Nathan Bransford - The Forums

Hi Nathan,

My MS was originally in 3rd person, from three POVs (the heroine, who has the majority of the face time, and two love interests, who have considerably less, but do have their own stories besides their relationships with her). A while ago, I rewrote the whole thing so the heroine's parts are in 1st person, and it works a lot better and I want to keep it that way. However, I now don't know what to do with the two other POVs. So far, I've kept them in. Especially in the beginning of the book when the heroine knows nothing, they add a lot in terms of both reader understanding and suspense. They also have stories of their own that would get mostly lost if I got rid of them. That being said, the heroine is most definitely the main character and has the great majority of the scenes.

My question is whether a story that is mainly 1st person with two 3rd person close POVs scattered throughout is just too weird, and might be an automatic dealbreaker for some agents. My readers have liked the 3rd person POVs, but they are not industry professionals, and I just don't want to make the mistake of doing something agents consider so off the wall that it is an automatic no.

If it makes a difference, the MS is a YA thriller/adventure.

Thanks so much for your thoughts!

Honestly, it may not work for some people, but more important is to write it the way you want to write it. It's more about the execution than obeying all the rules. I would focus as much as possible on making it a seamless and natural transition between the POVs, and if you get feedback that it's jarring you may have to figure out how to smooth that out for the reader.

Thank you for the advice!