MARJORIE SANDOR: I am fascinated by what we call in the business of creative writing point of view, also known as narrative perspective. And what intrigues me about it-- I guess I could split into two ways of thinking. As a reader, I find it a really interesting way to figure out what's happening in a story. I love retrospective narrators who are looking back from a long distance in time and the kind of tension that that creates, so it's almost like there are two narrators there-- one who's experiencing things at the moment and one who's looking back. And it's pretty interesting.
I'm also interested in it from the point of view of the writer and the process of writing, because taking a sort of different point of view can open up the story to you as a writer in a different way when you're still in the thick of creating it. So I often experiment with second-person point of view, which is "you." I'm essentially-- my character is addressing herself.
And it's a very dreamlike point of view. It creates a feeling of a trance as you're writing it. And it forces you to stay in the moment longer. You might rush on and make the plot move forward. But if you really want the detail and the richness of experience, the longer you can hold in a moment as you're actually in the early stages of creation, the richer your story is going to be and the more surprises you're going to discover early on.
So I write in second person a lot. I never-- not never, but almost never-- leave the story in second person. But every once in a while, I do.
And I have a little ghost story that's actually an imitation of an Edith Wharton ghost story that I wrote in second person, and I thought, oh, I'll never be able to get this past an editor. Editors at magazines are sick of second-person point of view. But I got lucky, and it got taken. And it's called DarkFruit.com.