Most people don’t give a lot of thought to chapters. It’s easy to overlook them as just dividing lines in a book-length piece of writing.
Avoid that mistake.
In fact, chapters are an essential narrative tool that have a major impact on the quality of your book. They present ideas and create suspense. They pace a narrative and focus a reader’s attention on the details that matter. Therefore, creating good, useful chapters is an integral part of the art form of nonfiction writing that all aspiring writers should aim to master.
A Chapter Needs a Thesis
Each chapter should have a clear purpose designed into it. Ideally, your chapters should be planned out from the beginning. Think of them as longer versions of paragraphs in your traditional high-school essay, each with their own topic but building toward a larger argument.
Your book itself always has a central argument–even if that argument is something as simple as “life is easier when you clean your bedroom.” (If you can’t figure out the one-sentence main argument of your book, take a step back to work that out first.) Additionally, though, each chapter should have its own individual thesis to hold it together–one that connects back to book’s central argument. This thesis is the spiritual equivalent of a topic sentence in one of those high school essays. However, putting it plainly as the chapter opener would be too abrupt and not artful. It’s a one-sentence description (in your mind) of what the chapter is about.
Going back to our fictional book about life being easier when you clean your bedroom, you chapters might be described this way:
- Chapter one is about the importance of realizing why your bedroom is so essential to well-being.
- Chapter two is about how to assess what needs to be cleaned.
- Chapter three is about tackling the closet.
- …and so on.
You can see that these chapters each have their own thesis but all support a larger thesis of how cleaning your bedroom improves your life.
These rules obviously work for discursive nonfiction, but they work for narrative nonfiction as well. Even if you are following a temporally-based plot, there is likely something on each point along the way to which you’d like to draw attention. That, then, becomes the ‘”topic” or “point” of your chapter.
Chapters Create the Pace
Too many chapters relative to the length of a book provides me—the manuscript editor—with a clear sign that an author has not thought through the book’s structure well enough. This signals that the book is going to move too slowly. Each chapter creates a significant break in the story being told, so take care to make sure that each chapter break is a meaningful pause. No one likes being on a bus that stops every two blocks. The same is true for readers trying to get to the end of a book who keep getting stopped in the middle of ideas for arbitrary pauses.
Generally, I think a chapter should be at least 10,000 to 15,000 words long. One exception to this rule is a book clearly designed around small or short chapters, such as one with lots of brief profiles, a travel guide, or a cookbook. Otherwise, for changes of ideas within a chapter that don’t elevate to the level of a true meaningful pause, use line breaks or horizontal dividers.
Conversely, having too long chapters can be overwhelming to a reader. Long chapters are the equivalent of being on a bus that is clearly barreling past stops it is supposed to make. If you have multiple big ideas in one chapter, and it’s longer than 15,000 words, consider breaking it up. The chapter is a great way to regulate the pace of the book to make the reading experience enjoyable for your audience.
Where Are We Going and Why Should We Care?
In addition to serving as the building blocks of the overall story you’re trying to tell, the book chapters serve as a vehicle to let readers know why the book’s argument matters. Each chapter should end and begin with stories, examples, or analysis that ties back (even subtly) to the main argument and its implications. In this way, the chapters hold the reader’s attention on the real aims of the book throughout. They also provide time for these ideas to sink in. It’s never good to wade through an entire book only finding out in the final few pages why you bothered.
For all of these reasons, chapters are crucial components of a book. Craft them with care and deliberateness, you’ll end up with a better book because of it.
How do you create your chapters? Tell me in a comment below.
About the Author
C.K. Bush is a nonfiction editor and writer. She lives in New York City.
I am yet to write a book but planning one. If it is a problem solution book then there could be 3-4 chapters on setting the context, understanding and unentangling the problem. Next 3 chapters may be the roadmap to solution.
First chapter or a good introduction may include why I write this book, the inspiration and motivation behind it and who is it for, and may be some personal anecdotes. The Conclusion needs to being all chapters to the central thesis/argument and perhaps call to simple action at various levels.
Sounds like you have a plan, Mita!
I love the idea of using an argument statement for the book and each chapter. This gives me something to consider. I did come up with a one-sentence argument for my book, which was delightfully freeing and gratifying.
