If this subject has already been covered here, please ignore this. 
We have discussed such things as present-tense narrative, but how about second-person narrative? I once mentioned the idea to a friend who wants to be a writer, and he didn't know what I was talking about, but the approach has been used by many authors.
This is from Wikipedia:
Although not the most common narrative technique in literary fiction, second-person narration has been a favoured form in various literary works within, notably, the modern and post-modern tradition. In addition to many consistently (or nearly consistently) second-person novels and short-stories by, for example, Albert Camus, Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Carlos Fuentes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Georges Perec (A Man Asleep, 1967), the technique of narrative second-person address has been widely employed in intermittent chapters or passages of narratives by William Faulkner, Günter Grass, Italo Calvino, Iain Banks, Nuruddin Farah, Jan Kjærstad, and many others.
So I might write a short story that begins: "You wake up and see a stained ceiling. You blink and realize that you are in a dingy room. What happened last night? Were you at the Last Chance Saloon or the Watchurwallet Bar? Slowly, you begin to remember that there was a blonde somewhere, and you think you spoke to her, or was that in a dream? You try to pull yourself up but find that...."*
What do you think of the second-person approach? Does it take a master (Faulkner, Grass, Camus) to bring it off? Would you use it?
*I'm good at writing crappy prose.
We have discussed such things as present-tense narrative, but how about second-person narrative? I once mentioned the idea to a friend who wants to be a writer, and he didn't know what I was talking about, but the approach has been used by many authors.
This is from Wikipedia:
Although not the most common narrative technique in literary fiction, second-person narration has been a favoured form in various literary works within, notably, the modern and post-modern tradition. In addition to many consistently (or nearly consistently) second-person novels and short-stories by, for example, Albert Camus, Michel Butor, Marguerite Duras, Carlos Fuentes, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Georges Perec (A Man Asleep, 1967), the technique of narrative second-person address has been widely employed in intermittent chapters or passages of narratives by William Faulkner, Günter Grass, Italo Calvino, Iain Banks, Nuruddin Farah, Jan Kjærstad, and many others.
So I might write a short story that begins: "You wake up and see a stained ceiling. You blink and realize that you are in a dingy room. What happened last night? Were you at the Last Chance Saloon or the Watchurwallet Bar? Slowly, you begin to remember that there was a blonde somewhere, and you think you spoke to her, or was that in a dream? You try to pull yourself up but find that...."*
What do you think of the second-person approach? Does it take a master (Faulkner, Grass, Camus) to bring it off? Would you use it?
*I'm good at writing crappy prose.
