How many chapters should a book have?

[Burty Burtman]

I have searched and searched and searched and no answer has been found.

How many chapters should a book have?

If it helps it is a fantasy/sci-fi blend of roughly 140k words.

[Sarah]

Hi Burty, I would imagine it’s up to the author and the type of project they’re working on.  I work on a 24 chapter format (historical fiction) for which there are various templates and so on.  There are 27 chapter templates available as well.  I quite like formulaic though as it means I’ve got a rough chance of hitting beats and so on – not for everyone of course. For this I would expect to write approx 80k words.

If you take author Bernard Cornwell (who will probably write to something approaching a formula) his early Last Kingdom books average about 13 chapters, but as the series goes on I think he nearly doubles this – although probably not the word count.

Just as a fun comparison – War and Peace has 350ish chapters and is about 500k words.

[Matthew Brown]

I’d pretty much agree with Sarah. I’m a great believer in a book should have as many chapters as it needs to that does not mean I am correct, though.

[Author]

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