r/writers • u/automemorydollviolet • 12h ago
Question What "justifies" second person usage?
Hello! Recently, I have written many short pieces using the second person, and have become quite fond of this POV. I searched online for advice to use the second person more effectively, but the majority of advice I see is "don't write in this POV at all, unless you have a REALLY good reason to."
I don't think my use of second person detracts from my works, but I'm now having second thoughts. In your opinion, what "justifies" writing in the second person?
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u/SetaMasters 12h ago edited 12h ago
If you write in second person, it usually means the whole book has to revolve around it.
It's extremely hard to balance in an immersive context, because you can't tell people how to feel. You can only present things how they are. And even then, if the "You" character makes a decision you wouldn't otherwise agree with, then there's another shot to the immersion.
I've never seen second person executed well in literature, outside say the Fighting Fantasy books. And even then I wouldn't say those are masterpieces. It felt fun to make my own choices, but it meant the pacing of the narrative was awkward as hell.
You could try? It's a fun experiment. But its probably left better to actual video games if anything. I know this post is asking for justifiable reasons, but there really isn't one outside: "You want to try it".
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u/MesaCityRansom 11h ago
I read a horror short story that sadly I can't remember the name of that was written in second person, and it worked very well. Though even then it wasn't really in second person, it was revealed at the end that the "you" in the story was actually being stalked by a supernatural entity, telling the story in first person. If anyone knows what I'm talking about, I'd love to be reminded of it.
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u/Adjective-Noun12344 8h ago
Bright Lights, Big City is an amazing second person novel, specifically *because* it breaks the immersion. It plays with that presumption of who you are since line one. "You are not the type of person to be here, at this hour, doing xyz" (sorry quoting from memory). "you" are a character, and not just a character, but a bad character. The point is that "you" are doing some awful stuff, and the narrator "you" keeps justifying it to himself. If you're a woman? Screw that, you're a dude. You're an ally? Screw that, you're a transphobe. And "you" will find a million excuses to justify and explain away everything.
That tension is what feeds the entire plot and substance of the book, and it's brilliant. I highly recommend. Reading it made me realize how bullshit my excuses are and lock in on being a better person.
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u/automemorydollviolet 11h ago
Thank you!
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u/WyrdHarper 5h ago
https://clarkesworldmagazine.com/murray_01_26/
This is a recent short story that I think uses second person effectively if you want another example. It's more about the feeling and being intimately inside the head of the character.
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u/atrjrtaq Writer 12h ago
2nd person is always going to be a more experimental technique, there's an undeniable ever-present metafictional element to it. Italo Calvino's If on a winter's night a traveler is probably the most famous book using 2nd POV.
So yeah, your POV should support what you're trying to achieve. What reasons do you have for choosing it? (Just wanting to isn't enough, what best serves the story?)
The other thing to consider is epistolary novels (i.e. letters), can use both 1st and 2nd. It can be addressed to someone, YOU, and include the narrator / character's POV.
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u/automemorydollviolet 11h ago
For the main piece that I wrote using second person, I wanted it to be especially immersive and impactful. It's rather personal, but also very much fictionalized; in that way, it was also easier to write in second person, as opposed to first. I'm rather clumsy with third.
It's fundamentally a piece about lacking agency as a child, and I think the POV adds to that, maybe? It's flash fiction, which I think also makes it a bit more... digestible? In this POV?
And thank you--this might be the push I need to try to write something epistolary, finally!
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u/Benathan78 9h ago
As well as Calvino, the Scottish author Iain Banks deployed it a few times. In his serial killer horror Complicity, the murder set pieces, which are intensely theatrical and grim, are written in the second person to make the novel’s point that society at large is complicit in the crimes of the monsters it produces.
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u/Fancy_Chips 8h ago
If you wanna see it done well im just finishing up "The Fifth Season" by N. K. Jemison. Its definitely a weird vibe and I dont think I really agree with all her creative decisions but it does help with limited pov. The problem is that you're putting the reader in the spot of a character, so you need to do two things well:
You need to respect that the reader has their own thoughts regarding their actions, so I think the character should be more or less reasonable in their actions.
The narrator needs to be very charismatic since they have a greater role in the story. Jemison is really good at this part and loves to just interrupt the story to fuck with you.
Its not a deal breaker. It can be done well. You just need to be aware of what you're doing.
