Query Letter Advice: How to Pitch a Multi-POV Novel
I've always struggled with pitching my books, whether to literary agents or my mom, mostly because my stories are multi-POV. From Por Vida on, my novels have always had four main points of view. I won't get into why I prefer that structure here, but it has always been difficult to describe a story with four heroes. Do I focus on one? Do I write a paragraph for each?
And what about the query letter? Should I expand there, or should I try to keep it short?
Recently, I attended a Reedsy event where Kathleen Foxx (kathleenfoxx.com) answered some questions about query letters. My question was about how to handle multi-POV books, and this was her answer:
[M]ention that it’s a multi-POV novel in your metadata paragraph. You probably won’t be able to show all POVs in the plot paragraphs, but you can give us a bit of detail about each character and then show how the inciting incident brings them together and how their goals, conflicts, and stakes are intertwined. The last line of tension should focus on what they’re all up against and what they all stand to lose if they fail, or how their stakes are interconnected (i.e., if one character wins, the other characters lose).
Mentioning the multi-POV is not something I would do in a blurb on Amazon, but it definitely makes sense in a query letter. Her advice about showing how the multiple characters interact and how their stories are intertwined is great advice. Basically... why are there four characters and what do they have to do with each other?
The Reedsy event was pretty great. Does that mean I'm excited about writing my query letters now?
No. Of course not.
But could you imagine?
