There are some standard ways of doing things, and some conven- tions that most authors follow, but for any “rule” you can find, I can show you exceptions that break it, and do it well. In this section, I will answer the common questions about chapters and try to give you some basic guidelines to help you as you write your book. WHAT IS A BOOK CHAPTER? Seems like a silly question, but it’s actually important to establish this for the rest of the piece. A chapter is one of the main ways to divide and separate distinct ideas within a book. Modern nonfiction books always have chap- ters. This was not always the case. Many ancient works were not organized by chapter, and were either one long text like Beowolf, or were organized with verses, like Aristotle’s Politics. A modern chapter is usually: • a single cohesive idea • a step in the process you are describing • a single argument or position It can be one or all of those things. WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A PART AND A CHAPTER? For books with lots of chapters, these are often grouped into several “parts,” as another subdivision of the book. A part is simply a set of chapters that go together and fall under a larger idea. For example, from the Table of Contents of a book, there are three parts here, with a few chapters in each part. 426 · ThE SCriBE METhOD