who stole my glass of water?

[rivendellrose]

New source of writerly angst re: my current "book" (and yes, it demands the scare quotes).

Holy crap, I don't know what my glass of water is!!! I can already see that my accomplishment at writing 1000+ words last night is going to go straight back down the tubes tonight, unless I manage to shut off the Thinking And Panicking part of my brain.

...And I still don't have a name for my third main character. ARRRGH.

Comments

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

Haha, I love the Glass of Water allegory. I'm not quite in the same boat as you, but I looked at what I wrote the other day and realized two characters (a Prince who doesn't realize he's actually king because his brother kicked it a day before and his bodyguard) spent 1.5K talking about getting married. I stepped back and was like, "are they drippy bored housewives, what the heck?"

Gotta love adventures in pre-edited writing!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

...spent 1.5K talking about getting married. I stepped back and was like, "are they drippy bored housewives, what the heck?"

Ha! I know how that goes. I've mentioned I'm having a hard time giving one of my characters a name he can go by... well, a good couple hundred of my words written last night were him and MC... bickering in a bizarrely good-natured way (considering he's her captive) about what MC should call him.

It's a funny old life, writing.

[dreamstrifer.livejournal.com]

I think what made the scene even funnier was the fact that sex did not get brought up at all.

But that's what editing is for, saving your readers from thinking you got really, really bored and were just writing whatever popped into your head. :-P

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah. Half the crap I've written since I started this thing will eventually end up in the bin, I'm sure of it. I just need to keep putting out words so that I can figure out what's going on and where they're going and all that. :P

[sneakyangel.livejournal.com]

I just wanted to say thats an awesome icon! Made me laugh!

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

Awwwwwww, and I love yours! I like having a Dalek icon for every situation. ♥

[gaslightgallows]

Step back from the computer/notebook/wax tablet. Take a very deep breath. Do some calisthenics or walk around the block a time or two.

When you come back, have a conversation with each character. Write it out stream-of-consciousness style or just talk to a wall. Very often, glasses of water aren't apparent from the get-go, and sometimes you'll only find out what kind of water each character likes to drink and how far they're willing to go to get that water after you've had a few totally unrelated chats with them over tea and biscuits (for example, after one such talk, you may find out that your 3rd main character really doesn't like tea all that much).

Names can also come out of this brain-storming casual conversation. If not, I recommend this site: Behind the Name: The Etymology and History of First Names. Best name site I've ever found.

You'll get through this like the pros do--with much wailing and gnashing of teeth. So... welcome to the party. :)

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

BehindTheName rocks, doesn't it? I adore it. ♥

But yeah, you're exactly right that I was freaking out over nothing - by the time I woke up this morning I realized that I do more or less know most of the glasses of water in the situation... but that I still need to have some nice sit-downs with all three main characters (and probably the fourth who keeps threatening to become a main character, too). I'm just not feeling... connected with them.

...Well, except my villain. But I like hanging out with him, anyway, the lovely little bastard. ♥

[gaslightgallows]

This is what you need to do with your characters. :)

[websandwhiskers.livejournal.com]

. . I saw that post too; is it not awesome? I particularly like the Twilight summary.

I sat around thinking about what my original-novel characters' glasses of water were for a while, and I don't think I knew what my glass of water was 1000 words in either. I'm not the sort of writer who outlines or knows how things end when I'm on page 10. I just write. The story goes somewhere. It drags me with it.

I have since concluded that Ellie has spent most of her life thinking she could never have a glass of water, but then she gets one, in the form of Nate. Nate just wants to keep his broken glass of water together without getting cut on the shards so much. Ellie is also sort of Nate's glass of water, and so he has beverage loyalty conflict. Also Nate is the tap that could fill up As-of-yet-unnamed antagonist's glass of water, so they want to come take him away. Ellie doesn't want to lose her glass of water, and ends up threatening to destroy the kitchen cabinets and all the other glasses if she doesn't get to keep hers.

. . or something like that. The original poster did a better job with the glass of water analogy.

. . . . though I'm so bookmarking this for when I have to write a query letter. Damn, I just summarized my novel in one paragraph.

. . . . and this just reminded me that I never read your big long Hellboy II fic, which I must do, but now I'm going to save that for the weekend when I will be stuck in a hotel room with both of my parents for many hours at time. Is this a level of hell? Why yes, yes it is . .

[rivendellrose.livejournal.com]

I don't think I knew what my glass of water was 1000 words in either.

Since I'm actually at 19,098 for the doc as a whole (yikes...) I'm pleased to report by light of day that I do actually know what everybody's glasses of water are... I'm just going to need a lot of work to finagle those into a whole plot. I don't exactly outline either (although sometimes I try, in a desperate attempt to figure out What Happens Next), and sometimes that leads to me thinking that my plot is too thin.

I hope the fic is good for the hotel-time! And yes, that is a level of hell. Not fun.

[lacrimaeveneris.livejournal.com]

Ahaha, I knew that was going to appear at some point.

I realized neither I nor my characters care about the Glass of Water, and should therefore do something about that.

[joellehart.livejournal.com]

That is a wonderful analogy! I'm going to have to share it with my other writer friends on lj.