First-Person, Second-Person, Third-Person
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- Terri2
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First-Person, Second-Person, Third-Person
Have you ever written a story in the second-person?
- Linda
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If you haven't already read it, "If on a winter's night a traveler..." is a great second-person book.Terri2 wrote:Do you prefer to write in the first-person or third-person? Why?
Have you ever written a story in the second-person?
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- DuchessAngel37
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I've done a few pieces in first person. Usually if my character is a bit neurotic and I want the reader to know what the character's thinking all the time, or if I'm doing visuals.
I have written a few visuals in second person, but it feels like I'm writing instructions and I don't like it.
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Example:
You will want to know why, and you deserve an explanation. However, what happened on that day is not easy to explain.
Who is the narrator here? He/she is not the 'you' referred to.
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Example:
You will want to know why, and you deserve an explanation. However, what happened on that day is not easy to explain.
Who is the narrator here? He/she is not the 'you' referred to.
- kaytie
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Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas, by Tom Robbins, is another off the top of my head.
What you've described is First Person Accusatory, wherein a first person narrator is there to tell you what's going on, sort of the Woody Allen narrator syndrome. (The author should not be mistaken for the narrator, unless you're reading A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius).
According to Wikipedia (and I'd gather the book cited on that page as a reference) the second person narrative is more common in other languages than it is in English.
Personally, it drives me insane trying to read a whole novel in the 2nd Person. It's probably the hardest POV for an author to get right. But there's a kind of a cult following for stories written in it.
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1. Too many "I" pronouns. A first-person narrator is self-obsessed. I doesn't know how anybody feels but himself, and he believes everybody should be fascinated.
2. Justification. A first-person narrator has to explain everything she does because, well, we readers all assume that she can. So the fpn becomes engrossed in her own feelings and motivations. A third-person narrator can merely state that something happened and leave the explanations to us. Withholding information is easier.
Still, some stories need the first person. Recently I discovered a new form for me: the first-person story told in the third person. Think "The Name of the Rose," even though its really a first-person flashback. But a fpstittp is a story in which the narrator talks about an event earlier in his life and refers to himself in the third person as a character. It eliminates the pronoun problem and allows the narrator to be more detached, wiser than himself as a character. "The Ice Storm" by Rick Moody is such a story. The narrator admits at the end that he is one of the characters.
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Then you have examples such as The Lovely Bones, that defy even that "rule" -- a beyond the grave speaker.
Lots of people write in first person because they feel it's the most comfortable for them. This makes a lot of sense! But that isn't always a reason to use it, to my mind. My rule of thumb is that if you can substitute "he" or "she" for "I" easily--without having to change anything in the story--the piece probably could have been written in third instead.
Second person is used quite a bit and always has a fresh feel. That said, I've judged contests where too many second-person pieces in a row can be a bit grating. It's fresh, but it also gets old easily. (I know someone will point out Lorrie Moore or Pam Houston--and I did love those collections!) I wrote a second-person POV once and used Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a subplot structure. I thought the "you"--that feeling of being "taken over" by the writer--worked well, given the theme of body-snatching. Depends what you need!
Good luck! For what it's worth, I think POV is one of the hardest things.