Emph
Member
Ok break through!!!
I attempted to write some second person today! woo hoo!
I attempted to write some second person today! woo hoo!
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2nd person narration (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Emph
- Start date
nwatts
Active Member
Good on you.
Make sure you get as many people to read it as you can. I don't know anyone who has pulled off an extended 2nd person piece without pissing someone off. So good luck. There's so rarely any substance to a 2nd person piece. Self indulgent intellectual masturbation. If you can wrap some kind of cohesive narrative around it that won't throw off your reader, i'll give you several gold stars.
Make sure you get as many people to read it as you can. I don't know anyone who has pulled off an extended 2nd person piece without pissing someone off. So good luck. There's so rarely any substance to a 2nd person piece. Self indulgent intellectual masturbation. If you can wrap some kind of cohesive narrative around it that won't throw off your reader, i'll give you several gold stars.
Emph
Member
Geez... thanks for the encouragement.nwatts said:
Kidding. I know it is a risk but despite what you say I hope to pull it off.
nwatts
Active Member
Haha, nah I don't want to stifle you. It's just something I like to see people avoid. 
Post up what you've written.
Post up what you've written.
Emph
Member
Nope sorry but I am slightly paranoid about my work. If you want to still, you can read my first draft. Give me about a fortnight and it will be ready.
nwatts
Active Member
Hah, ok. You'll need to get over that if you want to do writing at uni.
Emph
Member
Oh I just don't want to post my work up here yet because I know that some people may not have started their story yet and so might pinch mine (shock! Horror!)
Asheroth
Paranoid Android
I'd be interested in reading the 2nd person section if you could manage to bring yourself to show part of your work to an 06'er I've started my story, there's no way I could use anybody else's work at this point as my concept is too weird.
I've started my story, there's no way I could use anybody else's work at this point as my concept is too weird.
ur_inner_child
.%$^!@&^#(*!?.%$^?!.
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For Anyone Who Wants To Read It Without Straining Their Eyes Click:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/015...773-2061400?_encoding=UTF8&p=S00G#reader-link
Otherwise, here is an excerpt of Italo Calvino's If On A Winters Night A Traveler. (second person). The book starts off quite simply this way. After this excerpt you start becoming a character, the author dictates who you meet at the bookstore etc when you go back and ask for a refund etc. It's quite clever, particular how it seems to let you let go of the second person confrontation, and simply accept it.
-------------------------------------------------------
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concertrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe the haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "i'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.
Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.
Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book proppped against the horse's mane, or maybe tied to the horse's ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrips, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.
Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion on two cushions on the arms of a sofa, on the wings of a chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first. If you want to, put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don't stand there with your shoes in one hand and the book in the other.
Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes. Do it now because once you're absorbed reading there will be no budging you. Make sure the page isn't in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within your reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.
It's not that expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimatley this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.
So, then, you notice in a newspaper that If on a winter's night a traveler has appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookship and bought the volume. Good for you.
In the shop window yo uhave promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there edxtends for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunatley Your Days Are Numbered. With a paid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Sombody, Books That Everyboyd's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of fortress, where the other troops are holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning to Read For Ages,
the books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At the moment,
the Books YOu Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Casem
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This SUmmer
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
The Books That Fill You With SUdden, Inexplicable Curiousity, Not Easily Justified.
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; this is relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago WHich It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's TimeTo Sit Down And Really Read Them.
With a zig zag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general)( and the New Books By AUthors Or On Subjects Completley Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new, you seek in the new).
All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter's night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established.
You cast another bewildered look at the books around you, (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off the leash of his master, come to resbue him), and out you went.
You derive a special pleasure from just a published book, and its not only a book you are taking with you but its a novelty as well, which could also be merely that of an object fresh from the factory, the youthful bloom of new books, which lasts until the dusk jacket begins to yellow, until the viel of smog settles on the top edge, until the biding becomes dog-eared, in the rapid autumn of the libraries. No, you hope always to encounter true newness, which having been new once, will continue to be so. Having read the freshly published book, you will take possession of this newness at the first moment, without having to pursue it, to chase it. Will it happen this time? You never can tell. Let's see how it begins.
