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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/45139
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

I am working with an author, whose approach is to write her text, approximately divided by indicators where she wants the breaks to be, with the idea that later she and I would improve the breaks and decide, what will the sections become: parts, chapters, sections, etc. This is mostly based on the `LaTeX` `memoir` document class which I used to typeset the book.

The book is a science fiction novel, but not purely science fiction. It has elements of a psychological drama and bits of other styles, such as crime and action. The overall volume of the manuscript is around 700 pages and she is planning a sequel or several under the same title with different subtitles. Currently it is divided into 8 chapters and each has from 2 to 10 sections with 8 being most common.

The work is almost complete and I have typeset it for the time being as chapters and sections, but now we both are debating, whether our chapters look rather like parts, and our sections should be chapters. The only problem is that early in the manuscript the chapters are much shorter, and increase in length as the text goes.

The chapters currently contain hugely different locations as the plot moves across the book's universe. The sections contain more of a high-level topic as the plot develops within one location. We are kind of content with this sectioning and are not necessarily looking to change it - we are only looking for any well-articulated and commonly accepted reasons to improve what we have.

We are aware of [this question](https://writing.stackexchange.com/q/7083) and agree with both answers; however, they are more than 6 years old. Are there any commonly accepted guidelines for choosing parts vs chapters vs sections for the work described above and where could we read about it?

Original score: 9