This isn’t going to be a meaty post, but it’s a little issue that comes up every once in a while in slush: query letter POV. In short, your query letter voice should always be in first person. It’s a very small tweak and, honestly, it’s not going to make or break your query letter by any stretch of the imagination, but in case you’ve been wondering, you should discuss your plot and characters, and then introduce yourself and do your breezy sign-off in the first person.

Query Letter POV Should All Be In First

Mary is not a fan of people who talk about themselves in the third person. It’s an awkward tonal shift in the middle of a query and all she can think when reading one that introduces its author in third is about the author sitting there and writing about themselves in the third person and how weird it must’ve felt, because she herself finds it weird. See? She considers this paragraph a case in point.

So your query letter POV should all be in first. And, for the love of all things good, watch your query letter tone and don’t write it in your character’s POV. A very simple reminder and a question you didn’t ask, because maybe you didn’t think to, but now you know how to handle query letter voice!

Hire me as your query letter editor and I’ll help you nail the tone and content of your query.