Just writing a book I'll be making into two, maybe three parts. I was just wondering if I had to start the chapters back to one again when part two begins. For example. Part 1 Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc Part 2 Chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 etc OR do I keep the chapters going right through concurrently?
I think that you start with chapter 1 again for each part. But does it really need to be separate parts? Or could you just have section breaks, rather than chapters?
Well it's going to be about 100,000 words and encompasses two parts of a story, so breaking it up a bit like that should give the reader more of a break...
If all parts will be in the same volume, you would continue the chapter numbers through the parts. I've never seen one novel spread over multiple volumes, so I guess you could do whet you want to if that's the case.
Allan Drury, in his Advise and Consent series, broke each novel into sections, each with its specific POV character - "Bob Munson's Book", "Seab Cooley's Book", etc. Each section had its own numbering sequence. OTOH, Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz is broken up into three sections, each break comprising a span of about 500 years, but he maintains one chapter numbering sequence through the entire work. And James Michener's The Novel is broken into four sections, each with its own POV in first person, but each section is treated as a single chapter, with no numbering sequence at all.
As @EdFromNY said, I don't think there is any rule for this. I've read books where the numbering were continuous across the different parts as well as books where the numbering was reset to 1 at the beginning of each part. I suppose it would make more sense to start over at the beginning of each part if each part features a different POV or something equally separate, but apart from that you can pretty much choose whichever variant you think fits the story the best.
This is an old thread, but I found it very helpful in making a decision regarding my novel, which has three parts. Each part is centered on the same primary characters but different problems they must solve and hence different secondary characters. Right now, I'm using sequentially numbered chapters to give my readers a sense of continuity, but this thread gives me food for thought on starting each part with its own numbering sequence.
