Opinions on a Book Written in the Second Person?

I don't know if I could read an entire book in second person (the only time I ever have was with one of those choose-your-own-adventure books).

But I noticed when some people tell stories, they'll slip into second-person. "Across from us to the south was the state of New York. And from our suite at the very top of the hotel you could just barely make out the skyline of Toronto over Lake Ontario to the north."

That I don't really mind, in small doses, *if* that's the storytelling voice you're going for. I've found that people tend to be more engaged in what you have to say, if you try to put them in your own shoes by occasionally using "you".

Generally if you're going to do that though, avoid inserting your opinions. It doesn't work if you say "and you hated the view" when the listener/reader is thinking "no, that view sounds rather nice actually".

 

Iain Banks used it in one of his books. I don't like it and gave up on said book before chapter two was over. A quick scan over my bookshelf tells me it was A Song of Stone. Flicking deeper into the novel suggests he reverts to a more traditional first, but the opening in second was enough to put me off.

 

I submitted a flash fiction story in 2nd person to the monthly contest a few years back. In that case the narrator was the devil, tempting "you" to commit a crime. It didn't get any traction, but you may do better with your idea, @Justin Attas .

I think I heard of a novel that worked in 2nd person POV, where the "you" was the dead lover of the narrator. That avoided the problem of "you're making me think and do things I don't want to," because the "you" was already defined as someone else. The same can be said of the graphic novel cited above.

 

Read that. You missed some blinding paragraphs later in the book, some of the most creative/emotional expression I've witnessed. Thing is, I couldn't read it again (nor, save for the masochist, recommend it), was a distressing, sad, sad (tortured), tale. Felt proper gloomy at the end I did.

 

Is it a post-apocalyptic tale of sorts?

 

Yeah, author seems to purposely keep the backdrop blurry, other than the world’s gone to pot. S’about a posh bloke whose castle gets used by Mad Maxish gang, debauched as hell, he’s a bit of a sop/fop , MC, character wise... richness of writing is in his life/experiences... way they’re portrayed. < Crap time for a cultured fella, exquisitely written. Why it drained me I guess.

 

So how long does the second person VP go on for? Is it a reoccurring device throughout the book, and did you establish its purpose?

 

The 2nd p pov, flits in and out of the story, seemingly random, I’d say less than 10% of the book (from memory). As I mentioned though, more for me was that the book was grim, really grim. Warts and all speckled over the human condition. No let up at the end either.

Feel like I’m doing a review on Goodreads!

Purpose of 2nd... sorry... The character doing that was female, lover, admirer (poss) of the main character, her kind of ode to him/form of breaking up the difficult to digest narrative too.

 

Mmm, Iain Banks liked to use a number of literary 'devices'... some would call them cop outs, although these are by his own admission. When asked about The Wasp Factory he said that whenever he felt the story was flagging or he didn't really know where to go with it, he'd write a scene where the MC's forever-wandering oddball brother would ring him up for a chat. I also remember a section in one of his other novels (forget which) in which there was a three-page conversation between the MC and his friend that had absolutely nothing to do with the story or plot.

 

That's actually some super valuable feedback for me there. I will remember not to dictate what the reader is "feeling", to avoid removing them from the story. I'll plan from here on only to describe situations/settings and the feelings/inflections of OTHER characters the protagonist meets.

 

I think the more you read it the more you get used to it. It's narration style we don't see very often but I also think there is a good reason for that. Short fiction is ok but I'd struggle to read an entire novel in that style. I find it keeps breaking me out of the story.

 

Glad to have been of some help. Do keep in mind, even if you succeed at that, the trade off would be that your perspective character effectively has no personality, identity or voice - which would, ironically, make the storytelling very impersonal - but they still need to be a presence in the story that matters to the reader since that's the whole point of the perspective. Otherwise it might actually be easier to skip the Second Person thing entirely, tell some kind of Third Person story about those other characters, and just let the reader decide how the plot should go in general.

For that matter, First Person would probably work just fine for a CYOA narrative, with the benefit that you could justify decisions with very intimate characterization. It sorta feels as if a story like that should already exist but I can't recall ever seeing one. I guess Second Person is just considered traditional for that type of story.

Anyway, I'm not saying you shouldn't do it or anything. But I'd expect it to be very challenging since you are basically trying to do something that literature as a medium kinda isn't ideal for. (In fact, I'd say the only storytelling media that are really optimized for audience agency are tabletop RPGs and video games, more or less.)

It would probably be a good idea for you to read some of those old Chose Your Own Adventure books and try to figure out what makes them work and whether they tend to have shortcomings you should watch out for.

That brings up a point I sorta overlooked: CYOA stories require multiple alternative storylines depending on the path the reader chooses. So effectively you have to write considerably more text than the reader is going to experience, at least during their first reading. It's not a very efficient way of telling stories in terms of the workload vs viable plot ratio.

As in, if you aim to tell a novel-length story this way, the whole actual book is going to be enormous.

Those CYOA books my brother collected couldn't have been longer than, I think, 200-250 pages on average? Usually with illustrations, too. So, I'm guessing the storylines must have been quite short and not very advanced.

 

You burst in to the room. Roger is lying in bed with your wife, engaged in an act of coitus.

Do you:
Excuse yourself and come back later (turn to 556)
Join in (turn to 69)
Beat him to death with a clawhammer (turn to 14)

 

I used to read R.L. Stine's "Goosebumps" books, and the only 2nd-person POV's I'd read were his sub-series, "Give Yourself Goosebumps", which were basically a choose-your-own-adventure type of structure.

 

N.K. Jemisin’s Broken Earth series is excellent. With that series, she’s the only author to win the Hugo award three years in a row and to win for all three books of a trilogy. The main POV, taking up much of the series, is in second person. Worth taking a look at if you’re writing that POV.