I Second That Person · 5:13am Aug 29th, 2023
Dear Readers (especially all you Ohioans with your secret plans):
Greetings from, well, that place. There's... lots of corn around here. I'm here for a week, hopefully of actual vacation, hanging out with family, eating lots of ice cream, being lazy, etc., etc. Oh, sure, there is some "help parents around the house with multi-person projects," but that's secondary. If you love someone, you make the time for them. Pretty sure that was in show canon too.
This week's story, Blink, is another Quills N' Sofas speedwrite that I've been letting sit for a while in lieu of an editor (which I still need thankyouverymuch, so if anyone has any recommendations or wants to help...). ["Traitor." - Internal Editor]
It was for a "Poetic Prose" speedwrite, with the prompt of "Autumn." And autumn, for a very long time, always meant the first day of school. Which I don't remember ever enduring with much fondness.
["We are suffering, father. We are suffering and you are taking joy in it. Why."]
Twenty-one first days of school later, however, I can see why these repeating transition moments matter. I'm an uncle many times over. The few times I get on Facebook I'm bombarded by the usual first-day-of-school photos from all my friends and family. A lot of that filtered, second-hand, into Shining Armor. Every year, a constant. Every year, a change. What is it like to watch that, with your own eyes? The wishing among parents that they could slow time down just a little bit is one I hear all too often.
Which brings me to the "you," the infamous Second Person perspective.
As I was telling folks in an Open Read and Critique at EFNW with last week's story, I'm a big fan of second-person perspective, which I think is unfairly maligned and under appreciated. Yes, yes, yes, I'm aware of all the criticisms. It's annoying to readers, it's tiring to read for long stretches, editors don't like it, it's gimmicky, it's mostly used for marketing. And then, of course, it's mostly used here on FimFic for NSFW stories, giving it a rather... seedy reputation.
["I hear it's very popular with... ahem... self-insert fics."]
[Also, yes, that is a terrible pun. #SorryNotSorry.]
That's all the downsides. Here are the upsides that I have found.
First, it brings urgency and clarity. I tend to write long and verbose in first- or third-person, abusing commas, shoehorning in asides, stopping to smell or at least describe the smell of the roses, and it gets very long and hard to edit. But second-person forces efficient writing. When I'm in your head, I know I'm on borrowed time. Keep things short. Keep the story moving. It keeps my bad habits in check.
Second, it's easier to get into the head. Observations, dialogue, memories, thoughts, daydreams, musings. It's all one flowing [literal] stream of consciousness.
Third, it aids realism, whether from an emotional perspective like my little story, or larger, longer works. You already know what the world looks like from your own perspective. A few subtle tweaks to technologies, or timelines, or relationships is easy enough to do!
The book that convinced me second-person was a worthy perspective is from Scottish speculative fiction writer Charles Stross. Halting State, and its sequel, Rule 34, are mystery/police procedurals set in a very near future. Both are told from second-person perspective, each alternating between three narrators. Stross doesn't overstay in any one narrator; the chapters are short and punchy. And he's able to build three unique narrators, each with a different style of internal monologue. (Which is hard to do... but I like this challenge.) And the near-future setting works extremely well; a future where everyone has a 3D printer instead of a paper printer on their desk seems... quite plausible.
Alas, while there was supposed to be a third book in the trilogy, Stross stopped at two after Edward Snowden's revelations, noting that everything he was writing was coming true and he was in danger of being overtaken by the future:
Halting State wasn't intended to be predictive when I started writing it in 2006. Trouble is, about the only parts that haven't happened yet are Scottish Independence and the use of actual quantum computers for cracking public key encryption (and there's a big fat question mark over the latter—what else are the NSA up to?).... Sometimes I wish I'd stuck with the spaceships and bug-eyed monsters. Realism in fiction is over-rated.
Another of my favorite second-person stories is Italo Calvino's If On A Winter's Night A Traveler.
Calvino was a lover of language and experimentation; he practiced "constrained writing" for fun; he read widely across languages and genres. The novel itself is a homage to his favorite novels, to writing, and to readers of all languages and times. His main character-- You, the Reader-- have to make your way through ten misprinted novels, international intrigues involving book editions, and secret societies upon secret societies to find the truth... and another Reader whom you will fall in love with. It's a wonderfully romantic book. I even gave it as a wedding gift to a friend of mine who also loved books. You'll enjoy this one just for the sheer playfulness of it.
So now you know why I write second-person whenever I want to. You should too. Because what better place to experiment with doing something new than fanfiction! If it makes it big, you can always just file off the serial numbers.
Various and Sundry: My laptop is apparently on its last legs. Parts are cracking and falling off, and a few days ago the shift keys on the keyboard decided to stop working. This is not acceptable; capital letters, @ symbols, and exclamation points are each essential! After opening it up and trying to re-seat the keyboard cable, approximately half the keys had given up the ghost. Oh well. New laptop incoming. At just around the same time, my parents' refrigerator also decided to cool things down to no less than 50 degrees [F, in more ways than one]. So now that's among the next week's projects of things to fix, do, and now replace.
Next week it's back to Texas, and bosses who need things, but at a slower pace. So I got that going for me, which is nice. More time for speedwrites. Or longer stuff. Who knows?
I keep meaning to read Calvino, but just never seem to get around to it.
If you're interested in book recs, another few books that (imo) make excellent use of second person:
N. K Jemisin's Broken Earth trilogy -- secondary world fantasy, one perspective is second person. Note that if you have triggers you should check the CWs first, because it touches on enough difficult stuff that I'd almost certainly forget if I tried to list them out.
Karin Lowachee's Warchild -- far future sci fi, it's been a while since I read it so I may be misremembering but IIRC it's told primarily in either first or third; still, I found the second person sections very well done and effective. Some CWs here too, the main one I recall is underage sexual assault, though IIRC it's not graphic.
I sadly haven't read either of the books you mentioned yet, though I'm fond of Charles Stross' Twitter threads (back when Twitter was useable ...); I'll have to check them out at some point!