Filter word finder
Paste a scene to highlight every filter word: the small verbs like “felt” and “noticed” that report what a character perceives instead of letting readers share it.
A free tool from Plainhand. Your text never leaves your browser.
Words it looks for
The finder highlights the same seven filter words the full Plainhand editor checks: felt, saw, noticed, seemed, realized, watched and heard. It ignores capital letters and matches whole words only, so “heard” counts but “overheard” doesn’t. You’ll get a count for each word and a note on what it does to the sentence.
What a filter word does
A filter word puts a layer between the reader and the story. Instead of experiencing the cold, the sound or the sudden understanding, the reader is told that a character experienced it. In close point of view, readers already know whose senses they’re borrowing, so the filter usually repeats what the scene has established.
Before
She noticed the kettle had boiled dry.
After
The kettle had boiled dry, its bottom scorched black.
When to keep one
- When the perceiving is the point. If the story turns on the moment a character sees or hears something, name it.
- When it describes an action. “He felt along the shelf for the key” is about touch, not a filter.
- In dialogue. People say “I felt awful” and “I saw it coming” all the time, and characters should sound like people.
Check everything at once. The full Plainhand editor highlights filter words alongside sentence length, stock phrases, repeated openers and more, with a short note on each. Its checks are free and run in your browser.
Open the full editor