The Complete Guide to POV

Second person plural past tense

Another rare, because constricting, POV.

Second person plural past tense (You [both/all of you] went...) isn’t popular.

Though it’s in fairly common use.

It’s the POV a parent or carer would use, when telling their children, collectively, about some part of their childhood.

You loved going to granny’s! You always used to fight over who would sit in the front of the car, because you all wanted to get there first. And then you ran down into the orchard shouting, ‘Granny! Granny!’

This is also a good voice for writing about a band.

Paul McCartney said of The Beatles —

We were an entity. Mick [Jagger] used to call us the four-headed monster. We would show up at places all dressed the same.

I’ve had to make up a longer example, as if came from a story.

You headed down the alley, away from the Cavern. You were chatting to one another, clearly all feeling pretty good about how the gig had gone. Your reputation as a group had been a bit fragile, especially in the wake of the opening slot at the Palais, but after the way you’d played the encores that night — with that A&R man right near the front — everyone knew you were back. You carried your instruments up to the van, but it didn’t take you long before you saw something was wrong. Some fucker had slashed both front tires, and it was going to take you ages to get home.

With all these second person voices, I am starting to feel as if I’m saying the same thing, and that’s because I’m reacting to something a bit samey.

A first person voice can soon become very distinct. Although the ‘I’ is a shared bit of language, what surrounds it can have a vocabulary, a syntax, a rhythm, a stink all its own. We never forget we’re listening to Huck Finn or Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or Holden Caulfield or the narrator of My Year of Rest and Relaxation.

All you narrations are constantly projecting an image onto an uneven surface, which is us, which is each individual reader.

When a narrative voice says, ‘I felt’, there is no doubt; when it says, ‘You felt’ — especially when that means ‘You, all four of you, felt’ — there’s not the same certainty.

A second person voice can tell you that you loved eating the tripe and onions — every last bit of it.

Did you?

And so although second person is often seized upon as a very immediate POV, I think it introduces a tiny perpetual hesitation.

This can be used to great effect, especially for central characters who are themselves doubtful, but it could start to be grit in the gears.

The collective you, being addressed by the second person plural past tense, is — the reader can probably assume — one that has since broken up.

You were all my lovely little children, back in granny’s orchard, but now you’ve gone your separate ways, and are living your separate lives.

Technically, to show this slow or abrupt separation within a POV that is constantly lumping individuals together — that is more than a challenge, it’s a perversity.

But there’s nothing wrong with those.

In summary:

Second person plural past tense.

Likely upsides

Gathering, powered, nostalgic, fragile.

Possible downsides

Lumpen, decided, summary, bounded.