MIDNIGHT WRITING What Sort of Person Am I? Second Person Narration
Midnight Writing features info and useful tips on writing, collected and edited by a writer in the hopes that he can help others, and in turn get the help he needs.
Check out other perspectives, by reading my review of first person narration here. Or here. Or RIGHT HERE.
“I was watching some [motorcycle racing] this morning… that all comes down to who’s first past the line, who’s the fastest. This has nothing to do with that. Who’s on pole position? Well that guy decided to go backwards, that guy decided to sit in the stands and drink a Slurpee, that guy went forwards and it’s all like: What do you think?”
Christian Bale, post-Oscars interview
Being first, second or third person in writing has nothing to do with pole position or a podium. There isn’t a best or worst around here! And while each has its own advantages and disadvantages, it really is down to what a story needs.
And as always in writing, any rule can be broken depending on what a writer is trying to do (except for capital letters and punctuation… I’m a stickler).
Read on for a breakdown of each person, with every significant advantage and disadvantage I could think of. For clarity, these are elements I have noticed in my own writing experiences. I’m sure there are plenty more!
How demanding! Second Person (you, your)
Here’s the easy one. Despite the title, second person isn’t really any more demanding than the other people, but it is an oddity.
Used nowhere near as commonly due to the strange perspective it brings, second person tends to place your reader into particular mindsets when reading your material. One of these is that they are reading a choose your own adventure story, and it’s tricky to make second person any less hokey than that. And why would talented writers go through the difficulty of using second person, even if it’s done well, when they could just use first or third person? That’s a hypothetical question, really.
Neat Little Shoes
In theory, it’s a really easy way to put your reader into the shoes of the main character. Right? Except, more often than not, having a writer ‘tell’ the reader what they’re doing can actually create a distance between reader and story. Some reader will simply not enjoy being told they are the character and that they’re making certain decisions.
Strangely, it’s in trying to create this closeness that forces the reader away. As readers, we develop a closeness with a character not by imagining we are that character (that’s more of a power fantasy-type situation), but because we empathise with a character. It’s how we realise that a decision of behaviour is out of character. It’s how we cry and laugh and cheer with the characters we’re reading about, because we are seeing their perspective, without having it and our own points of view crushed together.
Even when it comes to the aforementioned power fantasies (I still remember one child watching a movie and enthusiastically asking his friends which characters they were as they were watching; all his friends gave an answer), the idea of placing ourselves as the characters in the outlandish story is never supposed to be explicit. But using second person makes it so.
This is why, in reading, second person comes across as a choose your own adventure because on the whole, that’s where second person works best. For every Bright Lights, Big City there’re twelve Goosebumps books (my favourite? The one where you become the vampire!)
So it’s that bad?
Probably. In writing fiction, there are rarely set rules (even punctuation, the building blocks of actual writing and communication, is up for grabs, or left for dead) that absolutely cannot be broken.
But with second person, the writing really has to be of sufficient quality or it can come across as incredibly hackneyed. As always, if there’s a thematic reason, almost any rule can be broken and anything can be gotten away with. But unless there is a really good reason for second person, there isn’t much point in using it. Writers that’re talented enough to make second person work could simply use first or third person and get even better results.
Matthew D. Smith likes to overshare his views on writing whenever and wherever he can. Indulge him, and follow him on Twitter or listen to the podcast he co-hosts with Leslie Wai where they pitch their own ideas for movies and TV shows.
