I'm not sure about how many words I should have in my chapters. My books genre is fantasy, and my target audience is 10-14 year olds. Does anyone know how many words a normal chapter in a book has?
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A typical novel will have 250-300 words a page. Just pick up a book you like and do the math. I'd guess usually between 15 and 30 pages.– ChesterCommented Sep 27, 2016 at 13:54
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1 Answer
In my opinion, the word count of a chapter just doesn't matter.
Instead, the word count of your chapters should depend entirely on the goals for the chapter, and how long it needs to be to tell the story. Many authors have incredibly varied lengths of chapters, however, I can provide some advice concerning writing for your target audience.
If you are looking for young adults or teenagers to read your book, its best not to create excessively long chapters where nothing happens. Instead, I think you should include at least one interesting part per chapter, to keep them reading. For example, many young people don't finish Lord of the Rings because of the slow moving plot. Shorter chapters as well as more things going on per chapter, could help break this illusion of a slow moving plot.
Also, don't write unnecessary chapters. Every chapter should tell necessary parts of the story, and be as long as it needs to tell that. If a chapter doesn't advance the plot, I would deem it unnecessary.
Conclusion:
Chapter length doesn't matter too much. Focus on telling the story with as many words as you need to per chapter.
For young readers, perhaps refrain from slow-moving chapters and a lot of pointless talking.
Never write an unnecessary chapter that doesn't contribute to the story.
I hope this helped you. As a final note, you might want to search the proper ways to break up your story into chapters, if you're still having trouble.
answered Sep 25, 2016 at 11:26
