The ABCs of POV: Second-Person Narration
Who is telling your story and how are they telling it? Perhaps you’ve thought about this and deliberately picked a narration style before you started writing; perhaps it hasn’t crossed your mind and you just write from a point of view (POV) that feels natural. Regardless, it’s useful to understand the different options and how they impact your story, so let’s dive in!
Second-Person narration is much less common than first or third. It uses the “you” pronoun, which means you’re either talking to the reader directly (e.g. “You’ll never guess what happened next); you want the reader to insert themselves into the story, such as in a choose-your-own adventure novel (“You go to the shelf and pick up the book. Inside is a spell to summon demons”); or the you is a specific, individual narrator who knows limited information, similar to first person.
Second-person is unique, because it can encourage a reader to feel closer to a character, like they are in that narrator’s shoes, but it can also accomplish the exact opposite if the reader feels like they would never behave like that character does. Just the fact that the narration style is seldom used and feels weird to the reader may contribute to them feeling distant from that character.
Most of the novels I’ve read that use second-person effectively use it sparingly; only some chapters or sections are narrated that way, and the other chapters use first or third to ground the reader.
Example of Second-Person Narration
Here is an example of second-person narration from the adult fantasy novel The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin:
“You are she. She is you. You are Essun. Remember? The woman whose son is dead.
“You’re an orogene who’s been living in the little nothing town of Tirimo for ten years. Only three people here know what you are, and two of them you gave birth to.
“Well. One left who knows, now. …
“Later the next day, someone knocks at the house’s front door. You do not stir yourself to answer it. That would require you to wonder who is there and whether you should let them in. Thinking of these things would make you consider your son’s corpse under the blanket, and why would you want to do that? You ignore the door knock.”
N.K. Jemisin uses second-person in some of The Broken Earth trilogy for specific reasons, which I won’t elaborate much on because spoilers, but it has to do with a character experiencing dissociation due to trauma. Second-person works so well for that, because readers will feel that wrongness and otherness simply from the strange narration style. The snippet above is from the opening chapter of the first book—can you feel the narrator’s shock at the death of her son, like she isn’t quite able to process what is currently happening? The effect wouldn’t be quite the same in first or third person.
It’s fine to experiment with second-person narration for fun, but choose it deliberately for a story intended for publication. Use it to reinforce themes, add distance or a sense of displacement, or create an intrusive sort of intimacy that may make readers feel uncomfortable—like they are trapped inside a character’s head.
