How Long Should A Chapter Be? Rules & Word Counts - Scribe Media

If you’d like some guidelines, you can assume that the average nonfiction book is about 50k words and that most nonfiction books have about 12 chapters.

So around 4,000 words would be an “average” chapter length.

That number actually lines up pretty well with the data we have on this. But again, that number should neither be a goal nor a constraint. It’s just a convention.

But it’s a convention that fits within your reader’s attention span.

One thing to remember about average chapter lengths is that they’re driven by:

• how much information most readers need to understand a good chapter topic
• the average attention span most readers have in absorbing a single idea

Rule 4. The Goldilocks limits

Chapters can be 500 words, or even 10,000. It all depends on how much you dive into an idea and how far you go with that idea.

That said, you never want your readers to think:

• “That chapter was too short,” or
• “That chapter was too long”

You want your chapters to be just right.

As a general rule, if a chapter is under 1,000 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 5,000 words, see if you can break it into different ideas. Maybe you can’t, and that’s okay. It’s just something to consider.

But if a chapter is more than 10,000 words, you should probably break it into two or more chapters.

Remember, books are structured in parts, chapters, and sections.

A part is simply a set of chapters that go together and fall under a larger idea.

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.

Rule 5. Use chapter breaks wisely

Even the longest chapter in the world can be a page-turner if it’s structured and formatted well.

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.

If you break your chapters into small enough pieces, readers won’t have any trouble following them. In fact, they won’t even be intimidated if they flip through a long chapter ahead of time—as long as they see those breaks.

This is one of the ways Authors break the “rules” successfully.

Rule 6. Formatting makes a huge difference

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.

But it isn’t just about how to structure your content. It’s about the formatting itself.

Interior book designers use negative space (empty space) to make content feel more approachable.

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.

Your concepts are complex enough as it is. Don’t make your readers work harder by laying those concepts out in a way that’s difficult to take in. Readers won’t buy the book.

For one thing, they don’t want to work harder than they have to. But they also won’t have much faith in you as an Author if your book looks like you didn’t really put the work in.

The right interior layout invites the reader in and makes them feel welcome.

Rule 7. Your chapters don’t have to be the same length

In fact, having chapters of similar length doesn’t matter at all. If one chapter is 5,000 words, and the next 1,200, and then 3,000, and then 1,000, that’s completely fine.

It might even be beneficial. Varying the flow can make the book read better, depending on what you’re saying.

It’s far more important to worry about the flow of ideas for the reader than to worry about any of these chapter guidelines. Your book is written for your reader, so make chapter decisions based on what makes the best book for them.

Rule 8. There are no rules

When you’re staring at the first chapter of the first draft of your first book, it’s natural to look for writing advice with hard and fast rules.

Should you use 3,000 word chapters or 4,000 word chapters? Where should one chapter end and a new chapter begin?

But there’s no bestseller formula when it comes to chapter length. There just isn’t.

The only real rule is to make your chapters work for your readers. If readers understand each chapter, connect the ideas, and flow easily from one to the next, that’s all that matters.

A book’s structure is never about confining the Author. It’s about serving the reader.