Hello and welcome to the east side of Highgate Cemetery. My name is Ann Amelia and I'll be your tour guide today.

Yes, sir, I am a graveling, and no, ma'am, those sorts of questions don't offend me. I understand you're curious. I live at the corner of Kirkaldy and the Opened Casket.

There are many opened caskets, crypts and even graves. The fence path by the north wall is full of them, but we won't be going that way - there are too many underslabbers. And before you ask, yes, the underslabbers are very dangerous. They mostly stay underground during the day, but they'll come out if they hear travelers on the path.

Oh, there are paths all over the cemetery. Don't think the underslabbers are ghosts; they just live in the open spaces

Is the hook here that we're touring a graveyard, or are the underslabbers the hook?

If you can keep this up for the whole story I think you might have something. The humor, I felt, was well placed.

A second-person direct address to a reader is kind of out of vogue, though. The second paragraph's addressing "sir" and "ma'am," deftly defuses the discomfort and awkwardness of a direct address by incorporating persons of the tour group in the frame of the story and leaving a reader outside of the frame, or at least unnoticed at the back of the tour group. I feel that vicarious participating standing creates a desirable layer of separation which effectively distances a reader from the readily perceivable imperative or lecturing nature of second-person addresses. I actually feel like following the tour group rather than going off on my own and exploring independently. That's well done, in my opinion. It puts a reader in the frame of the presentation without seating one in a lecture hall for a dreary slide show.

This one is in a second-person objective narrative point of view so far. The reportorial quality of objective narration, even in second person, blocks a subjective attitude, where very human opinion, judgmentalism, disapproval, wrong assumptions, self-doubt, biases, and other controvertible personal truths cause, deepen, and maintain a reader's potential intimate resonance and immersion. Subjective's strengths allow for deeper intimate immersion than objective.

Direct addresses in second-person objective are also more challenging to portray psychic access than third or first person, other than through superficial thoughts or through spoken introspection. A second-person objective speaker is in the foreground of a depiction, depicting an unspoken thought crosses the line of perspective when it turns away from the audience to face the narrator's internal self. And back again, and back and forth again whenever deep thought is indicated; perspective turning can become confusing and burdensome.

The hook for me is the anticipation of the tour with the hint of danger.

I spent a good portion of my working career as a tour guide. One common phenomena I noticed was that a speaker speaking in front of a tour group attracts other curious parties. The other was that direct second person addresses singled individuals out, and far better to name the person addressed than to say You. Doing so engages an individual in a participatory dialogue, at least initially from introduction courtesies. Also, engaging in dialogue encourages people to talk about themselves, which people do like to do. About 20% appreciated the attention; the others didn't like focused attention around strangers, preferring anonymity. I blunted that alienation by introducing everyone to each other. Ice breaking works wonders in person. I've wondered how that might effectively be incorporated in story.

I believe second-person is like first person personal though, avoiding the personal pronoun and depicting a story in third person auxilliary as much as possible is ideal. As this opening does get into immediately.

In the way that first-person personal firmly locates a narrator in the frame of a story, this second-person narrative voice does too. However, as noted, psychic access is almost impossible to pull off well in second-person direct, which is the most meaningful perogative of narrative. A handicap to be sure, but one that careful writing might work around. I'm especially intrigued by the potential of Ann turning inward in the ending and revealing a deep personal truth. A psychic access turn at the final turn for dramatic effect? Hmm, perhaps that method might rely on another form of second person, second-person reflexive voice.

I don't think it's too clever, but the audience appeal potential is initially lower than other narrative persons. There are very few examples of published second person in the fantastical genre canon, and not many more in the other genres. That can be good or bad news. The field is wide open, but readers automatically reject second person because it's not as familiar and is fraught with difficulties and alienating qualities.

Edit: James Alan Gardener's "The Ray-Gun: A Love Story" nominated for Best Novellete Hugo 2009 and Nebula 2008, opens with a direct address, somewhat in second person, but it's in second-person obviative. Obviative voice is probably the most distancing one available. And on top of already distancing second person, and obviative voice, the narrator is distantly remote from the frame of the story. I'm still not sure how I feel about that opening. It certainly stretches the limits of English language narrative voice. http://www.asimovs.com/nebulas09/Raygun.shtml

I thought the opening worked well, and that you were probably going to carry on the sentence to tell us about "the spaces" between something or other, so the end didn't worry me either.

I wrote a tour guide story in first person direct address recently, but the action was described as a past event. I didn't try to make the action in the present. My story was even shorter (about 1200) so I nearly got away with it.

I think you could too, if you manage to indicate the action through the dialogue of the guide without the style becoming irritating and restrictive. The beginning is quirky and engaging and I'd read on.

If you want a reader, pop it over and I'll try to give it a decent crit.

Mike Allen, "The Button Bin"

http://transcriptase.org/fiction/allen-mike-the-button-bin/

"Please tell me this is a joke," Ann Amelia said as she lowered her copy of the Evening Standard. She looked up at Ned, one of the volunteer porters for London's Highgate Cemetery. "The article - you read it, right?"

"I read it," Ned said, gesturing for her to come join him at the door to the porter's lodge. "It gets better - come look."

"No. He's not outside. He is not going to be on my tour!" Ann Amelia dropped the paper and hurried to join Ned.

Having read the story, I can see it working well. You might have to find an extra twist for the end this way, though. If you do decide to change it, you have a fantastic resource in the first version as you have half the dialogue already written.

In the new version (and depending on POV) would Ann think of herself as "Ann Amelia" and Eric as "Investigative journalist Eric Taylor"? I know you haven't established how deep the POV is, but the character names struck me straight away (particularly investigative journalist Eric Taylor).

The second version opens with a theme park scene in a staff breakroom. Being an earlier opening start to the same story, I now see that my first impression was wrong. However, though the second opening is in more palatable third-person objective and allows readily for the direct address of second person later on as an auxilliary voice, my entertainment interest is not as potent because Ann Amelia is no longer portrayed as an undead tour guide. I saw that depiction as an intriguing imaginative premise. The second version completely cancels it out, and graveling just becomes an insider's term for a graveyard docent.

extrinsic - you aren't wrong about your impressions from the other start; she is undead (well, a ghost possessing a human body, close enough) and she's about to give what I hope is a ripping good graveyard tour... and she's got to do it without letting a obnoxious journalist-tourist wander off and get himself killed :-) I'll have to play around with the 3rd person more and see if I can't bring over some of the charm from the 2nd person intro.