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The Treacherous Second Person | 11 comments (9 topical, 0 hidden)

This Is Good Food For Thought... (3.00/0) (#6)
by CheeseburgerBrown on Sat Mar 05, 2005 at 05:54:37 AM PST

...As I'm currently composing a short story which is told entirely in the second person.

Mercifully, it will be a short short story as I couldn't imagine I could throw too much "you" at the reader before they started asking, "Who?" too much.

I chose the second person as a device to illustrate someone with amnesia regaining their memories. They are truly being informed of their basic identity, like any reader of a second person text.

I'm from a small, unknown country in the north called Ca-na-da. We are a simple, grease-loving people who enjoy le weekend de ski.

: sounds like an intriguing approach (3.00/0) (#7)
by sabeth on Sat Mar 05, 2005 at 06:51:17 AM PST

I think the second person can be a very powerful device, and certainly allows for effects that would be much harder (or impossible) to achieve otherwise. It's just more volatile at the same time. Mostly it's when I get an author-disguised-as-second-person vibe that I really want to punch through the page, poke the author in the eye and scream, "If you're really talking about yourself, say 'I,' dammit!" But hey, I fall into the trap myself -- it's easy to do.
Anyway, I'm happy if this article helped at all. Maybe you could post the story here when it's finished, in diary-space or via a link?

--ich sage nicht, was ich will, sondern was die Sprache will--
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The Treacherous Second Person | 11 comments (9 topical, 0 hidden)

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