---------------------------------------------------
That will do
http://www.amazon.com/gp/reader/015...773-2061400?_encoding=UTF8&p=S00G#reader-link
Otherwise, here is an excerpt of Italo Calvino's If On A Winters Night A Traveler. (second person). The book starts off quite simply this way. After this excerpt you start becoming a character, the author dictates who you meet at the bookstore etc when you go back and ask for a refund etc. It's quite clever, particular how it seems to let you let go of the second person confrontation, and simply accept it.
-------------------------------------------------------
You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino's new novel, If on a winter's night a traveler. Relax. Concertrate. Dispel every other thought. Let the world around you fade. Best to close the door; the TV is always on in the next room. Tell the others right away, "No, I don't want to watch TV!" Raise your voice - they won't hear you otherwise - "I'm reading! I don't want to be disturbed!" Maybe the haven't heard you, with all that racket; speak louder, yell: "i'm beginning to read Italo Calvino's new novel!" Or if you prefer, don't say anything; just hope they'll leave you alone.
Find the most comfortable position: seated, stretched out, curled up, or lying flat. Flat on your back, on your side, on your stomach. In an easy chair, on the sofa, in the rocker, the deck chair, on the hassock. In the hammock, if you have a hammock. On top of your bed, of course, or in the bed. You can even stand on your hands, head down, in the yoga position. With the book upside down, naturally.
Of course, the ideal position for reading is something you can never find. In the old days they used to read standing up, at a lectern. People were accustomed to standing on their feet, without moving. They rested like that when they were tired of horseback riding. Nobody ever thought of reading on horseback; and yet now, the idea of sitting in the saddle, the book proppped against the horse's mane, or maybe tied to the horse's ear with a special harness, seems attractive to you. With your feet in the stirrips, you should feel quite comfortable for reading; having your feet up is the first condition for enjoying a read.
Well, what are you waiting for? Stretch your legs, go ahead and put your feet on a cushion on two cushions on the arms of a sofa, on the wings of a chair, on the coffee table, on the desk, on the piano, on the globe. Take your shoes off first. If you want to, put your feet up; if not, put them back. Now don't stand there with your shoes in one hand and the book in the other.
Adjust the light so you won't strain your eyes. Do it now because once you're absorbed reading there will be no budging you. Make sure the page isn't in shadow, a clotting of black letters on a gray background, uniform as a pack of mice; but be careful that the light cast on it isn't too strong, doesn't glare on the cruel white of the paper, gnawing at the shadows of the letters as in a southern noonday. Try to foresee now everything that might make you interrupt your reading. Cigarettes within your reach, if you smoke, and the ashtray. Anything else? Do you have to pee? All right, you know best.
It's not that expect anything in particular from this particular book. You're the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything. There are plenty, younger than you or less young, who live in the expectation of extraordinary experiences: from books, from people, from journeys, from events, from what tomorrow has in store. But not you. You know that the best you can expect is to avoid the worst. This is the conclusion you have reached, in your personal life and also in general matters, even international affairs. What about books? Well, precisely because you have denied it in every other field, you believe you may still grant yourself legitimatley this youthful pleasure of expectation in a carefully circumscribed area like the field of books, where you can lucky or unlucky, but the risk of disappointment isn't serious.
So, then, you notice in a newspaper that If on a winter's night a traveler has appeared, the new book by Italo Calvino, who hadn't published for several years. You went to the bookship and bought the volume. Good for you.
In the shop window yo uhave promptly identified the cover with the title you were looking for. Following this visual trail, you have forced your way through the shop past the thick barricade of Books You Haven't Read, which were frowning at you from the tables and shelves, trying to cow you. But you know you must never allow yourself to be awed, that among them there edxtends for acres and acres the Books You Needn't Read, the Books Made For Purposes Other Than Reading, Books Read Even Before You Open Them Since They Belong To The Category Of Books Read Before Being Written. And thus you pass the outer girdle of ramparts, but then you are attacked by the infantry of the Books That If You Had More Than One Life You Would Certainly Also Read But Unfortunatley Your Days Are Numbered. With a paid maneuver you bypass them and move into the phalanxes of Books You Mean To Read But There Are Others You Must Read First, the Books Too Expensive Now And You'll Wait Till They're Remaindered, the Books ditto When They Come Out In Paperback, Books You Can Borrow From Sombody, Books That Everyboyd's Read So It's As If You Had Read Them, Too. Eluding these assaults, you come up beneath the towers of fortress, where the other troops are holding out:
the Books You've Been Planning to Read For Ages,
the books You've Been Hunting For Years Without Success,
the Books Dealing With Something You're Working On At the moment,
the Books YOu Want To Own So They'll Be Handy Just In Casem
the Books You Could Put Aside Maybe to Read This SUmmer
the Books You Need To Go With Other Books On Your Shelves
The Books That Fill You With SUdden, Inexplicable Curiousity, Not Easily Justified.
