Are your readers struggling to connect with your main character? Filtering language might be the cause. Thankfully, the solution is simple. Keep reading to learn how to make your protagonist more relatable by eliminating nine common words from your draft.
How to Make Your Protagonist More Relatable
If your readers are having trouble relating to your main character, it might be because your style of prose is keeping them at a distance, rather than letting them experience the story alongside your protagonist. That’s exactly what filtering language does, and that’s why eliminating nine simple, common verbs is some of my best advice for new writers.
If there’s one thing that will turn your reader’s experience into a slog, it’s filtering language. Phrases like he saw, she tasted, I smelled, and they felt keep the audience at arm’s length and prevent them from experiencing your story’s events through the point-of-view character. Over time, an abundance of these passages can make the reader feel as though they’re being told the story, rather than reading it for themself. They won’t relate to your protagonist as a result, and that’s bad news for you and your work.
That’s why an editing pass to eliminate filtering language offers the highest ROI when it comes to elevating your prose and making your protagonist more relatable.
But wait, you say. A whole pass just to take out a few common phrases? Surely that’s inefficient.
It really isn’t, and let me tell you why.
Filtering language is everywhere. We use it when we’re telling stories to our friends, and so it naturally creeps into our prose when we try to tell stories to an audience of readers. Sure, you can add words like saw, watched, and thought to your kill list. I can’t stop you. But that’s likely to just bloat your list past the point of being serviceable.
So yes, I recommend an editing pass just to eradicate filtering language if you want to make your protagonist more relatable. I’ve got a list of key verbs for you to watch for, plus examples of how to write without using them below.
A List of Filtering Verbs
- believe
- feel
- look
- see
- smell
- taste
- think
- touch
- watch
Note: It’s not that you can’t or shouldn’t use these verbs at all. Rather, it’s how you deploy them that will make or break your writing.
How to Rewrite Sentences Without Filtering Language
Believe & Think
If you’re writing in first person or a close third person — and you probably are — your audience knows that they’re reading the story through the lens of one character. Therefore, you don’t have to label that character’s beliefs and thoughts as such. So instead of:
It’s nonsense, Marcy thought. Simply nonsense.
write:
It was nonsense. Simply nonsense.
Feel & Touch
When we’re talking about filtering language, feel can have two very different meanings. The first is more closely related to believe and think above, and you should follow those directions if that’s the usage you’ve employed in your writing. But if you’re talking about feel as in, She felt a hand on her shoulder, or, She felt the ornately carved box lid beneath her fingers, you’re going to follow a similar process to eliminating touch from your writing. Instead of:
He touched her shoulder gently.
write:
He laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.
Look, See & Watch
Look, see, and watch may be the easiest filtering verbs to remove from your writing. Because you don’t have to tell us what your protagonist is looking at — We’ll know they’re looking when we read a visual description of the thing! — you can just describe what they see. Instead of:
He looked out the window and saw the robins in the birdbath.
write:
There were robins in the birdbath outside.
Smell & Taste
Finally, there’s smell and taste. It’s a bit harder to eliminate these words completely from your draft, but you can change them from verbs to nouns fairly easily. So instead of:
She smelled fresh baked bread and coffee.
write:
The scent of fresh baked bread and coffee wafted up from the kitchen downstairs.
Conclusion
So there you have it, folks: an easy, stress-free way to make your protagonist more relatable and tighten up your prose as an added bonus. By eradicating these nine verbs from your work, you’ll allow your readers to embody your main character and experience the world of your story, truly, through their eyes and ears.