"NFW!" or "Hell, yeah!": Second-Person Point of View
One final craft lesson for 2025
A detailed list of artist and writer residencies is accessible here—most in the U.S; a second list, more international, here.
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Hello fellow literary travelers,
This past week…hokay…
2025 is one of the front-runners for worst year of the 21st century so far (may 2026 be far, far behind it).
A source of light in the gloom: Cole Haddon over at 5AM StoryTalk wrote movingly here about Rob Reiner and his career.
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Second-Person POV
In the fiction workshops I’ve taught since graduate school (back when Clinton was in the White House), it’s a rare semester if no one turns in a story written in second-person point of view (i.e. “you” as the subject).
Like wearing white after Labor Day or whether it’s fine, just fine! to walk around town with a toothpick clamped between your lips, second-person POV has its detractors and champions.
Some literary magazines’ submissions guidelines specifically state they won’t consider stories in second-person. (I also remember seeing stories set in cafés and dialogue without quotation marks included in this list of submission crimes.)
Today’s post explores why second-person is both denigrated and adored. When it comes to atypical POVs, the more expansive first-person plural has always interested me more (ref. Julie Otsuka’s The Buddha in the Attic, and Karen Brown has a first-person plural story in her Prairie Schooner-prize-winning collection Little Sinners and Other Stories that I love.)
But several canonical second-person stories come quickly to mind: Lorrie Moore’s “How to Become a Writer,” Jamaica Kincaid’s “Girl,” and Junot Díaz’s “How to Date a Brown Girl.” As for second-person novels, Italo Calvino’s If on a winter’s night a traveler, Mohsin Hamid’s How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia, and Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City are among the most well-known.
📙 PROS:
1. It can create intimacy and urgency
When done well, second-person feels immediate and immersive.
It collapses the distance between reader and the character(s) in the story
It’s a shortcut to interiority, self-interrogation, confession
This can make it especially effective for stories featuring:
Obsession or guilt
A moral reckoning
Memory and self-evaluation
2. It can be deeply psychological
This gives second-person a natural home in stories about identity, shame, regret, and survival, ones with:
A dissociated consciousness
A fractured self
A voice of accusation, longing, or denial
3. It openly signals artifice
Second-person reminds us we are reading a constructed narrative. Rather than hiding the artifice, it uses it.
For character-driven fiction, this can:
Undercut realism in interesting ways
Highlight power dynamics
Make the act of narration itself part of the story
4. It can feel daring and distinctive
Because it’s relatively rare, second person:
Immediately sets a tonal expectation
Can feel bold, confident, and controlled
When done well, readers often remember the book because of its POV.
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📗 CONS:
1. It risks alienation
Instead of immersion, some readers experience distance:
“This isn’t me.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“Why are you telling me how I feel?”
When identification or engagement fails, the immersive experience of reading the story will collapse for that reader.
2. It’s hard to sustain
Second-person is exhausting to maintain over long stretches.
It offers less flexibility than first- or third-person
Repetition of “you” can become noticeable or grating
Writers may struggle to vary sentence structure without awkwardness
As a result, second-person is often dismissed as a novelty.
3. It can feel coercive
Second-person tells the reader who they are, what they feel, and what they do:
You are afraid. You hesitate.
More than a few readers (and editors) bristle at this, feeling their agency overridden. If the emotional cues don’t align with the reader’s own instincts, the effect can feel artificial or manipulative.
4. It’s easy to do poorly
Second-person magnifies weaknesses.
Vague or generalized actions feel hollow
Overly prescriptive emotions feel false
The voice must be extremely precise
📕 When second-person works best:
The “you” is clearly defined (and is a version of the narrator, not the reader)
The emotional arc is specific, not generalized
If readers connect with a second-person narrator, the experience can feel affirming, but unbearable/insufferable if they don’t.
That extremity is probably why second-person endures—not as a default, but as a deliberate and risky artistic choice.
You are reading Christine's post on second person and it's convinced you not to use it!
p.s. You have me thinking about narrating something in 2nd person! Dare I try it for a novel?