I’ve seen first person view, I’ve seen third person view, but never second person.
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Naratively, it’s where the reader is the main character, but not the narrator.
Easy way to write a 2nd person story:
Step 1: Write a first person story
Step 2: ctrl+F “I”
Step 3: Replace with “You”
Second person written down, is the pronouns ‘you, your, you’re’ and other similar pronouns. Second person from a persons account, imagine a car chase in a game, you are controlling a car, but your POV is from the car chasing you
2nd person doesnt really apply to video games. 1st, second 3rd is more of a literary device, that we partially co-opted for videogames.
I may be wrong here, but as i recall,
– 1st person is hearing inside someones head, – 2nd person is a narrator (or newsreader even) talking to you the reader/viewer, and
– 3rd person is the writer talking about someone else.
This roughly translates to games in the 1st and 3rd person, in terms of where the camera is placed, but theres no real ‘2nd person’ (that i can think of off the top of my head at least) in games
Think of Choose Your Own Adventure, or Zork.
Second person –
You wake up in a forest. There is dappled sunlight coming through the canopy. To your east you can hear a babbling brook. What do you do?
Vs
1st person –
I woke up in a forest. I could see sunlight filtered through the canopy above. To my east I could hear a babbling brook.
Vs
3rd
He woke in a forest. He could see sunlight filtered through the trees. To his east, he heard a babbling brook.
2nd person doesn’t get used a lot in fiction in general, but I remember the short story “Paper Slippers” being pretty effective.
An English professor once told us about a second person novel:
“You open the door. You go thru the door…”
It doesn’t sound right. You can’t make it sound right.
Hi there! English teacher here.
Recipes and instructions are almost always written in 2nd person point of view. 2nd person is YOU, the reader, and the directions are asking you to do them.
Consider this example: “First, [you] mix the flour, sugar, and spices in a bowl. Then, in a separate bowl, [you] stir together the eggs, butter, and brown sugar. [You] combine all the ingredients well. [You] pour into a greased pan and [you] bake for 40 minutes until done.”
The “you” is normally missing from the directions, but it is still there, hidden. We call this “command” form, and the missing subject “you” is called the “understood ‘you.'”
Other works, like the classic “Choose Your Own Adventure” series, are also in 2nd POV. You, the reader, are the protagonist, and you get to make choices about what happens by flipping to different sections of the book. It’s not a super common POV for a narrative, though. (It’s a little gimmicky.)
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