I found this article asking the question, “Does my book need chapters?” It’s a 6-week workshop-in-a-book. It’s getting confusing to me as the writer to have chapters and weeks one through six in the context of chapters that don’t match the week numbers. I’ve broken the book into three parts, with the workshop being part two. So, there are chapters before and after the workshop. My head wants to have chapter one equal to week one. Do chapters need to be numbered?
No, chapters don’t need to be numbered. Go look at your favorite books! That said, a number tends to be helpful.
Many books start out as courses…or become courses. It’s a great structure.
I am writing this book to share with other women about being involved in a long time 3yr plus romance scam with a man ( whoever he is) or (where ever he might be), so that this does not happen to another woman anywhere. I would love to be able to take down this organization and believe me, IT IS AN ORGANIZATION!!! The emotional ups and downs, along with the financial devastation has left me perplexed. How could I, an intelligent woman fall for these lies…OMG. I can’t believe this. If through my writings, personal experiences, speaking to others and support I can help other women, I AM THERE. These guys are scum, low life thieves who take advantage of lonely woman. This is one of the worst crimes…they steal not only your heart but your finances and put the victim in situations where they can not even let their families know the entire extent of the victimization. I AM A SURVIVOR AND I HAVE COMMITTED my life to exposing these creeps…who say they love you, then run with your money. WHAT THESE SCAMMERS DON’T KNOW IS THEY HAVE MESSED WITH THE WRONG WOMAN… I have NO FEAR about taking them down . I will find someone to help me……,my story will tell it all, not in just one book but several I am planning. Many of these woman don’t even know where to go with complaints and even when they do, they get no response. I love to write and am a published poet. Never wrote a non-fiction book, did not have a reason to. But that was then, now is NOW—writing, public speaking anything to help women avoid the devastation in their lives from a romance scam.
I”m glad you are feeling inspired to write a book to help women. Please, speak about your cause in a positive manner. You’ll get more readers, followers and supporters that way! Good luck!
I’m so glad I found this page. You have provided a much clearer explanation of how chapters should be written in nonfiction. I am just starting my first book and have a couple of questions. What did you mean when you said “Too many chapters relative to the length of a book” Could you expound on this a bit? Also I am having trouble figuring out the difference between the introduction and the first chapter. Any info about this would be so helpful. Thank you.
I read a nonfiction book called American Road. It did not seem to have a thesis but it had a story.
The idea of each chapter needing a thesis is genius to me! Of course it makes sense! Thank you for such wisdom!
You are welcome.
I have a question about chapter transitions. In your example above, “chapter two is about how to assess what needs to be cleaned.”
At the end of chapter one, would you say, “In chapter two, we will assess what needs to be cleaned” or “In chapter two, we assess…”?
Thank you.
You can transition in that way, Richard. Or you can get to the end and then begin again in the next chapter. They chapters should flow logically one from the next. Look at nonfiction books you like. see how they did it!
I am going to write a non-fiction book (my first) about my life with bipolar disorder and anxiety and how my salvation and belief in God has helped me through. I was thinking of structuring the book by starting out explaining my illnesses, why I’m writing the book, the motivation behind it and how my salvation has carried me through. I was thinking of making the chapters time periods of my life, the experiences during that time frame, how they affected, the ramifications of those actions and how my belief system helped me through those experiences. Is it ok to structure chapters by time periods and name them after what I was going through at that time?? I’ve been told several times that I have a compelling story to tell that will be an inspiration to others so I’m going to start the process! Thank you!
Sounds to me like you are writing a memoir. A memoir covers a period of your life–not your entire life. Hope that helps.
You made a good point that chapters need to have theses in order to make it easier to guide the reader to its point. I’m currently looking for good historical nonfiction books about women to prepare myself in going back to college. I plan to take a masters degree on world literature so juxtaposing what’s already been written to what is currently being written would be interesting to examine.
Stumbled across this after sitting down and writing out 5 pages in Word and thinking to myself, “Maybe I could just write that book I said I wanted to do for a decade.” After the 5 pages of word vomit, I reminded myself of structure… and after some quick Googling, found this post and your website. Just a quick post to appreciate your work and say thank you.
If chapters have a meaningful, short title, do they also need a chapter number?
Not necessarily.