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My manuscript is planned to have 320 chapters nd two prologues. What's a good page count for each?
I am going to make a guess, the manuscript is non-fiction and is for post grads and one of the prologues is not done by you but a guest who is a recognized expert in the field. I say this because my doctoral thesis took six years to write and included an introduction from the man who proposed the use of liquid nitrogen to catch a ghost for study. Thus the two prologues and the overall length make sense.
Present your facts and a quick but succinct conclusion in as few pages as possible. Build on that with each succeeding odd numbered chapter keeping to facts and the conclusions. The even chapters following them will be your basis for how you came to those conclusions. For me Physics took a big part of the explanation and Quantum laws can be tough to explain for a non-physicist. Just be certain that you are clear with your explanations.
If my initial premise is incorrect and your work is fiction then the second prologue only works if it comes from both of the main characters points of view at different time periods preceding the main text. What I mean is, the hero during a struggle with your protagonist years before the manuscripts actual beginning and one from the protagonist halfway between the two. With that said tell the story and break the chapter where it makes sense to. Don't worry about the length until after it is written. Make sure the story is told and you will be fine.
Randy
Hi, my novel has two prologues. Ones is the prologue leads up to the antagonist's birthing and delivery, and the other ends with the antagonist murdering one of her sisers, then the story switches to years later when two of the main characters discovers the werewolf twins in the wooods. They've been raised by wolves all this time and are now feral. Takes place on the planet Yemora.
The average count for a novel should be 4,000 words per chapter.
It seems a little regimented to know how many chapters your novel will have. In the book Misery, some chapters were just one paragraph long. If you say all you need to say then the chapter is done.
My chapters range in length from 2,000 words to 7,000 (the latter of which I know if far tooooo long!) I just write until I come to a natural break and then call that the end of the chapter!
When I read you're planning to have 320 CHAPTERS and 2 PROLOGUES...I said WHAT!!!!
I have to asked you HOW MANY pages are you planning to write, If we use 250 words per page, and consider each chapter would be a page, we get a total of 80,000; which is a decent length. In my first YA romance endeavor, I Kissed a Ghost, I had a total of 246 actual pages of text, with 39 Chapters. And if we use this as a guide, 320 chapters would give us 8 books, which is longer than the complete series of the 7 books for Harry Potter, written by J.K. Rowling.
In addition, as it has already been mentioned, you can only have one prologue in a book, the only other "logue" you can have is a EPILOGUE which comes at the end of a book, to tighten up any possible loose ends,
So are you intending to write entire series of books instead?
Personally I like to keep my chapters to between 4000 and 5000 words in length, as this allows me to develop the plot whilst maintaining the pace I want.
I completely agree with Mockingbird. Some of my chapters are much shorter than others, but as long as they contain everything I want them to contain at that point in the story, I don’t think it's a problem that they're too short/long. In fact it’s not something I had even ever noticed before reading this thread.
I'd also be wary about sticking too strictly to a particular plan or outline. In my experience, stories have a tendency to evolve and go in directions I didn’t envision when I first started writing, so it's good to be able to have some flexibility there.
Hope that's helpful! Good luck!
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I'm confused, your manuscript has two prologues?