Re: 1st, 2nd, 3rd - 4th person POV??

On Fri, Sep 24, 2004 at 12:24:41PM -0400, Roger Mills wrote:
[...]
> In the various creative writing classes I took waaaaay back when (with a
> deliciously bitchy teacher) we had to do exercises in all these methods; 2d
> Pers. is the hardest, rather weird, and uncommon in Engl. prose probably for
> good reason.
Back in my highschool days, I had an English teacher who was convinced
it was impossible to write a story in the 2nd person. I proved her
wrong by writing precisely such a thing, and she absolutely loved it
(she says she likes its melodramatic tone). Unfortunately, I've lost
my only copy of it, and I don't think I'd be able to reproduce it
anytime soon.

Anyway, it's something crudely along these lines: the opening
paragraph begins with a hypothetical (thus making it easier to use the
2nd person from the start), and then proceeds to develop what happens
in the hypothetical scenario. In this case, it's describing how you
walk up to the bank machine and stand in line, with the person in
front of you taking his sweeeeet time and the person behind you
getting really impatient. Eventually, this person in front of you
finally gets his stuff together and leaves, and so you walk up to the
machine and start looking for your bank card, which unfortunately you
have misplaced. So on you search, flipping through your wallet,
scavenging through your trouser pockets, and dropping your comb, loose
change, and bits of paper on the floor, etc., until you made a
thorough fool of yourself while the person behind you frowns and
grumbles at you like an angry impatient bear.

(Notice how the use of the 2nd person doesn't actually hit you until
you look twice. :-P)  The closing paragraph then summarizes the moral
of the story, basically taking a poke at today's age of plastic money
and endless cards that fill up your wallet to bursting point. The
original story, of course, was more elaborate than this, but you get
the idea.


T

--
If you want to solve a problem, you need to address its root cause, not just
its symptoms. Otherwise it's like treating cancer with Tylenol...

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