(Originally Published December 3rd, 2016)
One of Kurt Vonnegut's eight rules for writing a short story is to make sure "Every character [wants] something, even if it is only a glass of water." I have shared some of Vonnegut's advice with my students in the past, this one among them, and the example given is one that I find interesting. A couple years ago, when my students embarked on writing their own short stories, I decided to take Vonnegut's suggestion literally, and myself began a story about a character who wanted only a glass of water.
The initial plot to accomplish this was to put some poor sap in a desert, deprive them of water, and watch them suffer as they try (and possibly fail) to find some. The idea seemed too simple, so I thought I would "challenge" myself by doing something different. It is worth noting that the very idea of challenging myself to write something less obvious is a terribly pretentious thing to do. Sometimes we can create great things by assuming and testing our own greatness, but most of the time we are humbled, and rightfully.
The story that I decided to tell was one of a man who was on a date, and while his date was a lovely woman with charm, intelligence, and an interest in other people, my protagonist was to be singularly defined by his need for a glass of water. I hadn't considered why a person would need a glass of water so badly (besides eating on a patio on a hot day), but the punch-line to the story would be the moment when he decides to take her water and drink it, thereby showing how selfish and foolish he was.
Looking back, it is clear to me from the first two paragraphs that this is a story that would be a failure.
Out walks a waiter in his khakis and rolled up white sleeves. I'm at the furthest table from the door, so I don't see the waiter until he's setting the glass of water at our table, and even then it's only the hairy forearm and rolled cuff that I glance as he reaches in from over my shoulder. Set in front of my date, the glass is bespeckled with the imperfections of a third world craftsmen, beading sweat down its side as ice clinks lazily.
This first paragraph is fine. It sets the scene as one taking place at a restaurant, the reason for the meal as a date, and the object of his attention the water glass. I'm pretty confident I partially stole the description of the water glass from Fight Club, but it gets the job done overall.
I wait a moment for the hairy arm to return, in abject silence, which is broken only by the sound of the patio door shutting behind me. When I turn, the flat glass of the cafe door holds for a moment the disappearing image of the waiter. Like a Savannah leopard, the mirage of his outline fades nearly as quickly as I caught it. The sun bakes down, and after drawing a hand over my eyes to mop the sweat from my brows the waiter is gone.
When I think back, I think I was trying to use the image of the waiter as a feline predator because A) it is apparently really hot on this patio and B) the waiter is trying to kill him. The problem is, this metaphor makes absolutely no sense in the space of the narrative because the whole point is that the waiter is ignoring the protagonist entirely. The narrator isn't the singular interest of the waiter, he's the antithesis of it. This analogy is here simply because I thought I was being clever and I wanted to make a connection to how hot it is. And I do. Three times.
A bigger problem with this story is that for a work of supposed humor, there is very little to laugh at (or with). The author - me - is so obsessed with describing things that nothing really happens. And, arguably more important, the protagonist is a jerk. While he was making a bad analogy, the date he is sitting with asks him a question about a story he heard no part of. He then describes her face as "wearing a smile that I imagine she saves for when she says something that is both honest and funny." His date is trying to engage him and he is disregarding her as someone pretending to be nice.
This is the biggest problem of my short story: I had an idea for a story that I could use to show how clever I was and ended up writing a character only concerned with showing the reader how clever he is. The problem is that in writing a jerk of a character I myself was a jerk. I disregarded what the audience needed to engage with the narrative I was trying to tell.
A writer, at all times, should be writing for the needs of his audience. In a short story, this means creating characters that the reader wants to spend time with. Sometimes this means creating characters who fascinate us even as they disturb us, but most of the time this requires characters that we value, look up to, or remind us of someone we care for.
If I wanted to write a story about a man who needed a glass of water, I should have created a man that the audience would have given a glass of water to if they were capable. He should have been introduced as someone enjoying his date, enamored with the girl sitting across from him and the stories she was telling. Only after being established as a likable guy should I have introduced a desperate thirst, one that would have him struggling between the joy of his date and his parched throat. If I had done my job right, my audience would have known that he really was in need of water and they would have been hoping that he could hold off drinking the only glass at the table so that he wouldn't blow the date. The tone should have been light-hearted, with small suggestions of humor that made the character endearing.
Instead I created a jerk and asked that my reader enjoy his jerkishness.
I have an idea for how I could come back to this, but I do not expect that I will. This experiment is soured for me. It has been instructive, however. This comes back to the first and seventh items on Vonnegut's list of advice (paraphrased): 1) Write so that your audience does not feel you wasted their time; 2) Write to please a single person.
It is clear looking back on this story that I was wasting the time of my audience precisely because I was writing simply to please myself. Thankfully, I never finished it or expected anyone else to read it. I've included what remains of it below.
Maybe you don't think it is as bad as I do, and maybe you are even entertained by my unnamed protagonist. What I can tell you is that when I wrote this I didn't care what you would think of it. For this reason it was never going to be good.
Out walks a waiter in his khakis and rolled up white sleeves. I’m at the furthest table from the door, so I don’t see the waiter until he’s setting the glass of water at our table, and even then it’s only the hairy forearm and rolled cuff that I glance as he reaches in from over my shoulder. Set in front of my date, the glass is bespeckled with the imperfections of a third world craftsmen, beading sweat down its side as ice clinks lazily.
I wait a moment for the hairy arm to return, in abject silence, which is broken only by the sound of the patio door shutting behind me. When I turn, the flat glass of the café door holds for a moment the disappearing image of the waiter. Like a Savannah leopard, the mirage of his outline fades nearly as quickly as I caught it. The sun bakes down, and after drawing a hand over my eyes to mop the sweat from my brows the waiter is gone.
“Have you ever had that happen?”
I’ve missed the tail end of a brief story about being forgetful. When I turn back to her my eyes stick to the chilled glass before I can pull them back up to my date, who’s wearing a smile that I imagine she saves for when she says something that is both honest and funny.
“Oh man…” I begin, with a grin and a wandering look that searches the table, as if my memories of similar events are scattered across the blue-white checker of the tablecloth and I’m searching for just the right one to compare with whatever her story happened to be about. Failing to find the right anecdote to tell – perhaps it is hidden behind the combination condiment/menu/flower-holder centerpiece – I glance back up to her. “I think there are hermits in old Scandinavian caves that can relate to that.”
The corners of her mouth spread and settle into the pockets of two adorable dimples. “You have a lovely smile,” I note, then hesitate to say more. Instead I match her smile with my own.
She bounces the tiniest nod and tells me thank you. She’s heard this compliment many times before, but the smile is still there. There is a hint of embarrassment when her nose crinkles and she looks away to the distant, shimmering visages of downtown pedestrians, then to the transparent, radiating sky.