Looking at some popular novels, even with similar themes and audiences, there is a great variation in overall length and number of chapters. The first installment in the Harry Potter series totaled 17 chapters with about 77, words total whereas The Hunger Games topped out at 27 chapters with a word count of 99, Here are the things you should keep in mind while trying to determine how many chapters YOUR novel should have:.
In trying to determine the number of chapters your novel will have you must first understand WHY you might want to include chapters at all. With that in mind, it makes sense to break up your book into sections that leave the reader both with some level of fulfillment but with an eagerness to know more. No one chapter should wrap up the story entirely except the very last one. Longer novels are likely to have more chapters simply because there will be more opportunities for breaks throughout the story.
Shorter fiction can be a great way to experiment with flow and pacing and can help familiarize you with the process of writing and dividing a piece into chapters.
Short stories, which are usually between 1, and 7, words long and very rarely have chapters. They do, however, sometimes include scene transitions and breaks to denote a change in setting or scene, or the passage of time. Novellas are longer than short stories, but still only clock in at around 20k words at their longest.
With these, the line gets a little blurrier. You could choose to forego official chapters in favor of breaks as you would for a short story or break it into defined chapters.
This decision will largely depend on the overall length of the novella and the number and lengths of scenes. For example, a cookbook could even be divided into chapters that focus on a certain type of dish like dessert, or a certain type of cuisine like French.
Now you know why you need chapters, but when is a good time to divide your book into chapters? Should you decide during the outlining phase? Should you wait until the second draft?
What works for you will depend largely on your personal writing style, but these are some methods to consider:. One way to chop your book into chapters is to just write the whole thing as a draft and then go back through later and divide it into chapters where it makes the most sense. With this method, you would write an entire first draft without worrying about specific chapter break placement.
You can then read it back, making note of where breaks would make sense. This could be after major scenes Look for places where some questions have been resolved, but there is enough tension to keep the reader craving more. But again, that number should neither be a goal nor a constraint. Chapters can be words, or even 10, It all depends on how much you dive into an idea and how far you go with that idea. As a general rule, if a chapter is under 1, words, it might not be a whole idea or chapter.
It might be part of something else. See if it makes more sense to combine it with another chapter. If your chapter is more than 5, words, see if you can break it into different ideas. But if a chapter is more than 10, words, you should probably break it into two or more chapters. So, if your chapter is more than 10K words, it might really be a part , not a chapter. See if you can break it into distinct ideas that would make good chapters.
Chapter structure is about how you use sections to break up your chapter. A chapter might be a single idea, but each section should present a coherent piece of that idea.
Another way to make long chapters seem friendlier is to use smart formatting in your book. Presenting material with charts, graphs, images, headings, bullet points, and other special formatting breaks up all that text and makes the content feel more manageable to the reader. When it comes to small, tightly-packed, unvarying text versus loose, flowing text with differentiated headings, the loose, flowing text will win out every time.
But chapter word count is something that you want to keep in mind for future edits. Take our short quiz below to find out! Find out what word count the industry expects for your genre — it takes 15 seconds!
You can write none if you prefer. Many shorter sections in a row will quicken the tempo, for instance, while longer ones will do the opposite. That said, genre word counts do tend to fall within a certain range. To find out how long should a chapter be, we examined books from a wide variety of genres and eras. From these numbers, we can establish some guidelines: the average word count of a chapter typically falls somewhere between 1, and 5, words, with 3,—4, being the most common sweet spot.
Does this mean that every chapter must end up somewhere in this range? Heck no. Books with much shorter sections become bestsellers all the time. Kurt Vonnegut or Dan Brown, for instance. And are there books with chapters that consistently score above 5, words? Of course! May we introduce you to J. But it's safe to say that 1,, is the normal range for most books. In any case, to see how authors use this tactic to set their pacing, we also mapped out the word count of every chapter in four famous books:.
And as you can see, it varies, depending on the story. The average chapter word count of these novels falls within the 2,, range. As Persuasion progresses, Jane Austen seems to elongate hers, building them up on a crescendo. George R. Ultimately, the way you section your book depends on the effect that you want to achieve at any given point in your novel. Over 2, of the best editors are on Reedsy.
