Is this thynge on?

Shut up. Just sit there and shut up.

You don't know what you're doing, or why. You're thinking in completely the wrong terms, so just stop it. No -- I said no, you're doing it again -- stop.

Clearer?

Good.

The second person narrative: a dangerous experimental weapon deriving from the earliest days of the English novel. Prior to this, you-forms confined themselves to romantic poetry, where "you" was usually a way of flattering the reader into believing they were the adored "she".

Theoretically designed to encourage reader engagement with a new form, I'm undivided on the question of usage: avoid. About 40% of people in England will be captured by it -- a good result -- but 60% will be repelled: it is an invasive construction. Perhaps less restrained US readers and confirmed narcissists would be more susceptible.

Myself, I'm in the captured camp; I'm pathetically suggestible, but even I have limits. Iain Banks' Song of Stone used a second-person narrative to deadly boring effect. I think its intimacy tricked him into letting his guard down; it ended up as sludge.

Second-person prose: dangerous to readers and writers.

You know what I mean, don't you?