Sounds and sights without filtering words

I try to avoid saying things like "She saw her dream dress through the window, with sheer sleeves, a white lace breast, and blah blah blah" and rephrase to "Through the window stood a mannequin wearing her dream dress..."

My goal is to eliminate the "she saw" filtering clause.

I struggle with this when something off-screen or unexpected happens. Like "She warmed her hands by the camp fire, the glow of the coals warming her face. She heard a gunshot, startling her before she realized it was distant, likely a hunter in the early morning twilight."

These I have trouble rephrasing. It seems odd to just say "A gunshot echoed through the forest, startling her..."

Any thoughts?

 

I struggle with this too, and at the risk of hijacking this thread, one of the related issues I have is the use of onomatopoeia and adverbs like 'suddenly'. Both are discouraged by many writers but I don't know if they should never be used.

I think filter words are similar to the passive voice and telling: they should rarely be used but it doesn't mean they are always wrong.

For your first example I'd probably just write something like "While she passed the window, a glowing dress caught her eye. Whipping her head around in a double take, she spotted her dream dress—[include dress description here].

For the other example, this is where I'd be tempted to use an onomatopoeia in a way a lot don't like:


"She warmed her hands by the camp fire, the glow of the coals warming her face. Bang! A gunshot echoed through the forest, startling her before she realized it was distant, likely a hunter in the early morning twilight."

Maybe a better way would be:

"She warmed her hands by the camp fire, the glow of the coals warming her face. When her fingers regained feeling she started to stir the pot boiling above the fire.

A gunshot echoed through the forest. She dropped the spoon and craned her head around the campsite. After minutes of [insert description of harmless forest sounds], she returned to breakfast, convinced it was just a hunter bagging an early kill."

Anyways I don't really know how to do this well, but hope this thread will get more views and replied.

 

This is actually much better. You made the gunshot the subject rather than the object of the sentence, and that seems appropriate. Think about it like this—the verb is the action in the sentence, the subject is the thing or person doing the action, and the object is having the action done to it. So it's like the subject is in better focus, takes center stage, and it's also the active part of the sentence.

In your first sentence the action was hearing, the person doing the hearing was 'she', and the gunshot drops into low resolution, almost in the background, by being the thing she hears. Since the gunshot is the surprising new thing that broke the silence and changed the focus of the moment, it should take center stage. This isn't necessarily always true, but in general it's a good rule of thumb to follow unless there's a pressing reason to do it differently.

And if all your verbs are things like hearing, seeing, thinking, feeling, remembering, etc, and the same person is always the subject of every sentence, it begins to feel like a very internal story, where everything is happening inside her head or her body. It loses touch with the external world and with other characters, and a story should involve interaction between characters and with the external world. Otherwise it starts to become very claustrophobic. Those are also very passive verbs. If a story is all about a person seeing and feeling and hearing things, that's not a very exciting story. It should be about bangs and punches and explosions, not someone hearing those things. See how it pushes the real action into the background?

 

I just realized—the title of the thread shows how you're conceiving of this, and I think that's a big part of the problem. If you think of it as 'writing about sights and sounds', those are still things inside her head. Things she's seeing and hearing. The story is about things happening—gunshots ringing out, cars crashing, people loving each other or hating each other or whatever. Not sights and sounds. Saying it that way makes it sound like a sightseeing tour, like the reader is sitting on a bus being told to look right, look left etc. Rather than witnessing the events themselves as they unfold.

 

@Xoic where I struggle with that is I like to write in deep 3rd POV, so the events, the things happening, all are filtered through that experience. For those things right in front of the POV character’s face, it is no problem, just describe what is happening as you say.

but for something unexpected and surprising, the character is going to experience it in the opposite order. In this example, a loud sound, followed maybe by an adrenaline rush, and then a conclusion of what it was. Maybe it wasn’t a gunshot but a car backfiring, or a kid fishing with dynamite. We don’t know because our character doesn’t know.

But I feel inclined to relay the immediate experience, the startling noise, first. Because that is the order that the character experiences.

Am I explaining that well?

 

I almost wrote the exact same thing, but I wanted to stick closer to what you had written. I did kind of feel like just writing "A gunshot echoed through the forest startling her" is too much telling, because as you said, she would hear a bang and wonder what it was. But you can write it that way and still place the sounds or sights etc as the subject of the sentences. Something like this:

'A loud bang echoed through the forest, startling her. Damn, that was close! Gunshot? Firecracker? Stack of lumber dropped off the back of a truck? No way to tell.'

