I love Janet Burroway’s writing craft book, Writing Fiction. Burroway has been a godsend, from my first few years of college up until the present moment. I truly appreciate the depth to which Burroway explores the all-important writing topics, from the basics in chapter one to breaking down each point of view. Whether you’re a beginner or advanced, every writer can benefit from Burroway’s book.
But while I was reading, I started to notice something, a pattern that I’ve seen in a lot of craft books over the years: a very sparse section on second-person POV. While first person and third person got well-deserved sections (they’re more commonly used after all), second person’s section was very short.
When I was a kid, I would read any writing craft book I could get my hands on, and one similarity between all of them was the sparse section on writing second person. While it’s true that most literature follows either the broader categories of first or third person, Burroway herself states that a handful of contemporary authors have experimented with this form. And there are some fantastic examples of second-person stories out there.
One example of a spectacular second person POV story is Adam-Troy Castro’s “Pitcher Plant,” and you can find in The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019. First published in Nightmare Magazine, “Pitcher Plant” makes full use of the second-person POV to put the reader in the shoes of Death itself. The story capitalizes on the horror of the story by placing the reader/protagonist in direct danger. This technique draws the reader in rather than calling attention to the fact that they’re reading a story.
In my personal experience with “Pitcher Plant,” I had shivers by the end; I still remember that raw sense of terror, almost as if even closing the book and finishing the story would not let me escape the madness because I myself was the character.
This type of meta storytelling is rife with possibilities, as Burroway mentions, but more people can take advantage of it.
It is unlikely that the second person will ever become a major mode of narration,
(Burroway 304)
This is an arguable point. Creating a successful story by effectively using the second-person POV is a difficult skill to master.
As it is now, second person is somewhat rare, but the stories that do use this form are among the most memorable to me. Though extremely difficult to master, this mysteriously scarce POV, if allowed more in-depth exploration in writing craft books paired with many examples, could eventually become as prevalent as first- and third-person narration.
In fact, with so many contemporary writers experimenting with second person, some even popular enough to be featured in a major anthology and many appearing in niche literary journals, second-person narration could become a most valuable tool, both for unsettling the reader (as in the case of “Pitcher Plant”) and for connecting even closer to the reader to immerse them in the story as Burroway suggests.
On a more personal level, I’m super interested in exploring the second-person narrative form. As it stands now, I consider the second person to be extremely underrated and a gem hidden in each POV section of many writing craft books. Let’s learn more about it so that it won’t seem as scary to use.
Rachel Sandell 