Certain words slip into a draft so quietly that you stop seeing them by the second read, and that is the gap this filler word finder covers. Paste a chapter and every hedge, filter word and limp intensifier is counted, ranked by frequency and highlighted exactly where it sits.
Paste a draft and the ranking, density and preview update as you edit.
Every writer has a handful of words they lean on without noticing. They arrive during drafting, when the priority is momentum rather than precision, and they survive revision because the eye slides straight over them. Counting them is the only reliable way to see a habit you have stopped noticing.
Three families cause most of the damage. Hedges such as just, really and quite soften a statement you meant to make firmly. Filter words such as saw, heard and felt push a camera between the reader and the scene, so instead of experiencing the moment they watch a character experience it. Weak intensifiers such as so and completely try to add force to a verb that should have carried the force itself.
The goal is not zero. Every one of these words earns its place sometimes, and a draft scrubbed clean of them reads stiff and oddly formal. What you are hunting is the pattern: the same qualifier four times on one page, or a chapter where every observation arrives through a filter verb.
Twelve instances of just means something very different in a 500 word scene than in a 5,000 word chapter. The per thousand word figure lets you compare passages fairly and track whether a revision pass genuinely improved anything.
Cutting she saw the door swing open down to the door swung open removes a layer of distance and usually improves the rhythm at the same time. This category is where deletions pay back fastest in fiction.
People hedge constantly when they speak, and stripping those words from dialogue makes characters sound like they are reading a statement. Judge the highlights inside quotation marks far more leniently than the ones in narration.
An even scatter across a chapter is usually harmless. Three or four flags inside a single paragraph almost always marks a passage written in a hurry, and rewriting the paragraph outright beats deleting words one at a time.
Careful line editing is wasted on a cramped, inconsistent page. Our fiction typesetting gives the finished prose the reading experience it earned.
Why each one weakens a sentence, and the fix that usually works.
| Word | Category | The problem | Better move |
|---|---|---|---|
| just | Hedge | Apologises for the sentence it sits in | Delete it and read the line again |
| really / very | Hedge | Props up a verb or adjective that is too weak | Swap in a stronger word: very tired becomes exhausted |
| actually / basically | Hedge | Signals correction or summary that is rarely needed | Cut, unless you are genuinely contradicting something |
| felt / saw / heard | Filter | Places a narrator between reader and scene | Give the sensation directly: the floor shook |
| noticed / realised | Filter | Reports a discovery instead of dramatising it | Show the detail and let the reader realise first |
| so / totally | Intensifier | Adds volume, not meaning | Choose a precise verb or cut the modifier |
| absolutely / completely | Intensifier | Usually redundant before an absolute adjective | Completely destroyed is simply destroyed |
| seemed | Hedge | Makes the narration uncertain about its own world | State it plainly unless the doubt is the point |
Any word that occupies space in a sentence without changing its meaning. Remove it, read the line again, and if nothing is lost the word was filler. Hedges, redundant intensifiers and filter verbs make up the bulk of them in book-length prose.
Under about fifteen flagged words per thousand is comfortable for most published fiction. Above twenty-five the padding starts to blunt individual sentences. Treat these as rough guides, because heavy dialogue and first-person voice both legitimately raise the figure.
They interrupt point of view. When you write she heard the gate creak, the reader processes the act of hearing rather than the creak. Removing the filter puts the reader inside the character's senses instead of watching from outside them.
Definitely not, and doing so would flatten your voice. The list is a map of where to look. Read each highlighted sentence aloud, and keep the word whenever the rhythm or the meaning genuinely needs it.
No. A line editor works on rhythm, clarity, character voice and the shape of a paragraph, none of which can be counted. This tool handles the mechanical pass so that your editing time and budget go towards judgement rather than word spotting.
The scan is mechanical and cannot tell narration from speech. Real people hedge and qualify constantly, so highlights inside quotation marks are often exactly right. Focus your cuts on the narrative passages between the dialogue.
No, that advice is repeated far more confidently than it deserves. The problem is not adverbs generally but adverbs propping up vague verbs. Ran quickly is weak because ran is doing too little work, whereas an adverb that adds genuinely new information is fine.
Once at the end of a full draft, then again after your line edit to confirm the pass worked. Running it while drafting is counterproductive, because self-editing mid-sentence is one of the surest ways to stall a first draft.
Once the sentences are clean, the typography takes over. We set fiction with the right measure, leading and paragraph indents, handle scene break ornaments consistently, and deliver interior files ready for print and every major ebook retailer.
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