Scenes & Chapters

You are nearing the end of this course. Now that you can construct nice sentences and paragraphs, it’s time to go one step further. Paragraphs are grouped into scenes, which are grouped into chapters.

A scene means one major event happening, usually restricted to one location and theme. (As soon as the current topic has been resolved, or people move to somewhere else, the scene ends.)

A chapter might have one scene or it might have several scenes related to the same idea. (I heavily prefer writing chapters as a single scene. Other authors can have five scenes in one chapter.)

In both cases, the idea remains the same as with sentences and paragraphs: focus on one topic. Scenes should focus on conveying one general event. Chapters should similarly have a theme that all scenes inside share.

That’s the whole point! These categorizations create structure and hierarchy that help the reader understand your prose. This is one of the “hidden” skills of experienced writers.

Beginning writers will often do too much in one scene. Or they’ll start new chapters at random (or once they hit some arbitrary word limit). Even worse, they might enter multiple different POVs within the same scene!

This rather small decision—how to break up your prose—can create a world of confusion and make your story hard to understand. You get better at it by writing and reading a lot. That helps sort your thoughts into “this is a scene, and this is another scene, but this isn’t enough on its own and needs to be combined with a bigger scene”

To learn how to structure the content of a scene, I refer you to all my other courses on Creative Writing. That’s not a prose issue but an issue with plotting/character/storytelling.

This chapter delves into the few prose-related topics to consider.

Starting a scene or chapter

I think it’s worthwhile to really focus on the first line and paragraph of a new section.

You’re asking a lot of your reader. Every time a new section starts, they have to “get into” your story again. They have to focus on turning words on the page into a fun story inside their head.

Make this transition as smooth as possible. Make sure the first few lines are short and simple. Make sure they contain something intriguing and interesting to hook the reader.

Most writers spend a disproportionate amount of time refining firsts: first chapter, first line of chapters, etcetera. Because it’s the first hurdle. Once readers have jumped over it, they’ll probably stick around for the rest. So make that first hurdle as low as possible.

Often, you can only find the perfect first paragraph once you’ve written the rest. Once you know the interesting content at the heart of this chapter. So don’t obsess over this in your first draft; focus on it for later drafts.

Ending a scene or chapter

The idea here is the same. If you want readers to continue, you need to dare them to put the book down!

End your sections with strong, interesting lines that open up new possibilities.

Those could be cliffhangers, sure. But they don’t need to be. In fact, it gets a bit exhausting and superficial if you forcibly insert cliché cliffhangers after every chapter.

Just end the section with a line that represents forward momentum. We learned something new this chapter, or a character made a huge decision, or something big happened. End with a line that tells the reader: “Yeah, this major thing occurred. Don’t you want to know how this plays out?”

Often, this means simply summarizing the chapter with one or two cool one-liners. (Remember the Pyramid of Abstraction? The chapter itself was filled with concrete details and action, so that you can end on an abstract, more epic statement.)

Ideal length

Some authors write super short scenes, others write super long ones. There’s no formula or rule here—I can only give statistics.

Throughout all my work, chapters have always been 1,000–3,000 words. I rarely have multiple scenes within a chapter, but if I do, I’d break the chapter in half. (So a typical scene would be 500–1,500 words.)

The general advice is the (slightly unhelpful): “make your chapters as long as you want / as long as the story needs”

Slightly better advice is: “make your chapters as long as they remain interesting”

I just told you to focus on one thing. There aren’t many single topics or events that stay interesting once you’ve surpassed 3,000 words. If your chapter grows longer, it probably meanders, or tries to be about multiple topics.

That’s why I think my numbers above are a good guideline.

And if you stick to such numbers, you also gain another benefit: you know how to pace your chapters. You know when to make something happen or when you can spend a few more paragraphs on description. You know when you still need to build more tension and be patient (when < 1,000 words), or when you need to quickly get to an ending (when nearing 3,000 words).

Your mileage may vary. But for me, this helps add structure to the chaos of getting the story on paper.

It also prevents chapters with wildly different lengths, which I strongly dislike. Like many, I read in bed, before falling asleep. If a chapter could take me 5 minutes, or it could take me 30 minutes, that’s really annoying and messes with my sleep. Same thing, of course, if you read on your commute to work.