In other words, in its neutral state, oxygen has eight electrons and eight protons. Now, a charge negative one oxygen molecule has eight protons, but now it has nine electrons. So let's draw our electron configuration for oxygen. So two electrons go into the one s, two electrons go into the two s, and five electrons go into the two p. Now, H stays the same because H is neutral. And so we place one electron into our one s orbital. So let's begin by first counting the total amount of balanced electrons that we have.