While writing in second-person narration, I’ve noticed that I have the ugly tendency to start sentences with ‘you’ or ‘your’. Constantly starting sentences with ‘I’ in first-person narration is generally something that more seasoned writers try to avoid, and as far as I can tell, it gets a lot worse with second person.
For instance:
You take a moment to catch your breath, taking in the fragrant smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. The study remains unlit, though the ground between is terribly exposed. You glance at the lit window of the room where the guests must still be.
You reason that a dead run is your best option here; any attempts at stealth or concealment would simply slow you down and increase the odds of detection.
One of the ways people seem to avoid this is by having lots of dialogue, but that’s not an option when your character is doing something alone. Another fix is using the passive voice more often, but that in turn is another pitfall for beginner writers and removes the character from the foreground of the action.
eg: “The figure of a crouching man is seen.” is a lot less impactful than “You see the figure of a crouching man.”
If it’s only the starting word being “you” that’s a problem, you can swap the sentence structure so that it’s in the middle instead (see what I did there?). Also, a lot of the "you see"s and "you reason"s and the like are completely unnecessary, since the “you” is the POV character so any seeing and reasoning not attributed to someone else is by default done by the “you”.
So for example, my editing of your example down to a single starting-You (if you want to keep the glancing; there’s a lot of taking in the first sentence though that bothers me as well)
Taking a moment to catch your breath, you take in the fragrant smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. The study remains unlit, though the ground between is terribly exposed. You glance at the lit window of the room where the guests must still be.
A dead run is your best option here; any attempts at stealth or concealment would simply slow you down and increase the odds of detection.
I think your comment about sensory descriptions not requiring the involvement of the POV character is great. Describing what the character sees/hears/feels very directly and very step-by-step definitely seems like a newbie pitfall.
I personally feel like “Taking a moment…” versus “You take a moment…” has the issue of diffusing the impact in the same way the passive voice does, though.
EDIT: I think “You take” matches better to catching your breath because it is a much stronger action while “taking in the […] smell” is something that you register incidentally, if that makes any sense.
How about some free indirect discourse for the thoughts? E.g.
You take a moment to catch your breath, taking in the fragrant smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. The study remains unlit, though the ground between is terribly exposed. The window’s lit, so the guests must still be there.
A dead run is the best option here; any attempts at stealth or concealment would simply slow you down and increase the odds of detection.
Another strategy is to think through what is being felt/experienced. This gets back to showing and telling a bit.
To revise part of your example:
The fragrant scents of damp earth and decaying leaves flood your lungs with each ragged breath. The study remains unlit, though the ground between is terribly exposed. One floor and roughly two rooms away, a bright window marks where the guests must still be.
This does get rid of the “take a moment” bit but you are showing this moment happens because of the breathing, checking of windows, and strategizing. I don’t need to be told the MC is taking a moment because I see them taking it.
Another strategy is removing filters (e.g., think, reason, feel, hear, see).
To revise another part:
A dead run is your best option here; any attempts at stealth or concealment would simply slow you down and increase the odds of detection.
I tend to do a few whole-draft sweeps for the prose, to feel how it reads and vary sentence structure.
If I was doing a sweep on the example text, I might revise to reduce the “you” sentence starts:
But I could also take a look at the focus of the sentences. Unless the decay and damp is particularly relevant to the situation or the PC, which of course it may be, I might rework more dramatically to focus on the descriptions on the presence/absence of other people and the worry about being seen:
To defend the use of the damp and decay a bit, I think it works decently enough to show rather than tell that the character is hidden among vegetation, it sets the season and highlights that they are inhaling hungrily. This is the last concealed space before exposed terrain.
Of course there are other issues with my draft paragraph too, 2 uses of ‘take’, the lit/unlit thing being repeated, etc.
Tastes in prose vary, but I think there’s a huge difference in tone between this and actual passive voice. “Taking a moment, you see…” and “You take a moment and see…” both have a defined subject, “you,” and mainly differ in the order of verbs. That’s miles away from “A moment is taken.”
I don’t 100% disagree that the former could be a bit less impactful in some contexts. Only faintly, though; not enough to take it out of the repetition-avoidance toolbox.
Re-reading this thread, I am reminded of the importance of writing deliberately. Or, at least, editing deliberately.
Starting every sentence or clause with “you” or “your” is easy. When words are flying and you’re working to capture a scene, the easy words and constructions jump so easily to your keys.
Strong writing, though, requires more deliberation. Some writers can do this in the moment, for which I applaud them, but after is just as good. This means examining your writing for your intent and desired impact.
You, you, you gets repetitive, hews closer to telling than showing, and, for these reasons and others, will eventually bore readers. Not quite the impact I want to have as a writer. Varying the structures, though, requires thought. Deliberation.
Everyone in this thread has offered different solutions, all of which could work, depending on authorial intent.
Anyway. I love discussions about the mechanics of writing like this.
To be honest, I think this is one of the things writers agonize about and readers barely notice, like the fear of overusing said.
Tastes vary, but as long as you aren’t starting successive sentences with it, you becomes invisible. What’s not invisible is the author twisting into contortions to avoid it, just like replacing 100 invisible saids with wheezes, snaps, bellows, and ejaculates is rarely an improvement to the prose. You has an unobtrusive immediacy the alternatives lack.
Repetition is not inherently bad, and in an interactive novel where the cognitive load is much higher, you is like a metronome, bringing the player’s attention back to the rhythm of author describes situation, player acts. When authors get too cute, it feels like playing a tabletop RPG with a game master who is unable to describe things clearly and keeps burying the lede on what is actually happening.
But that’s just how I feel about it, and I come to storygames from the game side more than the story one.
In your example, the only change I’d make is cutting the third you:
You take a moment to catch your breath, taking in the fragrant smell of damp earth and decaying leaves. The study remains unlit, though the ground between is terribly exposed. You glance at the lit window of the room where the guests must still be.
A dead run is your best option here; any attempts at stealth or concealment would simply slow you down and increase the odds of detection.
