How to Do it Right: Second-Person Narrative

by Mary Bast

If ever there was a rule that most editors and publishers agree on, it's this: Don't write a novel with a second-person point of view. In fact, that's exactly the feedback Jay McInerney got when he was drafting his debut novel . . . Second-person narration can bring readers closer to the story. But often, it's actually used to create a greater sense of distance between the true narrator and the story they're telling--as editor Matthew Sharpe suggests is the case with "Bright Lights, Big City." (Second Person Point of View: A Writer's Guide.)

As indicated in the above quote, writing experts tend to argue against using the second-person perspective, in creative nonfiction as well as fiction. Though Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City "took the literary world by storm [it's] often cited as the exception that proves the rule."

Second-person point of view can alienate readers if they aren't able to identify with the author's thoughts and feelings. However, Ed Coonce's Creative Nonfiction Pushcart Prize nominated "The Photograph" demonstrates how to do it right, as Seb Reilly suggests in "The Advantages and Disadvantages of Second-Person Perspective:" submerging readers "into the narrative completely . . . delivering sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch . . . ." Coonce's second-person narrative of his war experience and its aftermath allows the author some distance from traumatic events while engaging readers as if we, too, were there: 

      You remember what his face looked like when he fell onto the ground. The smell of cordite and white phosphorus hung over that ruined landscape, like it always did. You and those around you had been awake for the last twenty-four hours; one cannot sleep during a battle. You must keep one another alive; there are only four of you.
       Hot war had come for you on the small outpost atop a grass-covered mountain . . . You were in their country, it wasn't yours, get out, the lady on the radio said . . .
       A hundred yards down the mountain path, you came face to face with an enemy soldier, bloody and limping, a black rag tied around his head. He raised his weapon.
       You were faster . . .
       You still awaken at three a.m. . . . Sometimes, at the very moment you are taking that fatal shot you wake up screaming . . . .

*     *     *

Ed Coonce is an Encinitas CA artist, writer, actor, and the Creative Director for Theatre Arts West. An alumnus of San Diego State University where he studied art and anthropology, he hosts a weekly meetup, East Hell Writers.

Read Coonce's Creative Nonfiction, "The Photograph" (pp. 31-32)

and other works in Bacopa Literary Review 2019
(Print Edition or Digital Format),

2019 Pushcart Prize Nominations

CONTRATULATIONS TO Bacopa Literary Review 2019's SIX PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEES:

   Michael Dylan Welch, "Shengxiao" (Haiku)

Michael Dylan Welch has served as Poet Laureate for Redmond, Washington, and runs National Haiku Writing Month and his website Graceguts, devoted mostly to poetry. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in hundreds of journals and anthologies in more than twenty languages. He lives in Sammamish, Washington.

   Raphael Kosek, "When the saints come among us" (Poetry)

Raphael Kosek is 2019 Dutchess County NY Poet Laureate. Her chapbook, Rough Grace, won Concrete Wolf Chapbook's 2014 Prize, and Brick Road Poetry Press has published her poetry collection, American Mythology. Kosek's poems have appeared in  Poetry East, Catamaran, Briar Cliff Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Marist College and Dutchess Community College.

   Avra Margariti, "The Calligrapher" (Fiction)

Avra Margariti is a queer Social Work undergrad from Greece. She enjoys storytelling in all its forms and writes about diverse identities and experiences. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Daily Science Fiction, The Forge Literary Magazine, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Argot Magazine, Glintmoon, The Arcanist, Flash Fiction Online, Terse Journal, 50-Word Stories, pif Magazine, and other venues.

   Jeff Streeby, "A Brindle Bull: After Kuoan Shiyuan" (Mixed Genre)

Jeff Streeby is an American poet and haibunist. His mixed-form collection, An Atlas of the Interior, is available from Unsolicited Press. His chapbook of haibun, Wile: Sketches from Nature, was published by Buttonhole Press. Streeby is an Associate Editor for poetry and prose at OPEN: Journal of Arts & Letters.

   Miranda Sun, "Red Elegy" (Poetry)

Miranda Sun is twenty years old. An alumna of the NYS Summer Young Writers Institute and Kenyon Review Young Writers Workshop, her work has been nationally recognized by the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards and published in Body Without Organs, Lammergeir, TRACK//FOUR, Red Queen, riverbabble, Sobotka, YARN, The Gravity of the Thing, and more. She loves bubble tea and aquariums, and currently reads for Ninth Letter Online..

   Ed Coonce, "The Photograph" (Creative Nonfiction)

Ed Coonce is an Encinitas CA artist, writer, actor, and the Creative Director for Theatre Arts West. An alumnus of San Diego State University where he studied art and anthropology, he hosts a weekly meetup, East Hell Writers.

by Senior Editor Mary Bast