Things That I Like: You are about to read an article about second-person point of view

This article originally appeared at The Oak Wheel on March 27, 2014. 

…

As your eyes move from the title to the body of the article, you commence reading it. You quickly determine that the article is self-demonstrating, and you think that it’s kind of awkward. You hope that the author will cut it out with the crap.

I’ll acquiesce, dear reader. As the preceding self-demonstration mentioned, this article is about the second-person point of view, not self-demonstrating works. For that, you will want to read David Moser. I shall wait patiently till thou hast wetted thine appetite for self-demonstrating literature.

Are you back? Wonderful. As it happens I had a sudden attack of the King Jameses, as you may have noticed, so it was good to have a moment to handle that. You’re back, I’m back, we’re all back to back to back and we’re back to the actual article, alright?

Thank you.

Second-person point of view gets a bad rap most of the time. I don't think that I was ever told anything on it except "Don't." It took seeing other people disregard that rule, and a certain amount of contrarianism, for me to begin experimenting with it myself. Besides a whole lot of fanfiction, where it leads a very fulfilling life, however, it's still not quite yet in vogue in these modern times, the biggest example of it today probably being Andrew Hussie's Homestuck.

I'm a big fan of the second-person point of view now. I'm currently using it in The Buddha on the Road (which could possibly be described as "Andrew Hussie writes a sidequel to Herbert West: Re-Animator) and previously played with it in Sedatophobia, which is cast as a mostly-but-not-entirely one-sided discussion between the narrator and yourself, much like Lovecraft's Pickman's Model (what do we call these conversational blends of first- and second-person? first-point-five points of view?).

Second-person is not a gimmick, though. Like the choice between first-person and third-person, the decision to use the second-person shouldn't be made haphazardly. Melissa Tydell states that there are three benefits to using the second-person pov in her Write Practice article advocating, unusually, for writers to use it more often:

1) Second person pulls the reader into the action

2) Second person gets personal

3) Second person stretches your skills and surprises the reader

There's a reason that Choose Your Own Adventure books are generally in the second-person. For all the technical difficulty that it poses, it makes the action that much more real and penetrating. To grossly oversimplify the mechanisms at work, your sense of empathy is based on an ability to mirror others' emotions in yourself, asking "How would I feel under these circumstances?" By using the second-person point of view the line between yourself and the Other is blurred.

Consider this excerpt from the novelization of Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, by Matthew Stover. For context, this takes place at the very end of the movie when Anakin has returned to consciousness and has found himself in the Vader armor. Read, and pay attention to how it makes you feel.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.
The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon your flesh.
You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.
You don’t even have lungs anymore.

Do you have a good handle on your state of mind right now? Can you set it aside, acquire a couple of others, and pick it back up relatively unmarred? Good.

Let's read the same passage again, this time in the first-person point of view.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in my universe brings pain.
The light burns me. It will always burn me. Part of me will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon my flesh.
I can hear myself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but I cannot stop it. I can never stop it. I cannot even slow it down.
I don’t even have lungs anymore.

And again, from the third-person:

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:
The first dawn of light in his universe brings pain.
The light burns him. It will always burn him. Part of him will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew upon his flesh.
He can hear himself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but he cannot stop it. He can never stop it. He cannot even slow it down.
He doesn't even have lungs anymore.

If you're anything like me, the second-person point of view cuts to your heart more deeply than the other two do.

The second-person point of view also opens up the room to tricks that you can't utilize in quite the same way, if at all, in other points of view. Secret Life, which also uses the first- and third-person points of view in supplementary fashion, is able to hide important facts in the second-person that would be revealed much sooner, if not immediately, in either of the other possible points of view.

In Things Unsaid, one of the stories in my Babylonian Medley cycle, the narrative even turns a little meta through the use of the second-person. At the end, for example, the protagonist struggles to find the words to describe a particular incident which happened in xir past but fails and fails again. The reason for this is that the particulars of the incident are unknown to you, so of course you don't know the words to convey what really happened. By taking the state of mind of the reader and mirroring it in the protagonist, the line is blurred that much more.

Your turn: What are some unusual literary devices that you have used in the past or want to employ in the future?

R. Donald James Gauvreau works an assortment of odd jobs, most involving batteries. He has recently finished a guide to comparative mythology for worldbuilders, available here for free. He also maintains a blog at White Marble Block, where he regularly posts story ideas and free fiction.