This way you bring the reader right through the experience with her, as her in a way, and give her immediate thoughts. But don't say 'she thought', that's another filtering phrase. Since it's close/deep POV, you can treat it almost just like 1st person and make it all much more immediate.

Interestingly (or not?) immediate means 'without mediation', mediation in this case meaning a go-between. So without filtering phrases in other words.

 

In fact, reading back over that I'd remove the 'startling her'. It's a bit of telling sitting right between the noise and her immediate reaction. Instead, just show the noise and show her reaction, with no filters and no telling in between. Her thoughts, that I reported directly, show that she was startled. The Damn! is the equivalent of a jump or an adrenaline rush. Or you could show it with a physical reaction, like 'she jumped and looked around.' But that seems like we're seeing it from outside of her, so I'd go with her inner thoughts rendered immediately. Let the reader experience what's she's experiencing, let them be her for that moment. If they were there in the forest and heard that bang, it's what would rush through their head immediately. Put them right in her place. That's what showing is about.

Telling is fine at certain points, where you want to explain something that isn't too important and want to get it done quickly, or for a few other reasons. But for moments like this you want to be in full show mode.

 

the reason I don’t like this, other than one you pointed out it could have more show and less tell, is I feel some distance between the bang and the reaction. Does that sound silly? I mean, in reality the bang and the reaction are almost simultaneous, but for some reason this version feels like there is some delay. I don’t know why, that’s why I always want to say something like “she heard a loud bang” (but I hate that too).

Maybe I’m overthinking this!

 

“An ear splitting crack jolted her, causing her to spill her morning tea. Her heart skipped a beat, but she told herself it was just a hunter bagging an early kill”

???

 

It's because there's not only a bang, but then there are echoes, and her reaction is after they're mentioned. With that being written in there, the reader imagines at least a single echo, maybe several, and her reaction afterwards.

Sometimes you have to really dissect the sentences to figure out what they're doing.

 

This is a little overkill. I mean, by all means, try anything and everything. Experiment, that's how you figure this stuff out. I wanted earlier to say 'A loud bang rang out', in order to do away with the echo problem, but of course then you get a weird rhyme that draws too much attention. So maybe 'A loud crack rang out.' It's usually best to cut sentences to the bone for those shocking moments. any excess words at all, including clauses or phrases, stretches the moment out and makes it seem like there's plenty of time for the telling. Short punchy sentences give the feeling of urgency.

It's a bit excessive for her to jump or spill her tea, unless the noise is really loud and really close, or or if she's super nervous or anxiety-prone.

 

But what about the basic construct: sudden-thing transitive-verb POV-character. POV-character is the object of the verb.

 

“An ear splitting crack startled her” being a much more toned down version.

 

If it were easy, everyone would be an accomplished writer.

In your example above, I'd change the second sentence into some internal monologue as @Xoic suggested to show the character's thoughts and feelings in the moment, or reflect those thoughts through quasi-internal monologue like:

An ear splitting crack jolted her. Poachers! Crouching behind the windbreak, her heart beat faster as she prayed they'd avoid her trail. Hearing poachers in action was one thing, but seeing them face to face would be deadly. They never left any witnesses.

 

Sure, ultimately it's your decision. I was just offering some suggestions.

 

of course, but I’m asking your opinion

 

@Xoic I’m not trying to be difficult. I’m just throwing things at the wall to see what sticks.

I’m also 7 days into a very low calorie diet and moderate exercise routine, so my head is a little off.

 

I'm going to drift a bit off the topic, to mention that I live 2 miles (as the crow flies) from an outdoor shooting range. Especially on Saturdays and Sundays when they're busy, I can hear the gunshots -- but they're clearly very distant, not sharp cracks. Sound attenuates very rapidly as distance increases, which means that any gunshot loud and sharp enough to cause a startle effect is near enough to be a concern -- not just a distant hunter taking his first shot of the day.

Going back to the opening post and the dress in the window:

I think you're on the right track if you want to avoid the filtering phrases. You might also write something such as, "A dress with sheer sleeves and a white lace bodice grabbed her attention as she walked past the shop window; it was the dress she had dreamed of, right there in front of her!"

 

When something unexpected or sudden happens, I like to jump straight to the relevant verb. Action. It might be, "He flinched at the sound of distant gunfire." Or it might be, "A distant gunshot. He flinched," to front load the unexpected thing. Something like that.