How many scenes in a novel

If you have read any novel by Mario Puzo, especially The God Father, you will know how to select number of scenes for your novel… in fact the number of absolutely required scenes. I learned this year that it also depends on the genre and publisher. I sent my romantic suspense manuscript to an editor last summer and received a page letter of changes that they wanted before they would consider it.

One major change was the number and length of each chapter. They wanted 20 chapters of approximately words. There were several scenes they wanted cut. As a new author, I am happy to make any changes they want. Interesting article. Very good insight. Whenever the point of view character leaves one place to go to another, a new scene is usually needed. A scene usually takes place in one location. A single locale is one of the clearest demarcations of a scene. Perhaps this might strike up a debate or perhaps Randy might chime in to clarify his thoughts on this?

Your comment about a scene being devoted to a single location is, I believe, a traditionally held belief. It seems like an interesting challenge to consider writing the sequence of that emotional landscape while passing through different settings. Scene composition becomes about emotional landscape then. More rarely, an entire scene-sequel or more can take place within a single scene if the pace is very rapid. I just got back from a conference where this was discussed by an agent.

His take was 4 pages for scene is nice tight writing, anything over pages probably has to much static description and should be edited down. So one of the top agents says pages is a desirable scene length. There are always exceptions though! He helped me edit a prologue and thought the best length was under one page, like anything else in writing the rule is know the norm so that when you break it you can justify why you did.

I used the Snowflake Method , which consists of several steps to designing a novel that we can discuss at a later date. Column 1: POV. Column 2: One-two sentence summary of the scene. Column 3: Proposed word count. Column 4: Actual word count. Keep in mind that before you get to the scene list you need to know your major plot points. The list simply forces you to flesh them out. For me, this step was incredibly helpful.

By the time I sat down to type, I had something far more detailed than a mere outline guiding me through the process. Want a better idea of what your scene list might look like? Here are three famous examples of scene lists:. Joseph Heller: Remember Catch? As you can see, every author creates their scene list differently. The key is to create one. Generally, however, you are writing your novel over a period of months or even years.

The key building block for a long form narrative is the Scene. So the first breakdown of the 80, to , word book are the scenes necessary to create the five building materials for your beginning, middle and end of your Global Story. How many scenes are in a novel? So there will be at least 15 scenes in your book:. But how long should they be? How many words should each scene be? And then how many words should be in the beginning?

How many words should be in the middle? How many words should be in the end? Here is a piece of information that professional writers spend 10, hours of their lives figuring out. After thousands of years of storytelling, the beginning, the middle and the end for a long form Archplot or Miniplot story breaks down as follows:. I have a theory about why Stories break down like this. My next post will throw it out there. So, if you are writing a ,word novel, the beginning will generally be 25, words, the middle will generally be 50, words and the end will be the last 25, words.

Nerds like me have noticed that typically, in contemporary commercial fiction, scenes run between and words. Remember that a scene creates a clear value change in the life of a character through conflict.

I also recommend that you treat your scenes like chapters. That is, each scene should be a chapter in your novel. Whereas, if you cram five scenes into a chapter that ends up being forty pages, the bedside reader will have a much easier time of just setting the book down before beginning the long slog through seven five hundred words. Transitions: Thank you I learnt a lot. In my new novel two people are on a blind date.

She is waiting in the restaurant for him and I am showing her nervousness. Then over dinner I am following their discussion bringing in their private thoughts but I realise I can skip a lot of it and and go to the end of the evening where they end up on the dance floor where he might ask if he can see her again.

Set in the 70s Thank you. Excellent as always. I was heart broken when you ceased to agent. Perfect timing Mary. A knowledgable MG author advised me I had too many plots in my novel.

My original intent was to provide many entertaining scenes and characters to engage the quick-paced MG reader. Worth a try since my last querying tries for Remmy were totally unsuccessful. Thanks for the tips! Your email address will not be published. Notify me of follow-up comments by email.