: Re: Are there any established rules for splitting books into parts, chapters, sections etc? I am working with an author, whose approach is to write her text, approximately divided by indicators where

@XinRu607

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As the OP mentions LaTeX, this answer uses "part" in the sense of that typesetting system, i.e. as the next bigger hierarchie above "section/chapter" and below "physical book".

While I have not enjoyed a formal writer's education (i.e., university or whatever kind of school writers could go to), I have also never heard of formal "rules" for splitting books or other texts. "Rule" in the sense that there is some kind of prescription how to do it.

But some choices seem to be pretty popular. I.e., splitting simply to avoid paper books too large to be handled (and this is different in different countries; i.e., "The Reality Dysfunction" trilogy had 3 very thick books in some countries, and 2x3=6 in others).

But my favourite aspect is if the author really takes the opportunity to bring an overarching "part" structure into the story itself. For example by doing very large time- or place-based jumps at "part boundaries". For example, "The Earthsea Quartet" or "A Canticle for Leibowith" make very good use of that. Both would very well fit into a standard continuing format (they are short enough to comfortably fit into a single, even thin book), but due to their parts, sometimes with ominous titles, they really set the tone for what is to come.

Also, and this may be old-fashioned, sometimes it is very fitting if as a reader you can see the names of the parts beforehand, alltogether. This would probably not be so wise for the smaller chapter names (if you give them names at all) because it would spoil too much; but for large parts it has a very eerie effect on me to kind of know the scope of what's to come already. Obviously this is not so trivial, but if done right... bliss.

Chapter breaks are a great opportunity to add small pre-faces for each chapter (e.g., Neal Asher used this to absolutely astounding effect in "The Skinner", which I don't remember much of except those little encyclopedia-like bits).

Hope that helps. Aside from that, if you have no preferences either way, I'd simply look at how others do it and derive your own rules (number of pages per chapter etc.).

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