Meet them today and make sure your book is ready for the market. Learn how Reedsy can help you craft a beautiful book. If you're thinking right now that these are a lot of numbers to wrap your head around, don't worry! We created this cheatsheet to help you visualize the data. It has everything you might want to know about your novel's word counts — including how long a novel in full should be.
Simply enter your email below to unlock it. Broadly speaking, a break does one of two things: look forward or look back. The former promises more intrigue in the next chapter, often by foreshadowing things to come.
This is from the ending of Chapter 3 in The Hobbit :. Now they rode away amid songs of farewell and good speed, with their hearts ready for more adventure, and with a knowledge of the road they must follow over the Misty Mountains to the land beyond. Tolkien, The Hobbit. This passage promises the reader plenty of upcoming adventure. Looking back on past events is another common way to end a chapter.
This technique can simply bring the scene to a close, or it can be a way to summarize. Rowling re-familiarizes us with Harry Potter, an unusual boy wizard who misses some school friends. Then he took off his glasses and lay down; eyes open, facing his three birthday cards. Extremely unusual though he was, at that moment Harry Potter felt just like everyone else — glad, for the first time in his life, that it was his birthday.
Charles Dickens, whose serialized novels got readers in the s coming back every week, was a master at writing cliffhangers — sometimes even in the middle of fight scenes. This time, the chapter ends mid-scene. In addition, this particular cliffhanger rests on a physical act — the soldiers approaching Pip. But it could just as well be a dawning mental or emotional realization that keeps readers on the edge of their seats.
One of the most prominent practitioners is George R. Or a way to get rid of himself. However, if the narration changes often, there won't be a need for splitting the story into parts. If you do this, you'll have as many parts as chapters, and the main reason for using parts will be lost. The action keeps readers engaged and tugs at their curiosity often. Consider beginning a chapter with an action; any other approach is good too.
By action, I mean any activity that can whet the readers' appetite. Overloading the beginning of a chapter with endless scenic descriptions can bore the readers and make them even give up on your book.
Chapters are like short stories making up the large novel. Attract your audience and make them attached to the actions in those chapters. Chapters can be titled for more complexity. In most cases, the titled chapter gives you an overview of what to expect. In a few other cases, only the author understands why the title is used.
Again, you are at liberty to introduce 10 or even chapters in your book if you so wish. No strict rules are guiding the breaking down of novels into chapters. There are no rules at all stipulating the rudimentary patterns of splitting a book into chapters. It is dependent on you, your instinct, writing style, and the pace you want to set for your readers.
It is even possible to scrap the idea of 'chaptering' totally and write your novel with scenes flowing swiftly into each other.
While you are free to use as many chapters in your book, the genre can impose a subtle limiting factor. In romance stories, for instance, breaking thoughts and stories often before they mature into units that hold useful meaning on their own could be very detrimental.
You could destroy any chance your book has to do well in the market. You know good reviews of channel marketing traffic. Imagine what will happen if people give negative reviews about your book all because you staggered them around and through the book by creating too many chapters. Depending on what you want, you can add prologues and epilogues in your novel.
A prologue is simply a few pages of writing introducing a scene that holds information for us to understand the contents of the main book. On the other hand, an epilogue is about pages of writing also, but they are placed after the story is complete. Epilogues can be used to briefly state what is left of a character or a scene that is not mentioned in your book.
Whether you have a dozen chapters in your novel or more, the most important thing is to tell your story properly with all the necessary elements of fictional writing. Reader experience should be a major concern. Since language is a unanimous expression, writing in an 'extremely-personal' style that people can't relate with will do you more harm than good. Yes, it is acceptable to use any method. It is also wonderful to break out of the ordinary and create a new thrill. However, take serious precautions before trying such and make sure the thrills are relatable to be at least accepted by the readers.
If you've decided to write that unique fantasy thriller, teen drama or otherwise, put out your best foot and give it your all.
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