Is it just me?-Query with many POVs?

I've never written a query from two or more POVs, but I do think they're more difficult to write, partly because you are trying to introduce more than one person in the same amount of space given for a query. It is slightly easier for romance (or variations thereof) if the two protagonists' stories are intricately intertwined. I've seen many of these done well. :>

One bit of advice I've heard is to just show one POV. It's sort of similar to how we don't really name all the characters in our story in the query, we just pick one to talk about. When you have limited space you shorten the best you possibly can. The synopsis will allow you much more wiggle room to explain the POV changes and give the other character's stories.

Very hard to do, and easy to overload the query with names. Remember, there's only about 200 words in the summary, and there isn't any time to introduce the characters. My was with four, and it was very choppy. Synopsis wasn't much better. In my case, I had to revise the book to shift the focus of the storyline to a primary main character. Still four main characters, but only one was the star. Query became a lot easier to write. I did the same thing for my current book, which also has four main characters.

I tried to write one years ago and it was rough. There's just not enough room. One thing you can do is pick something thematic that all the POVS have in common and run with a theme idea versus a specific plot idea (though still show plot if that makes sense at all). Like if everyone is looking for redemption, you can talk about how these four folks battled whatever to find X kinda deal. Those are trickier since you don't have a solid protag to work with, but it can be done.

You might try looking ta the back cover copy of multiple POV books and see how they handle it. Cover copy is pretty close to query format in most cases. They just gloss over the details instead of giving specifics.

There's a couple of reasons why multiple POVs are hard to write. First is you have to have a transition in there. Most people don't bother, leading to a big jump from paragraph one to paragraph two. It causes their writing to look awkward. But to do the transition requires the writer to waste some precious words.

The second reason has been stated, where getting us hooked on more than one person is hard in the space and time restrictions inherent to a query.

A third reason is the diversity of interests that two or more protagonists have. In theory, they should have a mutual goal, but so often as they appear in the query, they don't. This means you have two dilemmas that you're trying to present. Again, time and space tend to make this hard to work.

That being said, I've seen many primo multible point of view queries

The reason in QLH that we emphasis the single POV is it's easier to teach and write.

Best of luck,

Jim Clark-Dawe

Anonyouth said:

Is it me, or queryies for MSs that have two or three POVs, are harder to write (not that any query is easy to write and not that I have ever written a good query in my short life).

Like how did/would C.S. Lewis have written a query for Narnia?

Or how did/would Dakota Lane have written her query for the book Gothic Lolita?

Click to expand...

I would have queried Narnia by referring to 'the children' whenever possible, and by making sure I didn't stray into subplots involving some of the individual characters.