as dialogue.

But there’s something interesting about the way Garmus uses the descriptive tags. The novel is set in the ’60s. The writing above has a bit of a retro feeling. In addition, the tone of the entire book is one of quiet irony. I can’t help feeling that she uses the dialogue tags in a deliberately ironic fashion.

Contrast the Garmus example to the one below, which occurs very near the beginning of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo, by Taylor Jenkins Reid.

“Take a seat,” Frankie says as she sits down and gestures toward an orange chair on the opposite side of her Lucite desk.

I calmly sit and cross my legs. I let Frankie talk first.

“So, puzzling turn of events,” she says, looking at her computer. “Evelyn Hugo’s people are inquiring about a feature. An exclusive interview.”

My gut instinct is to say Holy shit but also Why are you telling me this? “About what in particular?” I ask.

“My guess is it’s related to the gown auction she’s doing,” Frankie says. “My understanding is that it’s very important to her to raise as much money for the American Breast Cancer Foundation as possible.”

“But they won’t confirm that?”

Frankie shakes her head. “All they will confirm is that Evelyn has something to say.”

Evelyn Hugo is one of the biggest movie stars of all time. She doesn’t even have to have something to say for people to listen.

“This could be a big cover for us, right? I mean, she’s a living legend. Wasn’t she married eight times or something?”

“Seven,” Frankie says. “And yes. This has huge potential. Which is why I hope you’ll bear with me through the next part of this.”

“What do you mean?”

Frankie takes a big breath and gets a look on her face that makes me think I’m about to get fired. But then she says, “Evelyn specifically requested you.”

Reid, Taylor Jenkins. The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo: A Novel (pp. 3-4). Washington Square Press. Kindle Edition.

The only dialogue tags she uses are says and ask. So where exactly does the atmosphere of this scene come from?

Because this is a first-person narrative, the narrator’s thoughts feel organic to the scene. We are in her head, literally. And we are very clear about her expectations as to where the scene is leading, so the reveal at the end works.

The depiction of movement is extremely sparing, but we nonetheless get a picture because of the well-chosen details: orange chair opposite a lucite desk. Frankie looks at her computer—an avoidance tactic, it appears.

Beside the point for this course, but see how seamlessly the backstory is woven in: Evelyn Hugo is one of the biggest movie stars of all time. She doesn’t even have to have something to say for people to listen.

Finally, we get very clear, unmistakable on-the-page thoughts: “My gut instinct is to say Holy shit but also Why are you telling me this?” Notice that instead of saying “I thought,” Jenkins Reid gives the actual thoughts more punch, makes them more dynamic, by taking us deeper inside the protagonist from mere thoughts to instincts.

Exercise

Taking the best version of your test scene so far, write a version that uses filtering and one that doesn’t.

Then if your scene doesn’t already include dialogue add it, and write two versions of this as well, one using descriptive dialogue tags (this is like aversion training, LOL!) and one that relies on body language and interiority to get the characters’ emotions across.