The next thing you want to know is how long it takes to write and we start small for that.

How Long to Write 500 Words?

If you set your daily goal at a minimum of 500 words it’s important to have a rough idea of how long that might take you. If you don’t know, set a timer for 30 minutes and type at your normal speed. Count your words and that should give you a rough idea – if you churn out 250 words then you know to set a minimum of an hour aside to meet your goal.

The important thing is not to be tough on yourself when you first start writing – if you can’t make 500 words in half an hour, don’t worry – practice and you will see an increase over time. The more consistent you are in sitting down every day to write, the better the words will flow.

If 500 seems too tough a target, set a target of 300 words a day to start with or set a time limit – say 30 minutes per day. But in that 30 minutes, you need to write – no checking social media, no staring at your phone and definitely no interruptions from friends or family.

When you have worked out how long it takes you to write 500 words,  you can start to think about how long a chapter will take, so long as you have an idea of the word count per chapter.

To answer the question, “how long should a chapter be?”, again it will depend on lots of factors. There is nothing that says a chapter has to be a minimum of 500 words – I’ve read shorter ones. And there isn’t a limit to how long a chapter should be either.

For non-fiction books, you should aim for a reader to complete one chapter in about 20 minutes, preferably a bit less. Keeping in mind that the average reader will read at a speed of approximately 200 words over minutes, you should aim for a maximum of 4,000 words per chapter.

However, that is quite a word count for one chapter – either make each chapter shorter than that or make sure you break it down into manageable chunks.

How Long to Write Non-Fiction?

If you want readers to get through your book in less than 2 hours, aim for a word count of around 24,000 words. If you think 3 hours sounds about right, aim for 36,000 words.

How long a book will take to write will depend on what type of non-fiction it is and the length you want it to be. If you were writing a self-help book, for example, it would depend on the subject, the number of topics being covered and how in-depth you want each one to be.

To get an idea, have a look at a few books on the subject you want to write about, get an idea of word count, chapter length, pages, and so on. This gives you an idea of how long to make your book and, based on how many words a day you write, how long it will take you to write it.

In part 4, we’ll look at how long it takes to write a novel.