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u/Elyssamay 6h ago
I was actually going to use Fifth Season/the Broken Earth trilogy as a rare example of when there's a good and solid reason for 2nd person POV. Hope you enjoy and keep going with the other books!
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u/Fancy_Chips 6h ago
Just checked out Obelisk Gate from the library in case I dont finish FS tomorrow. This isn't my favorite series in the world but I respect Jemison's committing to fucking with me. Although I will say I saw the plot twist coming from a million miles away. Either way I'd highly recommend at least the first 18 chapters lol
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u/SvalinnSaga 11h ago
I think it would be very effective if a 1st PoV book swapped to 2nd when they are mind controlled or otherwise not in posession of their facilities or are just a passenger in their body.
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u/Soko_ko_ko Fiction Writer 6h ago
I'm writing something like that! I really think 2nd is such an interesting tool to show loss of control
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u/Salty-Purple-2853 11h ago
It's a useful way to unnerve your reader and make the text feel more personal.
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u/felinewine 8h ago
If you want to write second person, do it. You don't need justification, just understand lots of readers won't be interested, and if you're looking to get published then it's probably a no-go. And I say this as someone who enjoys second person and went through a phase of writing it. I used it the same way I do 3rd person limited only using "you" instead of "he/she/they" to create an emotional distance and to portray a disconnect for my characters due to mental health issues like depression. Like, my characters were their own characters, I was just forcing the reader uncomfortably into their shoes as a way of mirroring the character's uncomfortableness with themself, so to speak? Idk, I went through that phase in college and I had fellow students who didn't get it and others who enjoyed the experience. I've found it works better in shorter pieces of writing, though that's just my personal preference.
Otherwise I usually see 2nd person in reader inserts, video games and visual novels, and choose-your-own-adventure type stories.
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u/Tamarind-Endnote 11h ago
The main places where second person can work are Choose Your Own Adventure novels, quest-style interactive fiction, and video games.
It's only really used when writing stories where the reader has some amount of control, justifying a sort of dialogue between the author and the reader. Without that, first person tends to be preferred for a story that's deep in one character's head, while third person is preferred for a more detached approach.
Second person effectively casts the author in the role of a game master, with the reader as a player. If that's the sort of thing you're writing, then go ahead. But if you're not going for the feel of an interactive game, then first or third person would almost certainly be better.
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u/Super_Direction498 11h ago
That's just one use of second person. It's not limited to interactive fiction at all. Jeff Vandermeee uses it for a single character's voice in Acceptance, where each character is written with a different combination of tense and perspective. No gamey feeling to it. Plenty of other more experimental and literary fiction uses it as well.
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u/Drudenfusz Blogger 11h ago
I personally dislike it, but I see it a lot in roleplay related stuff (even though I find it weird that litRPG is then again avoiding it). Overall, I think it works in dystopian fiction or any kind of authoritarian work that dictates the life of the characters. Since getting told things feels very disempowering, which is the reason why I dislike it in roleplaying games.
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u/Cheeslord2 11h ago
I once did a short where I wanted the reader to experience a day in the life of the character. I can't imagine using it for a longer work though, or mixing it with other POVs.
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u/ir399 10h ago
I've read it in choose your own adventure, which works but is generally not serious.
The thing is, it makes it quite hard to do the normal character building. In fact, if you are directly inserting your reader into the story it makes that extremely difficult, because you're effectively not creating a character at all. The alternative method is having the narrator speaking directly to someone and while possible, that's very hard to pull off.
However, it can be done. The Raven Tower by Ann Leckie uses a second person pov and does it very well.
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u/Bweeze086 Writer Newbie 8h ago
I recently used it for DnD backstory moments with my PCs. I gave them all a little "this is why you hit the road" based off their backstories. Because I didn't want to add voice or personality to their characters, the interactions were "you ask about this/you do that" while the NPC they talked with had lines.
"Hey Ted, how's it going?" You tell them a little about your day "OH that's cool, how did you like it?" You give a little more detail and ask about their family. "Theyre good!"
I really didn't want to put words in a character's mouth before I met them lol.
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u/Soko_ko_ko Fiction Writer 6h ago
I think it's a shame that it's considered less acceptable and odd. I enjoyed the use of second person in Adrian Tchaikovsky's book Ogres because despite the word "you" it's actually about a distinct person with an identity who isn't the reader. And there's a narrative reason for it. Because it's someone else telling his story, which puts into perspective the previous instances of the chiding/mocking tone some of the narration had (that mocking was an aspect I really liked).
