Hi all! I've decided that the domestic abuse piece would work well if written in four parts (part one being the domestic abuse, part two the court and hospital, part three the prison and part four the coming back into society) My question is how many chapters are ideally in a novel? And what is the ideal word count for each chapter? Any other advice on the four part novel is welcome! Thank you in advance :)
Another thing I like to do is find a similar type of novel to the one I'm writing on the shelves of a bookshop and see how many chapters it has and count how many pages on average there are. If you can't find another book similar to you own it tells you two things:
Your book is unique and will be the first of its kind, or there may not be a current market for it.
The thing to bear in mind is that the market is constantly changing and we writers don't always have the best insight into what is current, but a good book shop should be stocking what the public are currently interested in.
Good luck and keep up the excellent writing, Victoria. I believe you have a lot of what's required to make it in the wonderful world of writing for publishing!
30 chapters. 3,000 words a chapter is a useful guide to start with, but chapters don't have to be uniform in length. 3 to 10 pages a chapter is acceptable, 12 pages maximum. Many contemporary novels have short chapters of 5 to 8 pages.