ElectricBlue
Joined 10 Years Ago
- Joined
- May 10, 2014
- Posts
- 16,382
Yes, powerful strange.
Second person narrative
- Thread starter dogpak
- Start date
PrevertOne
Really Experienced
- Joined
- Oct 21, 2009
- Posts
- 1,945
I second that, not.
I prefer third to first and dislike second intensely, especially when used with first. I find it annoying when I click on a story with an interesting hook, only to find a "you" in the first or second sentence. I like to observe the protagonist from a distance and let the writing style and story itself draw me in. I don't need the author pointing at me and saying "You!"
I prefer third to first and dislike second intensely, especially when used with first. I find it annoying when I click on a story with an interesting hook, only to find a "you" in the first or second sentence. I like to observe the protagonist from a distance and let the writing style and story itself draw me in. I don't need the author pointing at me and saying "You!"
Areala-chan
Knight Saber
- Joined
- Jan 6, 2003
- Posts
- 480
Outside of very specific literary genres like the "Choose Your Own Adventure"-style story, or "Fighting Fantasy"-style game book, it's difficult to do a true second-person narrative well. I've written exactly one very short story in this style that I feel worked, but it wasn't for Literotica.
Second-person, to me, is best used as a seasoning in a story, where it's usage is limited but the intention is to make the reader shift gears for just a few minutes and truly try and place him- or herself into one particular situation. My go-to example for second-person done right is Matthew Stover's novelisation of "Revenge of the Sith". It doesn't dominate the book. Stover only uses it a handful of times for a handful of paragraphs. When it makes its appearance though, it's a smack in the head, a kick in the teeth.
This is the passage from when Anakin awakens on the surgical table, having been welded into the armour that now sustains his life as Darth Vader:
"[Y]ou rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf. You can remember where the power was, but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.”
That, to me, is far more powerful than a simple third-person recitation by an omniscient narrator of what Anakin felt at the time. It's immediate. It forces you to consider, just for a few sentences, what it's like to go from one of the most powerful Force wielders in the galaxy, to being one who can only hear the faintest whispers of its darkest aspect because so much of what you are, what you were, is now artificial.
"And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame."
Compare that to the film, where all anyone remembers of that scene is a laughable, whiny "NOOOOOooooo...".
"Revenge of the Sith" wouldn't work entirely in second-person, but for those brief asides, it could do no better in my mind.
Second-person, to me, is best used as a seasoning in a story, where it's usage is limited but the intention is to make the reader shift gears for just a few minutes and truly try and place him- or herself into one particular situation. My go-to example for second-person done right is Matthew Stover's novelisation of "Revenge of the Sith". It doesn't dominate the book. Stover only uses it a handful of times for a handful of paragraphs. When it makes its appearance though, it's a smack in the head, a kick in the teeth.
This is the passage from when Anakin awakens on the surgical table, having been welded into the armour that now sustains his life as Darth Vader:
"[Y]ou rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf. You can remember where the power was, but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow. In the end, you do not even want to. In the end, the shadow is all you have left. Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself—And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.”
That, to me, is far more powerful than a simple third-person recitation by an omniscient narrator of what Anakin felt at the time. It's immediate. It forces you to consider, just for a few sentences, what it's like to go from one of the most powerful Force wielders in the galaxy, to being one who can only hear the faintest whispers of its darkest aspect because so much of what you are, what you were, is now artificial.
"And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame."
Compare that to the film, where all anyone remembers of that scene is a laughable, whiny "NOOOOOooooo...".
"Revenge of the Sith" wouldn't work entirely in second-person, but for those brief asides, it could do no better in my mind.
