Comments on: Persons of Interest

By: Cyril N. Alberga

Cyril N. Alberga — Thu, 23 Nov 2006 20:33:53 +0000

CAPITAL LETTERS????????

By: callie

callie — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 17:01:44 +0000

Excellent post! I’ve written many short stories and a few not-so-brilliant novels –all in first person. Only recently did I say to myself “hmmm, this all feels so limiting and flat because I’m always with the same character.” I’ve just starting writing a novel in close third and while it may be the most popular POV, it has freed up a range of possibilities for me. What fun I’m having! As you point out, close third POV is definitely tricker, but worth the effort, I think.

By: Justine

Justine — Tue, 21 Nov 2006 01:52:15 +0000

Lili: Read Black Idol by Lisa St Aubin de Teran.

By: lili

lili — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 22:30:08 +0000

i always think of the bride stripped bare whenever i think of second person. which totally felt like a conceit to hide the fact that it was a fairly boring and unpleasant sort of book.

and the moral of that story (and probably all the stories in your last few posts, justine), is that if you’re going to do something wacky and creative with the architecture of your novel, make sure that you

a) have a really, really good reason to do so (don’t use the smoke machine and the strobe light just because it’s there. there needs to be a narrative reason why you do it).

b) do it well.

By: Penni

Penni — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 21:31:03 +0000

Italo Calvino’s ‘you’ kind of slips from being ‘dear reader’ to being a completely fictional construct who behaves in ways the reader wouldn’t necessarily, so Calvino’s actually being very playful with that 2nd person POV. When I first started reading the unsoliciteds I used to torture myself wondering if I would have rejected Calvino because I didn’t get it. (In the end I realised I wouldn’t have, because – of course – he’s got the voice.)

Coming back to say that I think the big trap with 1st person is that it’s very easy to ‘tell’ rather than ‘show.

Justine you have become my favourite procrastination.

By: Diana

Diana — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:59:15 +0000

I never thought of the “dear reader” one as being second person POV. I think of it, rather, as breaking the fourth wall. My protag addresses teh reader directly all the time.

By: Chris S.

Chris S. — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 16:51:18 +0000

“Omniscient Difficulty: Extremely High, unless you were born in the 1700s, or really are God”

Or Terry Pratchett.

By: scott w

scott w — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 08:30:45 +0000

We might want to distinguish two species of second person.

One is the “dear reader” second person, such as you quote from Calvino. It has an old-fashioned ring to it, as 18th- and 19th-century authors often directly addressed their readers with warnings, admonitions, and other narrative hooks. “You will not believe the story I am about to unfold, and yet I assure you it is true!”

The other species is the more modern second person of comic books, Choose Your Own Adventure novels, and 1980s hipsters:

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder. Then again, it might not.
—Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City 1984

In the modern species “you” are a character in the book. It has an intense, pulpy directness, very different from the fireside-chat feel of the old-school second person. (Although Calvino is ultimately doing a more post-modern thing; the reader is a character, or something.)

I always tell my students that the (modern) second person is best reserved for characters who are “sweaty.” Maybe that’s because all the comic book characters I’ve read in second were on desperate, unlikely to succeed missions. Or maybe it’s that I used to ghostwrite Give Yourself Goosebumps, where “you” are always getting killed.

I’ve actually published 100,000 words in second person, which contain roughly a total of 100 deaths for “you.”

By: Suri

Suri — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 03:32:14 +0000

Thank you!

By: Diana

Diana — Mon, 20 Nov 2006 02:04:53 +0000

so it’s official: you’re feeling better.

By: Penni

Penni — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 21:59:17 +0000

Oh very very good explanation. I actually find first person the hardest to write (well) – my next novel after my next one after this one (what?) is my first foray into writing a first person novel. It’s actually wickedly fun if you hit on a voice and a character you like.
Getting a distinctive voice happening for me was the key to unlocking the mystery of writing a novel. I’d had stories before, I’d had characters. But when I started getting phrases popping into my head that sort of defined the voice, the writing started to flow. I also think, as a reader of unsoliciteds what separates the maybes from the absolutely nots is the narrative voice – it’s there from the beginning and if you don’t got it, you don’t got ‘it’.

By: Diana

Diana — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 18:52:04 +0000

Brilliant.