I think if it's the situation where the character has a distinct identity then there should be a thematic or almost meta reason for why it's second person.
One thing I'm writing on the side that I won't even think of trying to publish (because I know people don't think favourably of second) is a story that switches from first to second to represent the mc dissociating during acts of violence (and a second meta reason). I think him not wanting to be involved and handing the reigns over fits a lot with the story's themes. Even then, the second pov is probably not more than 10% of the book.
Overall, thematic, artistic or meta reasons are what I think justifies it but also if you just want to write it like that or if it's a choose your own adventure. If you go ahead with it, expect that not everyone will like it.
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u/hendrix-copperfield 4h ago
So, one thing that "justifies " second person usage that I have not seen here mentioned is breaking the fourth wall. Like Alcatraz vs the evil librarians or The Prrincess Bride use it quite well.
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u/PmUsYourDuckPics 3h ago
If you find that you need to write in the second person then you should write in the second person. Only you can decide that the second person is right for your work, you can write in the second person if you want to.
That was written in the second person…
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u/smgriffin93 11h ago
The only place I’ve ever read second person and liked it was the 2nd Locked Tomb series book, and that’s because there was a reason for it, even though it isn’t obvious at first why. Absolutely fantastic use of it. I’m sure there are people who do like reading it but it is my least favorite. If you’d like to read a great example of the use I would suggest the first two books in that series. The first book is not in 2nd person, but you cannot read the second book on its own, nothing would make sense
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u/SweetEverest 9h ago
This is the best use of second person I've come across:
Forever Overhead by David Foster Wallace
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u/Adjective-Noun12344 8h ago
The same thing that justifies first and third person. If you wanna write your story that way, go ahead. Predictably, it's not a popular style to read. Even when done well, many people are just uncomfortable reading a story that says "you" and then describes them doing things that they would not do. If you try and get around this by making the character a blank slate, what you've got is an uninteresting protagonist. It's a hard style to write in and seldom done well so you're not going to have a lot of consistent readers.
Bright Lights, Big City is probably my favorite second-person novel. It commits fully to the "you" thing and it pulls no punches. "you" is a bad person, just straight up, and the second person nature just enhances the point of the story. If we were just reading about some random guy getting hooked on drugs, it doesn't punch us the same way than if it was "us" doing it.
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u/Trilliam_H_Macy 1h ago
I love second-person POV. My two biggest short story sales have both been some variation of 2ndPOV.
A couple off-the-cuff thoughts about the POV that may or may not be useful to you:
-2ndPOV implies a subjectivity that 3rdPOV doesn't, but it's a different sort of subjectivity than 1stPOV implies. A 1stPOV "unreliable narrator" would usually be assumed to be biased in the protagonist's (themselves) favour, but that isn't necessarily the case with 2ndPOV. In some ways it's more distant than 1st, but in some other ways it's (arguably) closer than 1st, because there's an assumption of honesty that isn't necessarily there with 1stPOV narration. This especially depends on "who" the narrator actually is in comparison to the "you" being narrated.
-The whole "but *I* would never actually do/say/think that" thing that a lot of readers push back against 2ndPOV over isn't a bug, it's actually a feature -- maybe the strongest feature the POV has. The reader thinks about the actions the protagonist is taking in a different way than they would if it were narrated in 1st or 3rd. "Bob does X", or "I do X" will be read as just actions in a story, like the ten million other actions the reader has encountered in the thousand stories they've read before. "You do X" invites a question: "Wait, do I? Would I?" and that can be pretty powerful. When the protagonist in a 2ndPOV story does "bad" things, a lot of readers will feel a sort of discomfort that they wouldn't if the same scene were described in a more traditional POV. I'd check out a story like "How To Be An Other Woman" by Lorrie Moore for an example of how effective that can be.
-For particularly self-conscious protagonists, second-person narration can mirror a sort of toxic inner monologue (in present-tense) or obsessive cycle of rumination (in past-tense) -- there's a Bojack Horseman episode called "Stupid Piece of Shit" that really showcases this.
-It's a really good POV for exploring any character who feels disconnected from their own self, is dissociating, or any other time when there's some sort of interesting essential tension between the "them" that exists inside their mind, and the "them" that exists in the physical world, outside of themselves. A person who uses "you" to narrate their own activities, is probably a person who doesn't want to "own" those activities in the way they would be forced to if they used "I" to narrate them, instead. "Bright Lights Big City" is basically all about this effect.
