When filtering (and other "rule breaks") are appropriate

It really has to be taken on an individual basis.

When I'm writing, I limit my use of filtering and other much-derided techniques because I hate them.

Do I still use them? Oh yes, from time to time. But it has to be done from a position of power rather than weakness.

Will get back to you when I come across something that works from my 'currently reading' pile.

Ok I'm a real idiot. What does Filtering mean?

Saying things like, "She could see," or "He could feel."

You're filtering what was seen/felt/heard through the point-of-view character, so there's another degree of separation between it and the reader.

So instead of saying, "She heard someone scream," you could say, "A scream rent the night and turned her bowels to water."

Or something.

The woman in the red dress watches the woman in black hang up the phone, check the coin return slot for change, and slump against the Dixie Dandy window.

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It works because it's necessary to know the woman in the red dress is watching the woman in black. Since it's an omniscent POV, we also don't have a clear POV character.

Unlike, say, a first-person POV where you might say, "I'm watching the the woman in black hang up the phone," only if the POV character is the woman in the red dress. You can lose the "I'm watching" because obviously the woman in the red dress is watching if she's narrating it happen. But if your first-person POV character is the man in the blue jeans, then yes, you still need to note that the woman in the red dress watches the woman in the black dress.

It's not "true" filtering that we say to eliminate in writing.

Lonely One, brace yourself for the inevitable answer, which you should have known would roar at you like a double mocha tsunami across the scone crumbs of eternity*:

If it works, it's appropriate.**

*Damn, I'm good.

** That is, if it works in art, it's appropriate. Smushing chihuahuas with a steamroller will also work, but it's not appropriate.***

***Or is that a bad example?

I feel less sure about this answer than some of my others, so posters feel free to correct me if I'm off on this one.

I think things like filtering and tense changes tenses work if a character is somewhat detached from a scene, particularly in first-person. Usually when the character is somehow impaired by a substance or a shock of some sort has rendered them unable to see the events taking place correctly. For example, if they're just stumbled into the scene of their mother's murder.

Consider this:

Dan walked in and waved.

"Hi Sue," he said. "Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Can you believe they've got chimps answering the phones at the AOL call center? Seriously, those people are too lazy and chimps are too smart."

"Yeah, I saw it," I answered. "Hard to believe. The future is here."

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It's pretty assertive. The narrator is saying, This is what happened.

Now consider this:

I hear footsteps outside and I think I see my friend Dan coming in. I see him wave and he starts to talk about chimps working at AOL.

I hear myself start to answer him, words that seem to get tangled up and lost in the air. What am I saying? I'm interrupted because I can hear my mother calling to me from the other room. That can't be, my mother's been dead for 15 years. I look in that direction but all I can see is the paint on the walls crumbling and changing color.

"Sue, are you alright?" I hear Dan say from behind me. I turn to answer him but he's gone.

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Lots of filtering here and the tense has changed to present. It suggests the character is confused.

Fitering or not filtering is not a writing rule-- it is someone's preference. The writing rules are in Strunk and White and other books like that. There are still no real rules in fiction writing. People who write "how to write" books are just writers who have a bit of experience-- they write about how they would write something. If it is your teacher who tells you these things, ask for the ISBIN number of their latest novel. That will shut them up. And even if they have written something, it is still their opinion. Writer's classes in school (college) consist of reading other people's work and critique sessions. All of the writing rules come from generalized grammar books, usage manuals, and the opinions of the publishing industry. Opinions are like A**holes, everyone has one.

Some assholes produce more shit than others, though.

So do some writers...

Specific to filtering, I think it can be really effective in these places:

Slapstick. Filtering can completely take the immediacy out of action scenes, producing a sort of "classical stand" of academic disinterest: I saw the masked maniac wielding the chainsaw dangerously in my direction and thought that he might be a little angry with me. That same effect can make a violent scene quite comical. The most hilarious and heartbreaking scene I know of in literature is Huck Fin describing his father chasing him around the cabin trying to beat him.

It also seems to make the narrator self-centered. So it's a good tool if that's what you're going for.

And the other time it seems good to me is in "concrete" forms, like journals and character voices. A great example is Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, which uses filtering CONSTANTLY. In that case, the narrator is a child, and the mode of storytelling seems appropriate to a child. Not only does it capture the concrete forms of letters and the veracity of child-like storytelling, it places the reader in the kid's body, filtering all the action through his opinions. The other rule that book breaks is sentence structure. There are sections that go for PAGES where every sentence has "I" as the subject. IMO, it gets a little old, but you accept it as the storytelling of a child. Perhaps that apparent unsophisticated narrative disarms the reader. Very effective.