finnlongman:

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Time for my second post about POV and THE WOLF AND HIS KING, my retelling of ‘Bisclavret’ which comes out in the UK on 27/11 (and in the US in January). In my last post, I introduced you to Bisclavret’s perspective. But the king’s viewpoint is a little more controversial: it’s in second person (see below for his opening paragraphs).

Second person is a tragically misunderstood phenomenon – so many people assume it’s intended only for reader-inserts, and that the ‘you’ being addressed is always the audience. That’s not what I’m doing here. I saw somebody once say to imagine that second person is listening in on a story being told to somebody else, which is closer. I love the simultaneous intimacy and distance it offers. When we’re focused on a character in second, they can’t consciously lie the way that a first person narrator can: they’re not in control of the narrative in the same way. But there are things we can never quite see, too…

I chose to use second person for the king in part because a ‘king’ is not an independent identity. It’s fundamentally relational, presupposing the existence of subjects, subordinates, observers. You can’t be a king by yourself: it’s defined by other people, and whatever you were before that becomes consumed by and subsumed into it, so that you see yourself only in the mirror they offer. Second person seemed to evoke that dependency, and the way that existing in this role means being shaped by the expectations and perceptions of others.

Second person also has practical benefits – it allows me to do pretentious things like only naming one character in the book (Bisclavret), and it avoids any number of pronoun woes that I would otherwise run into, with so many nameless he/hims around. I mean, can you imagine how confusing that would get?

Mostly, though, I used second person because it felt natural. The very first lines I wrote of this book were from chapter 33, one of the king’s chapters, and I never considered writing them any other way. Many people don’t like second person, but I’ve been gratified by the number of early readers who said they ceased to notice it after the first page or two, because it felt so natural in context. Even my editor said she was originally unsure, but on reading it, knew this was the only way it would work.    

So if you’re someone who hears “second person” and thinks Oh No, or assumes this must be addressed to the reader, or otherwise can’t imagine how this would work… I hope you’ll give it a chance, and perhaps it’ll grow on you. I think it can do things that no other perspective can do, and while it’s definitely not right for every story, there are some that need it. This, for me, was one of them.

The king’s opening paragraphs:

And as a special treat for Tumblr (I didn’t put this one on Instagram), here’s a glimpse at chapter 33, and the lines that preserve some of the very first words I put on the page for this book:

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[This post is part of a series. You can find my post about Bisclavret-the-man’s chapters here, and Bisclavret-the-wolf’s chapters here.]