Engaging Your Reader With Second Person Point of View

Second person point of view is one of the surest means of engaging your reader in ways the other points of view do not. For instance, can you offer your reader a drink or cigar using omniscient or even first person point of view? Obviously not, unless of course you deviate into the second person point of view.

One prime example of second person point of view is found in Elick Moll’s novel Seidman and Son. In the first chapter you, the reader, are a gentleman Mr. Seidman shares a park bench with while he rests from walking his rambunctious dog. Here is the introductory paragraph:

Excuse me. You don’t mind if I share this bench with you for a couple of minutes? Got to rest a little from this dog. You wonder sometimes how could such a small creature hold so much energy. So much emotion. Sit down already, Sam. Give me a chance to catch my breadth at least.  

Notice too, how the author addresses not only you the reader but the dog as well. In the next two paragraphs, you, the reader, get to participate in a way that is different from simply being directly addressed. Instead of Mr. Seidman asking you all the questions, your character, the guy on the park bench, gets to ask a few of his own.

Excuse me, I didn’t make the introductions. My name is Morris Seidman, I’m in the dress business, wholesale, I got a factory on Seventh Avenue. This is Sam, short for Samson, fox hunter, retired. The name?  Well, a Saint Bernard he’s not, like you see. When he was a puppy you could hide him in your pocket and there would be room for your glove besides . . . So the first time my boy Harold saw him he says, “Hello, Samson.” And that was the name.

Here you, the reader, ask Mr. Seidman the name of the dog. The exchange continues in the next paragraph with this:

Thank you, I’m not much for cigarettes. Could I offer you a cigar?  No, I’m not going to the shop today. For one day my business could run itself. What is your line, may I ask? You’re a writer? Is that so? I got a big respect for writers. Listen, I’ll ask you something, if you wouldn’t laugh. From where does it come the idea for a story? Somebody should start out with nothing, an empty page, and pretty soon there’s a story, people living through things—well, it’s kind of magic, no? . . .

Here you offer Mr. Seidman cigarette and ask him if he is going into work. So as you can see, the questions can go both ways in the second-person point of view, allowing you, the writer, to speak to your reader directly. The reader, in turn, gets a part in the story.

When used skillfully, the second-person point of view provides the reader an extraordinary experience and the writer a way to give the reader an active roll in the story.