Chapter Book Guidelines

I like writing children’s chapter books. They allow the writer more freedom than picture books or early readers, but they’re not as involved as middle-grade or young adult books.

The children’s chapter book is just right—at least to me.

I’m currently working in three genres: picture books, chapter books, and young adult. And, there’s also my own middle-grade story, which I’ve had to put on the back burner for the time being.

Working in multiple genres, I know what’s involved in each, and as I mentioned in the first sentence, I like chapter books best. Picture books are a close second, though.

HOW DOES THE CHILDREN’S CHAPTER BOOK COMPARE TO OTHER GENRES?

Chapter Books vs. Picture Books

I prefer chapter books over picture books because you have more words to work with. A good length for a chapter book is 10,000 words, though it can range from under 5,000 to around 15,000.

The number of words gives the writer the freedom to provide details, descriptions, and so on that you can’t do in a picture book, since picture books should be under 600 words. And that word count keeps shrinking. Hopefully, one day it’ll go back up to around 800 or 900.

You need to ‘write tight’ with picture books in order to get a full story arc.

Chapter Book vs. Early Reader

Compared to early readers, chapter books offer much more freedom. While you do have to consider the age of the reader for the plot, sentence structure, paragraphs, and so on with the chapter book, it’s not as stringent as the early reader.

The early reader is geared toward the emergent reader. The words, sentences, and paragraphs must be in accordance with educational tools such as the Lexile Framework for Reading.

Chapter Books vs. Middle Grade and Young Adult

The other great thing about chapter books is that they’re not as involved as middle-grade or young-adult books.

A middle-grade book is usually between 20,000 (for a simple middle grade) and 55,000 (for upper middle grade).

Young adult books are usually 55,000 to 80,000 words. This kind of word count requires a lot of organization and notes. A good memory helps, too.

While a larger word count allows for a much more in-depth story with lots and lots of details, including subplots, and even more than one point of view, there’s a lot to keep track of.

To add to this, if you’re working with a client, you may encounter pauses in the writing momentum due to the client taking a long time to review what you send. These pauses are a big deal when you’ve got good momentum and you have to pause it.

CHAPTER BOOK GUIDELINES

So, What Exactly Are the Guidelines of the Chapter Book?

According to editor Mary Kole, the key element of a chapter book is to give the reader “easy wins.” These wins will give the new reader a sense of accomplishment for each chapter read. These wins encourage a child just learning to read to keep reading.

Reader Age

This age group varies, but the usual is seven to nine.

Word Count, Pages, and Chapter Length

As mentioned earlier, the word count can be 5,000 to 15,000, but the sweet spot is around 10,000. And the book can range from 48 to 80 pages.

Because the child is new to reading independently, the chapters should be 500-700 words each. Short and sweet. This helps with the ‘easy wins.’

Along with easy wins, shorter chapters allow young readers to pause or stop reading at the end of each chapter. This makes reading less tiresome.

Considering the word count per chapter, having 10-20 chapters is a good number.

Plot

The plot should be simple, and subplots should be avoided.

The young reader is just beginning to get comfortable reading on his own. Making the story easy to understand and follow along is essential.

The book should have a whole story (narrative) arc.

Popular topics include friendship, inclusion, school, bullying, being yourself, and achieving goals. The topics need to be relatable to kids in grammar school.

Words

Word choice should be age-appropriate. And keep in mind that the characters should sound like ‘real’ kids.

For example, if a character refuses to do something, how would he say it?

“I’d rather not do that.” Or “No way!”

If you don’t have personal access to kids, watch age-related shows and read lots of chapter books.

Sentence Structure

Sentences should be short, around 12-20 words. The average sentence length in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter is 12.

Vary the length, and you can use some sentence fragments. The “No way!” from above is a sentence fragment.

You can also use onomatopoeia sound words. These are words that sound like the action that’s happening: plop, zap, buzz, boom, clank, achoo…

Story timeframe

The story’s timeframe should be short.

For simpler chapter books, it should be limited to one incident. For the longer chapter book, the timeframe could be longer. But not too long – it shouldn’t span years or even one year.

Characters

There should be a full character arc. The protagonist struggles to overcome a problem or obstacle and ‘grows’ in some way as a result of the journey.

The character might become more assertive, wiser, friendlier, happier, more accepting, more social, more helpful, more understanding. The person might become a better person, better at sports, etc.

The protagonist should be at the top end of the target age group or a little older. So, basing it on the average reader of seven to nine, the protagonist should be nine to ten. Kids don’t like to read down. In other words, they don’t want to read about a protagonist younger than they are.

There should be only one point of view: that of the protagonist.

Illustrations

Kids in this age group are still learning to gather information through text only; having illustrations here and there will be helpful. The beginning of each chapter is a good place to ‘show’ the reader what’s going on.

Similar to picture books, the illustrations can help tell the story, so physical characteristics don’t need to be mentioned in the text.

You also have the option of using black-and-white illustrations rather than full color, as in picture books. If using black-and-white illustrations, you would mention characteristics in regard to color, such as blonde hair, a purple room, and so on.

This information is the basics of a chapter book.

If you’re not familiar with chapter books, a good way to get a feel for them is to take a lot of recently traditionally published ones out of the library and study them.

If you’re a children’s writer and haven’t written one yet, give it a try!

References:

(1) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ngDXXlVrL1U&feature=youtu.be

https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-are-the-elements-of-a-narrative-arc-and-how-do-you-create-one-in-writing#quiz-0

I’m a working children’s ghostwriter, rewriter, and coach. I can help turn your story into a book you’ll be proud to be the author of, one that’s publishable and marketable.

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