If you’re embarking on the journey of writing a novel, you probably have several questions about where and how to start. One of the big questions that plagues authors is: How many chapters are in a novel?
Determining how many chapters are in a novel will depend on genre, subject matter, and writing style.
Planning and outlining your story in advance can be extremely helpful, but learning how many chapters are in a novel can help you to understand what to expect from your book.
This Guide to Chapters Will Cover:
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How many chapters are in a novel?
The short answer is, unfortunately, that there is no one correct answer to the question of how many chapters are in a novel.
How many chapters are in a novel on average? Not accounting for genres or target audience, the number of chapters in a novel is about a dozen.
However, there is no exact minimum or standard for how many chapters are in a novel. Because chapters are just places where the author decides to break up the flow of their story, you could go a more traditional route and end up with 12-28 chapters or choose to be more experimental and have as many as 200.
Looking at some popular novels, even with similar themes and audiences, there is a great variation in overall length and number of chapters, so you can understand how many chapters are in a novel on average.
The first installment in the Harry Potter series totaled 17 chapters with about 77,500 words total whereas The Hunger Games topped out at 27 chapters with a word count of 99,750.
Your story is unique, and the number and length of the chapters inside it will reflect that.
Let’s dive into some specific genres as we explore how many chapters are in a novel.
How many chapters are in a young adult novel?
How many chapters are in a novel from the young adult genre? It depends on the subgenre!
Some popular examples of how many chapters are in a novel that is young adult include:
- The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins: 27 chapters
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone by J.K. Rowling: 17 chapters
- The Fault in Our Stars by John Green: 25 chapters
- Divergent by Veronica Roth: 39 chapters
- The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas: 26 chapters
Most YA novels tend to have between 20 to 40 chapters, though some may have fewer or more. The chapter count often depends on the story’s pacing and structure.
How many chapters are in a fantasy novel?
How many chapters are in a novel from the fantasy genre? Well, fantasy books tend to be a bit longer on average because of all the worldbuilding, so you can expect a higher number of chapters along with a higher page count.
That being said, some books, like The Hobbit, have very long chapters, so there aren’t as many of them.
Here is how many chapters are in a novel from the fantasy genre:
- The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien: 19 chapters
- A Game of Thrones by George R.R. Martin: 72 chapters
- The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss: 92 chapters
- Mistborn: The Final Empire by Brandon Sanderson: 36 chapters
- City of Bones by Cassandra Clare: 28 chapters
As you can see, the YA fantasy books tend to have fewer chapters and the more epic, adult fantasy books have a massive amount of chapters!
How many chapters are in a romance novel?
How many chapters are in a novel from the romance genre? That really depends on the author. You have classic authors like Jane Austin who wrote prolifically, and other writers with a much lower chapter and page count.
- Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen: 61 chapters
- The Notebook by Nicholas Sparks: 21 chapters
- It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover: 31 chapters
- Beach Read by Emily Henry: 30 chapters
- The Hating Game by Sally Thorne: 18 chapter
With Jane Austen being the outlier, you can expect most romance books to be between 20-30 chapters long.
How many chapters are in a sci-fi novel?
How many chapters are in a novel from the sci-fi genre? Once again, it depends on the author. While sci-fi books tend to be longer like fantasy books, that isn’t always the case. Sometimes, the chapters are a lot longer than other times.
Here are some of the popular sci-fi books and the number of chapters they contain:
- Dune by Frank Herbert: 48 chapters
- Neuromancer by William Gibson: 16 chapters
- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: 35 chapters
- Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card: 15 chapters
- The Martian by Andy Weir: 38 chapters
As you can see from all these genre examples, there is no one answer to how many chapters are in a novel. It depends on you! But you probably shouldn’t write a novel with 2 chapters. You need to be smart about how you break up your book.
Why Do We Use Chapters?
In trying to determine how many chapters are in a novel, you will have you must first understand WHY you might want to include chapters at all. They aren’t mandatory by any means, but they can be a very useful tool in structuring the overall story in a way that is more easily digestible to the reader.
The end of each chapter gives the reader a solid place to take a moment and process everything they’ve just read. Since it’s not always feasible to read an entire novel in one sitting, they also allow for a practical place for the reader to take a longer break and do other things. But they shouldn’t be so satisfied that they don’t want to come back and read the next chapter.
When Should I Divide My Book Into Chapters?
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?
One person may strongly advise against writing without planning your chapters first, while others will tell you it’s illogical to even CONSIDER chapters at all until you have a solid first draft.
What works for you will depend largely on your personal writing style, but these are some methods to consider:
Write First, Ask Questions Later
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. This will work better for those who consider themselves to be “pantsers”, or those who tend to write exploratory or “zero” drafts rather than abide by a specific outline.
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. You don’t necessarily need to end each chapter with a classic cliffhanger, but you can use chapter breaks to highlight building tension and keep the reader on their toes.
Another way to determine where your chapter breaks should go is by looking for natural pauses in the story. Maybe you’ve reached the end of a major event or plot point. Perhaps your protagonist has just learned something that will change the course of their storyline. Anywhere that it would make sense for the reader to ruminate about what they just read is a great place for a chapter break.
Build Chapters Into Your Outline
If you are a staunch outliner and organizational savant, you might consider breaking your story into chapters before you even begin the first draft. This method will probably work best for people who like to have very specific and thorough outlines.
Using this method, you can plan which scenes you want to include in each chapter and have them work intentionally with the overall structure of your story. This should also make the process of writing and editing your first draft easier. You can always rework them if you find out that it’s not working properly as planned, but it will give you a great jumping off point.
By the Numbers
If you don’t want to do a thorough outline, but want a good way to gauge how many chapters you should end up with, you can use an average number for whichever genre and category you are writing as a good base and go from there.
For instance, an average YA novel is between 55,000 and 80,000 words long. Most experts agree that 3,000-5,000 words per chapter is a good guideline to follow. So, 12-27 chapters for a YA novel would be a good range to start with.
Shawn Coyne from Story Grid does a great job at explaining the math of a novel here, including a breakdown of key scenes, word counts, and act structure.
How Long Should Each Chapter Be?
Chapters usually range from about 1,500 to 5,000 words. The length of each chapter will vary throughout your novel depending on how it’s paced and how much information is in each section. What genre you are writing and who you’re writing for could play a part as well.
Some genres leave more room for experimentation when it comes to chapter length, but it’s important to keep your reader in mind. One chapter from Stephen King’s 1987 novel Misery was comprised of a single word— “Rinse”.
Shorter chapters can greatly influence the pacing of a novel and help to build tension. Conversely, longer chapters may serve to slow a story and can be used to communicate more thoroughly. Both should be used cautiously and intentionally so that readers don’t feel like they are slogging through or being rushed through with little to no respite.
So How Many Chapters Should I Aim For?
As previously stated, there’s no magic number to how many chapters are in a novel. The best way to know how many chapters you should write is to write an outline or draft and see what feels most natural with your story. Then make sure that it flows properly, and the pacing is on point.
Make sure that the position of the breaks adds to the story rather than detracting from it. When you have done all of that, you should end up with a perfectly appropriate number of chapters for your novel.
However, you may want to set a chapter goal as a way to visualize your book’s structure and motivate yourself. In that case, I recommend you shoot for 15 chapters in a first draft. If you write 15 chapters at an average of 4,000 words per chapter, you’ll have a solid 60,000-word manuscript. From there you can add to or edit down to get your desired length.
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