How to Write a Novel: Scenes and chapters

When you read a book, you experience the story through chapters that the author has organized to guide you through the book in a linear fashion.

But you don’t have to write that way.

In fact, most authors write in scenes and structure them into chapters later.

Learning about scenes was a pivotal moment in my writing journey. It freed me up creatively because I realized I could just write intuitively and structure later.

It also gives me a concrete goal to focus on during writing sessions. I aim to write a scene, rather than a specific number of words. I mostly write out of order, writing scenes as they come up in my mind, following story threads regardless of where they might end up in the finished book. After I’ve written the whole story in scenes, I organize them into chapters.

What is a chapter? What is a scene?

A chapter is a sub-division of a book, often numbered or sometimes with short descriptors about character or plot elements.

A scene has a character, or characters, in a setting performing some kind of action toward a specific goal.

The intention of a scene is to advance the story, reveal aspects of character, or explore theme at a deeper level.

There can be multiple scenes in a chapter, usually separated by three asterisks or an ornamental break. The change of scene might represent a shift in point of view, or a time jump, or a setting change.

You can also split a scene across chapters, which can make readers want to turn the page, desperate to know what’s coming next. These cliff-hangers can improve pacing and tension.

For some authors, one scene equals one chapter. James Patterson’s novels often have hundreds of short chapters, all of which are one scene. Other authors have multiple scenes within a smaller number of chapters.

“If a scene doesn’t work, nothing else matters. You can create a brilliant premise, but if you can’t nail the execution, the reader will not turn the page.”

—J. Thorn, Three Story Method: Writing Scenes

How a scene works

My thriller Crypt of Bone opens with an Israeli soldier walking in the dawn light toward the Western Wall in Jerusalem, ready to begin his guard shift.

As he prays at the wall, he hears a shout from high on the plaza above. If you don’t know Jerusalem, the Dome of the Rock, sacred to Muslims, sits above the Western Wall, sacred to Jews. It’s a highly contested religious site and a flash point for violence.

The soldier pulls his rifle out, ready for trouble, but sees only a man in a white hospital gown standing above. The man jumps and smashes onto the stones below, his blood staining the sanctuary. He clutches a slip of paper in his hand with the sketch of a pale horse’s head and a quote from the book of Revelation, “Before me was a pale horse. Its rider was named Death, and Hades followed close behind.”

In this scene, the setting is the Western Wall in Jerusalem, and the character is the Israeli soldier, Ayal Ben-David. The scene is written from Ayal’s point of view (POV). He is Jewish, so the reader understands how important this place is from a religious and spiritual angle, and the location underscores the theme and tone of the story, which is a religious conspiracy thriller.

The scene has action. Ayal walks in the streets before praying at the wall, then witnesses the suicide, and finally picks up the scrap of paper and reads the prophecy.

The scene moves the story forward and opens questions in the reader’s mind: Who is the dead man? Why did he jump? Why was he holding the apocalyptic lines about the pale horse — and what else might be coming with Death and Hades?

If I had written the scene from the POV of the man who jumps from the wall, readers would know the answers to these questions and there would be no mystery.

Make sure there’s a value shift across the scene

The value shift relates to some kind of change. Without a change, a scene can feel slow and static.

In the previous example, Ayal starts his day, walking to pray in the dawn before his guard shift — a positive moment.

Then he witnesses a suicide, his holy sanctuary is stained with blood, and he reads an apocalyptic prophecy that threatens the status quo — a negative moment.

The Story Grid by Shawn Coyne explores this idea of story value in more detail, giving examples of different kinds, including internal changes.

Break the scene across chapters to create a cliff-hanger

“A book you simply cannot put down — this being your goal — is a book with great scenes that propel you toward other great scenes.”

—Larry Brooks, Story Engineering

If you want to keep the reader turning the pages, then break your scenes across chapters.

Choose a point where you have opened a loop in the reader’s mind that they must close, then cut to another scene.

Here’s an example from Blood Infernal by James Rollins and Rebecca Cantrell, a fantastic supernatural thriller.

“A dark figure snaked out of the darkness and into the light. Jordan barely registered the fangs before it launched straight at him.”

That’s the end of the chapter. Of course you want to turn the page and read the next one!

But the next chapter is a scene featuring another character, and the story doesn’t return to Jordan for another two and a half chapters. If you are strategic with cutting and organizing scenes, you can create multiple cliff-hangers from multiple POV characters, so the reader is pulled through the pages with multiple nesting open loops. A new cliff-hanger is presented by the time the previous one is resolved.

Here’s another example from Honeymoon by James Patterson: “Then Nora heard something — footsteps approaching the kitchen. Someone else was in the house.”

End of chapter.

You don’t have to write such dramatic cliff-hangers, of course. It will depend on the genre and the kind of loop you want to open in the reader’s mind.

Remember, the chapter is the organizational unit of the novel, so you can restructure your scenes into chapters in the editing process.

How long is a scene? How long is a chapter?

This is a personal choice and can become part of an author’s style. James Patterson has 117 chapters in his novel Honeymoon, which is about 75,000 words. That’s only 641 words on average per short, pacey chapter. Some chapters are only one page.

The Shining by Stephen King is over 100,000 words and only has 57 chapters.

As ever, it’s up to you.

But however long they are, write in scenes, organize into chapters later.

Pacing

A reader experiences your story in a linear way. They start at the beginning and (hopefully) read or listen to the end. Your job as a writer is to control how they proceed through the story, and pacing is one aspect that can affect their experience.

Pacing varies by genre. For example, fans of thrillers expect more action scenes than fans of cozy mysteries, and the literary reader may prefer long paragraphs of introspection rather than choppy scenes with a lot of dialogue.

You can speed up reading pace with your writing style.

Hit the return key.

So there are shorter lines on the page.

More lines on the page.

More white space.

Just like this.

Your eyes will move faster down the written page, and the audiobook narration will similarly sound more pacey.

You can achieve this with dialogue pinging back and forth between characters, which is faster to read. You can also use dashes and other punctuation.

Examine a James Patterson novel in ebook or print so you can see how much white space he uses during scenes. That white space, along with his short chapters, keep the reader turning the page.

You can lengthen a scene by writing longer sentences, which can run into longer paragraphs. Spend more time on setting descriptions or the point-of-view character’s thoughts and emotions about the situation, so you linger in the story. The prose will look denser on the page in a story with a slower pace.

Make sure you have a balance of scenes. If you have a fast-paced scene, consider adding a slower scene next, perhaps featuring a subplot, so the reader can take a breath before you speed things up again. You can even balance pacing within scenes.

You will get a sense for it over time. It just takes practice.

Questions:

•   How long is a typical scene in your genre? How long is a chapter? Check your example books and see what the authors do, but don’t let them constrain you.

•   How long do you expect your chapters and scenes to be?

•   Are there a few scenes in your novel you can already clearly visualize? Could writing these scenes first, even if they are out of order, help you get started?

•   What are some natural places in your story where you could create cliff-hangers using scene and chapter breaks? Find examples from your favorite books.

•   What kind of pacing is typical in your genre? Which techniques for controlling pacing will work well for your novel?

Resources:

•   Story Engineering: Mastering the 6 Core Competencies of Successful Writing — Larry Brooks

•   The Story Grid: What Good Editors Know — Shawn Coyne

•   Three Story Method: Writing Scenes — J. Thorn