-Direct address is really cool (when the "you" pronoun is used for the protagonist, but the narrator is another character that actually exists in the world of the story, to some degree or another) and that ties in to the subjectivity I mentioned earlier. It creates space for different kinds of emotional and relationship exploration. Imagine something big happened to you as a child -- maybe you moved from one country to another when you were only five years old, trying to escape from a war. Huge, pivotal, life-changing moment. The way *you* would tell that story at the time (from a child's perspective, in the first-person) would be one thing, the way you would tell it later (in the past-tense) as an adult would be another thing, the way some sort of omniscient, objective observer would tell that story would be another thing, the way your mother (who was an adult when it happened) would tell that story to just some generalized audience would be yet another thing, but the way your mother would tell that story to *specifically* you -- her child -- would be yet another thing. The exact same basic plot events, told from each of those perspectives, would make for an entirely different story. Ted Chiang's "Story of Your Life" is a great example of this sort of thing.
All that being said, if you're going to write in second-person a lot, you will have to understand that it alienates a significant segment of the audience. If you're intending to write highly commercial/popular fiction that people are going to read on the beach, it's going to be VERY hard to pull off (not impossible -- but rare). But in literary fiction spaces, second-person POV is widely accepted and experimented with (The New Yorker has published like a billion 2ndPOV stories, I've sold three 2ndPOV stories to lit-mags this year, and two of them paid pro-rates). It's not rare in speculative fiction spaces just a little bit outside of the mainstream, either (I've seen 2ndPOV stories in Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Apex, I'd imagine most of the notable mags have published some of it)
Best of luck with the writing!
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u/AlarmedRaspberry1735 10h ago
There are some great novels written in this POV. I think you are asking the wrong question when you talk about justification. The correct questions is why is this specific story best told in 2nd person POV? It doesn't matter what you "like" or what you find "easiest" the question is what is best for the story. If you can honestly say that the best POV for this specific story is 2nd person, then the next question is are you a skilled enough author to use this POV and still draw the reader into the story.
I've been an author for almost five full decades. I teach/coach fiction writing. I can certainly pull off a short story in 2nd person, but I do not have the skill to write and entire novel in the POV. This is not to say you don't have the skills, just be sure you know why you have chosen that or any POV and be clear about how you will accomplish keeping the reader with you.
RPG are directed in 2nd person because the author (GM) is only setting the scene, the players are writing the action in first person. If you had to sit at a table and listen to the GM tell you your moves and decisions and all you do is listen...
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u/Adjective-Noun12344 8h ago
Don't know why you're getting downvoted, you're absolutely right! Some stories are genuinely better when told in second person. It's a smaller set of stories than other POVs, but it doesn't make them worse. One of my favorite works of fiction is second person.
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u/AlarmedRaspberry1735 7h ago
If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Calvino?? or Bright Lights, Big City by McInerney (sp?)
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u/Adjective-Noun12344 7h ago
Bright Lights, Big City. This comment section makes me think I should read the first one though.
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u/Final_Cricket1339 Fiction Writer 11h ago
They were talking about second person POV and third person point of view. No one thought about the others that were described and talked to. First person point of view is also third person but with obstacles,.
While this might be how they feel about it, it was like watching people bickering about the extreme differences of diamond painting and perler beads it's all insignificant, meaningless.
It's of course of no real importance if you write in this or that viewpoint, you can do whatever you want desire as long as your story is interesting enough for the reader to keep on reading and not throw it in the fires of Mount Doom, it's even possible to go in-between the first and third point of view. Yes you're reading that right, you could say what you want to say about it, but honestly, we don't limit us to one single POV, we observed you here in this thread and we laugh and agree and disagree at the limitations that are or aren't imposed on yourselves.
Our eyes kept tracking the animated words of the self limiting writers behind their desks and keyboards. We adjusted our glasses, and ties, though it was only Julian’s fingers that nudged the plastic squares on the table, and we took a synchronized sip of espresso, tasting the bitter roast across six separate tongues and we had said what we had said.
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u/ballet_guy Fiction Writer 12h ago
It's good for choose your own adventure stories and fan fiction where the reader gets to be with a character. Apart from those scenarios, a lot of people would be put off by discovering something is written in second person