The Complete Guide to Writing Fiction in Second Person

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy. You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head. The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge. All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder.

This is the opening passage of Jay McInerney’s Bright Lights, Big City, the most well-known novel written in second-person point of view, where the primary pronoun is “you.”

How did you feel about being inserted into the story? Were you transported into a different life? Or did you resist feeling, thinking, or doing things that don’t match who you are? Did it suck you into the story or shove you out?

It’s natural to tell a story in first person with the pronoun “I”: “Then I opened the door . . .”

Or to recount events someone else experienced using third person with the pronouns “he,” “she,” or “they”: “Then he opened the door . . .”