December / January Flash Fiction Challenge: Try a new perspective

All About Writing’s latest writing challenge offers the winner a literary assessment on 5000 words of writing worth R 2750 / £ 150 or a voucher to the same value to use on one of our courses or programmes.

This month, we’re  inviting you to play with Point of View in an unusual way – to see what effect it creates. We’re seeking flash fiction written from the second-person perspective. Write no more than 250 words. Paste your entry into the body of an email and send to pam@allaboutwritingcourses.com by midnight on 31 January 2020.

Second person can be used to achieve a number of different effects:

• “You come into the room, take off your dress . . .” Using “you” gives us the impression of a character removed from himself, as though she were watching herself from a distance.
• Second person is most commonly used in combination with first person, where a first person narrator addresses the reader. Jane Eyre, for example, speaking of Mr Rochester, famously said: “Reader, I married him.”
• You can address an implied audience less explicitly, with phrases like: “You wouldn’t think so, would you”, or “a nasty habit, I know.” It gives a sense of intimacy between writer and reader, as though they are being directly addressed.
• You can use second person to address another character – this character could be present, absent or dead. It can be done in letters.
• It can even be a good way of introducing a slightly unreliable character, if he protesteth too much and keeps harping on about something.