Vonnegut's Glass of Water: The One Question That Fixes Flat Characters
By Dr Dan
Some writing advice arrives as a thick system. Kurt Vonnegut gave us eleven words that do more work than most of those systems put together.
The advice
"Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water."
— Kurt Vonnegut, introduction to Bagombo Snuff Box (1999)
It is rule three of the eight rules he called "Creative Writing 101" in that introduction. He also said great writers break his rules. He named Flannery O'Connor, who "broke practically every one of my rules but the first." The point was never perfection. The point was a useful test.
What Vonnegut means
Desire is the engine of fiction. A character who wants nothing just sits there, and readers can feel the stillness. A character who wants something sets up a question: will they get it?
Notice the second half of the rule. The want does not have to be huge. A thirsty man in a hot room. A nervous teenager who wants to leave a party. A soldier who wants a letter from home. Small wants make scenes come alive. Big wants carry whole novels.
When I taught English, and later when I studied how people think and choose as a psychologist, I saw the same pattern off the page. People move when something matters to them. On the page, that movement is what we call story.
Try this on your draft
Every character, every scene. Before you write a scene, jot down what each person wants right now, not only what they want in the book as a whole.
2. Put wants in conflict. Drama happens when two characters want things that cannot both happen at once.
Separate want from need. Characters often chase the wrong thing. The gap between the two is where the heart of a story often lives.
Make the want visible. Show it through action. Do not only announce it in dialogue or summary.
A clear want on the page
In At the End of Hardship, the central want is urgent and plain. Eighteen-year-old Curt Conrad and his team parachute into North Korea to find and disarm a nuclear bomb before it can poison the rivers around Pyongyang. That mission is a large, readable desire. It gives every scene a direction: toward the bomb, or away from the disaster it would cause.
You do not need a nuclear clock in your own draft. You need a want the reader can name. If a scene feels flat, ask Vonnegut's question first. What does this person want in this moment? If you cannot answer, you have found the problem.
Your turn
Pick a scene from your work in progress that feels stuck. For each character in it, answer three questions:
What do they want in this scene?
- What is stopping them?
- What will they do about it?
If the first answer is empty, start there. Give the character a glass of water, a letter, a door they want to walk through, or a truth they cannot say yet. Then watch the scene wake up.
Keep reading. Keep writing. And keep asking what your people want.
Keep going
Read At the End of Hardship on Amazon: https://a.co/d/01cRx5XW
Find my free short stories: https://www.danyladoyle.com/free-short-stories
Book Dr Dan for a free talk: https://www.danyladoyle.com/book-a-speaker
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