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- Nov 24, 2017
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Queries with traditional protagonists seem to follow (from what I've read on successful ones) a fairly basic "formula":
Who is the main character?
What does he want?
What is keeping him from getting what he wants?
What must he sacrifice to get what he wants?
(Outline above is courtesy of the Query Shark)
Or a slight variation of that, but basically Protagonist -> Needs -> Antagonist -> Sacrifice. And while you write that, you are supposed to display your voice.
Now, I've written a genre novel (Scifi) that does not feature this classic setting. It's a multi-POV novel where the protagonist already gets what he wants in the mid-point of the novel. Then he turns into the antagonist for the rest of the characters of the novel. (There is an actual literary term for this, it's called a false protagonist apparently. I googled it so it must be true.) This is not unheard of in genre novels (like A Song of Ice and Fire), but it's fairly uncommon, so I couldn't find anything to work with. The issue of "what is a protagonist" has been widely discussed in this forum, and someone will probably ask if I'm sure that the character actually stops being the protagonist and if I'm merely confused. That's a fair criticism, but it's one that can't made without reading the novel, so I hope those answering will just trust me
I've tried to force it into the normal mold by a few different methods. First I wrote a few queries with only the first half of the novel, but I didn't like that, even though it's easy to do with the traditional formula. It also makes the plotting look weak and the novel seem boring. Then I tried to include the false protagonist, but I just can't get it to work and it comes across like I don't know who my protagonist is (which is technically true, but also one of the stronger aspects of the novel). I will post a try on the appropriate forum once I have the necessary 50 posts, but I'm posting here first if someone else has been through a similar thought process and has found a successful method of writing such a false protagonist into their query. Or if anyone has any idea how to solve this, even querying a novel with multiple protagonists.
I know this is a hard sell for a first novel, and will not likely go well with agents, so I'm looking for a way to get my query stronger. How would you go forth querying such a novel?
Who is the main character?
What does he want?
What is keeping him from getting what he wants?
What must he sacrifice to get what he wants?
(Outline above is courtesy of the Query Shark)
Or a slight variation of that, but basically Protagonist -> Needs -> Antagonist -> Sacrifice. And while you write that, you are supposed to display your voice.
Now, I've written a genre novel (Scifi) that does not feature this classic setting. It's a multi-POV novel where the protagonist already gets what he wants in the mid-point of the novel. Then he turns into the antagonist for the rest of the characters of the novel. (There is an actual literary term for this, it's called a false protagonist apparently. I googled it so it must be true.) This is not unheard of in genre novels (like A Song of Ice and Fire), but it's fairly uncommon, so I couldn't find anything to work with. The issue of "what is a protagonist" has been widely discussed in this forum, and someone will probably ask if I'm sure that the character actually stops being the protagonist and if I'm merely confused. That's a fair criticism, but it's one that can't made without reading the novel, so I hope those answering will just trust me
I've tried to force it into the normal mold by a few different methods. First I wrote a few queries with only the first half of the novel, but I didn't like that, even though it's easy to do with the traditional formula. It also makes the plotting look weak and the novel seem boring. Then I tried to include the false protagonist, but I just can't get it to work and it comes across like I don't know who my protagonist is (which is technically true, but also one of the stronger aspects of the novel). I will post a try on the appropriate forum once I have the necessary 50 posts, but I'm posting here first if someone else has been through a similar thought process and has found a successful method of writing such a false protagonist into their query. Or if anyone has any idea how to solve this, even querying a novel with multiple protagonists.
I know this is a hard sell for a first novel, and will not likely go well with agents, so I'm looking for a way to get my query stronger. How would you go forth querying such a novel?