Asking for help question

I write most of my work in 3rd person, I think many do. First person can be limiting, and 3rd person gives you a little more freedom, 3rd person omniscient even more so. 2nd person is one I find really hard. I have great admiration for Erin Morgenstern who wrote The Night Circus, she did most of it 2nd person, present tense and it never sounded forced or wrong. Suzanne Collins also did a great job with The Hunger Games by making most of that 2nd person present tense as well. John Scalzi did 3 Codas to his recent Hugo award winning novel Red Shirts, and he did them in 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd.

I will have to re-read The Hunger Games, I remember it as being in first person.

You could be right there actually. I think it was first person present tense, so sorry for the slip up there. She still deserves kudos, though, because present tense is hard to do and to maintain it over 3 books is quite an achievement.

"Bright Lights, Big City" by Jay McInerny, is a good, relatively recent example of a successful novel told from the second person POV. I liked that particular book, but in general, I'm not a big fan of the second person. Seems more of a gimmick to me, in that I think stories can be told more efficiently, and more entertainingly, in either the first or third person. With second person, I have trouble forgetting I am reading something - I often feel the author's presence, when I should just be immersed in the story.

I am also puzzled by CS's question. So, I'll address it to CS in the SECOND person, just to be annoying: You write in third person quite a bit, and just because you write about a guitar shouldn't be much different than when you write about a person. You still use an omnipresent narrator to describe something - the same as when you describe scenery, a house, or a well spanked rump.

I think POV is one of the most important decisions you make when setting out to write a story. So much depends on it. It sets the tone, defines the characters, places constraints (or not) on the narrative. What are you going for? Illustrating the characters' feelings? Then don't use 1st person. Describing a personal voyage of discovery where others' motives are mysterious? Then DO use 1st person. It all depends and i've experimented with them all, even 2nd person ("The Second Person").

Writing in 2nd person IS a challenge, but it is really the best way to make the reader become as invested in the emotions of the scene. You keep telling the reader what he's doing and you describe to the reader what he is feeling and with any luck (and a little skill), you'll drag the reader right into the story ... to BE the story rather than a spectator.

1st Person, to me, has very specific feels. One, is an orientation of admission: I did this, that or another thing. In this sense, mixing 1st person with 2nd person can be an effective element. "I did this, and now YOU are doing thus."

Try this fun (if you're a masochist) little drill. Write a short scene ... then rewrite it twice more so that it is written in all three persons and see what it feels like. You quickly get a sense of the directions you can take a story, just by changing the orientation!

@ rollin

POV is not the same as "person." 1st person & 2nd person pretty much define POV, but third person does not. I agree, though, that selecting both POV AND "person" is a critical choice in defining a story.

Anyone interested in (plenty) more on the subject can read my long and boring interview in WW.

It is even possible, although rare, to have a first person story where the Pov Is not that of the narrator. An "as told to" story can do this "Then he told me that he went to the movies, and there he met..." Occasionally a 'sidekick" story can do this, like Dr Watson for Sherlock Holmes, but even more so. But normally a first person story has the first person as PoV character.

The complex PoV changes in Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky are part of its attraction, for me. And then there are unreliable narrators.

I suppose it's even possible to have a story written in the 2nd person, with the narrator addressing the reader/observer, but directing the story to be experienced through the POV of a character.

So many ideas here!

Certain genres seem to lend themselves to a certain type of story telling. Most urban fantasy for some reason seems to be written in first person. I have to admit, even when I write in first person, I often ask myself why and how is this person telling the story? Are they writing a diary or a blog.