Now you have been able to reduce the countless embattled troops to an array that is, to be sure, very large but still calculable in a finite number; this is relative relief is then undermined by the ambush of the Books Read Long Ago WHich It's Now Time To Reread and the Books You've Always Pretended To Have Read And Now It's TimeTo Sit Down And Really Read Them.
With a zig zag dash you shake them off and leap straight into the citadel of the New Books Whose Author Subject Appeals To You. Even inside this stronghold you can make some breaches in the ranks of the defenders, dividing them into New Books By Authors Or On Subjects Not New (for you or in general)( and the New Books By AUthors Or On Subjects Completley Unknown (at least to you), and defining the attraction they have for you on the basis of your desires and needs for the new and the not new (for the new you seek in the not new and for the not new, you seek in the new).
All this simply means that, having rapidly glanced over the titles of the volumes displayed in the bookshop, you have turned toward a stack of If on a winter's night a traveler fresh off the press, you have grasped a copy, and you have carried it to the cashier so that your right to own it can be established.
You cast another bewildered look at the books around you, (or, rather: it was the books that looked at you, with the bewildered gaze of dogs who, from their cages in the city pound, see a former companion go off the leash of his master, come to resbue him), and out you went.
You derive a special pleasure from just a published book, and its not only a book you are taking with you but its a novelty as well, which could also be merely that of an object fresh from the factory, the youthful bloom of new books, which lasts until the dusk jacket begins to yellow, until the viel of smog settles on the top edge, until the biding becomes dog-eared, in the rapid autumn of the libraries. No, you hope always to encounter true newness, which having been new once, will continue to be so. Having read the freshly published book, you will take possession of this newness at the first moment, without having to pursue it, to chase it. Will it happen this time? You never can tell. Let's see how it begins.
---------------------------------------------------
That will do
darkdamsel
New Member
Emph said:
Your not really crazed, just ambitious and brave.. like me, i'm writing my entrie major work in second person, quite challenging to begin with, but as you get used to the style it becomes quite easy, and often i find it difficult to slip out of.
"The Bride Stripped Bare" by Nikki Gemmel is an awesome book, its written in second person, and is very easy to read.
The thing i find most attractive about second person is how it incorporates the reader into the story. Esp in "The Bride..." while the reader is not made into the character, the involvment and intimacy with the character is really a thing to be experienced.
Having and intimate knowledge of your characters that you intend to write about in second person is really important, otherwise how can you convey that knowledge to the responder if you dont know it in the first place. Something i found very hard in my first few pieces of practice material.
In anycase thats my 10c for the moment...
ciao xoxox
dasphoebus
Pastamancer
I've got a short attention span so I didn't read all those posts before this - forgive me if I reiterate.
Second person is well suited to a "choose-your-own-adventure" piece of pulp fiction, or maybe a text-based RPG game from twenty years ago. Unless your story is set in yonder times, touting brave knights and ye olde mages, I don't think second-person is a great point of view unless you package a D20 with your manuscript.
Second person is well suited to a "choose-your-own-adventure" piece of pulp fiction, or maybe a text-based RPG game from twenty years ago. Unless your story is set in yonder times, touting brave knights and ye olde mages, I don't think second-person is a great point of view unless you package a D20 with your manuscript.
Emph
Member
Sorry... but you're wrong. I have finished my third draft now and the second person narration has worked successfully in all of them.dasphoebus said:
But everyone has thier own opinion.
Emph
Member
I am waiting for my gold stars nownwatts said:
dasphoebus
Pastamancer
Oh, sorry. Could I read your so you can prove me wrong, otherwise, I'll hold my opinion and tell everyone what I think.