A Question About Scene's Within Chapters

[Dresdenus Prime]

So I downloaded the trial version of Scrivener the other day, and I've been toying around with it whenever I've had the time. Something I noticed is under the Chapter folders the program expects you do create "scenes" within the chapters. What exactly are these? Is this simply to differentiate one place from another? For example, if my chapter one has the hero in the middle of the city, but then drives home, would the city and home be two different scenes? Thanks in advance!

[Lanodantheon]

Scenes are units of dramatic action. The 2nd smallest before Beats. Generally speaking, several Beats = a Scene,   several  Scenes make a Sequence, 3-5 Sequences make an Act, 3 Acts to a story.
Or at least that's what Film school taught me.


A scene is a single unit of action. They are basically microstories that build up to create a narrative. Every scene begins with a character with a single objective and then he/she either achieves it or not over the course of the scene.


For novel writing I would say that Novels usually have like 3-7 scenes per chapter depending on the action.


Where scenes start and end is an art not a science.


Example: A Fight scene. 2 characters are fighting each other. Both with the same goal, win. The scene starts when they start fighting. The scene ends...when both parties resolve the fight. One person could defeat the other, one could run away like a little girl, endless possibilities.


To answer your first question, a change of location is a good way to break up the dramatic action and move from scene to scene. Though the journey itself could be a scene or set of scenes.


To go off your example of a hero driving from the middle of the city to his home, it could be as small as 1 scene or as large as 3+ scenes.


You could do the drive as 1 scene Hard-Boiled detective style like this:


"I was getting a box of doughnuts in the middle of the city when I got a call at home. The wife needed me for some emergency. I got into my car and drove as fast I could. My wife didn't elaborate. What could be the problem at this hour?..." Scene ends when he finishes his monologue and pulls into the driveway.


You could do it as 2 scenes by breaking the action up, 1 for the hero getting into his car (his objective to get in the car) and 1 for the trip (His objective is to get home). 


For 3 scenes: 1 for him getting into his car downtown and pulling into traffic. Goal being to get on his way. 1 scene for the ride over. Maybe the hero's o n the phone or thinking about something on the way over. 1 scene for when he pulls in.


You could do more than that if the middle part of the way home is broken up in some way. Maybe the Hero gets into a traffic jam and he needs to find his way around it. The traffic jam itself is a scene. probably a small scene but a scene nonetheless.




There are lots of books on the subject of scenes.

[Starbeam]

Think of it sort of in the context of Star Wars.  Sometimes the scene is one character in one place, like Luke standing with Ben by the sand crawler, and then there's a wipe and the next scene is Luke arriving at his home.  Sometimes it's a change from one character to another, like the scene change from the Falcon escaping the Death Star to Vader and Tarkin talking about them getting away. 

In some cases, these scenes, especially if they're long, can take up an entire chapter.  Other times, this is where you see a line/space break--a single line of space between paragraphs--indicating a change.  Star Wars is a good example of this, especially if you look through the novels.  Early on, in both movies and novels, you'll get longer scenes with one character--sometimes there's a location change, sometimes there's not--and usually the change comes at the end of the chapter when you switch POVs.  The scene changes get smaller and quicker as you get closer to the end-book or movie-and the switches happen multiple times in a chapter.  Sort of like the Battle of Yavin at the end of SW--each POV switch--from Luke to Han to Leia to Vader--can each be a different scene, but overall they'd be in the same chapter.

This may or may not make sense.  I would've used Dresden as a reference, but none of the books are close to hand.  And I'm pretty sure that, for the most part, each chapter tends to be a self-contained scene.

[LizW65]

I'm not familiar with Scrivener, but when you see a break of 2-3 lines within a chapter, that's a scene break.  Think of it as jumping to a new scene in a movie--instead of showing all the boring parts with characters driving to a different location, sleeping, and so on, you go straight to the new location or the next day.  Of course, this isn't strictly necessary--see the example above; chapters in the Dresden Files, for instance, tend to be quite short and self-contained.

[MClark]

As other replies have said, I think of the scene sections the writing software uses similarly to scenes in a movie- the individual parts the story breaks into.

One thing that confused me for a while is the difference between the scene and the Scene, mostly because they use the same name.

Jim's blog has two long entries on Scenes and the follow-up unit of story telling the Sequel.  I will add the word Unit to them to help differentiate them from scenes. A completely different nomenclature may be even more helpful (Conflict-Emotion?) but lets just use the words Mr Butcher used.

I wasted a lot of time trying to fit my story into Scene Unit-Sequel Unit pairs and then into the Chapter-scene mechanic of Writewaypro (very similar to scrivener).

Your story will probably use Scene-Sequel pairs but they may not follow the physical mechanic of separate scenes in your writing software. For example, your hero may be trying to get information from his cop buddy, but fails (Scene Unit). THe hero quickly rethinks a different approach (Sequel Unit) and tries it on the cop. This time the hero succeeds. (Scene Unit)

Another example (Spoiler from Dead Beat)

(click to show/hide)

Jim shoots Corpsetaker inside Anastasia's body and then he argues with Morgan that it wasn't Anastasia. He can't force Morgan to back down (Scene Unit- Jim fails to convince Morgan to stand down). Then there are a few introspective paragraphs where Jim thinks through the sitiuation from Morgan's perspective (Sequel Unit-rethink goal, and then try something new). Then Jim tries a different tactic. This all takes place in one section of the story. 

All of the above would be in one section of writing in your software. 

Most writing software will put a separator (either an additional line or ### or ****) between the scenes.

Hopefully I haven't confused the issue by bringing up another usage of the word scene.

[meg_evonne]

Agree, but I will disagree with the scene break that Liz talks about. Yes, it sometimes is a couple line spaces or perhaps hash marks or some fancy artwork between. Generally though, as MClark mentions, these are used (0r I do.) for a break in time or location or point of view shift. (Below is a recap of my understanding. It's close to MClark's.)

Those tiny scenes of tension tightening and then released (def of a scene) can occur in slow mo or one per page or maybe two per page. I wish I had a JB hard bound on hand to point you to some pages, but go to a really good fight scene. The over all fight scene might be the entire chapter, but inside that Harry might: fight the zombie mini-scene, then rescue Charity mini scene, then he watches Toot Toot and his crew attacking someone mini scene, and then he arrives at the Winter/Summer Table to confront Mab. 

The fight with Mab will also have several mini scenes (beats)... and this goes on and on until the story conclusion.

(sorry for mixing my books, but you get my drift...)

Every tightening of tension and release will be more tense than the scene prior.

[Dresdenus Prime]

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I mostly got confused wondering if the scene breaks were indeed in the books where there were spaces left in between sections of the paragraphs, or if it was literally just from one course of action to another.

So let's just go with the beginning of Storm Front.

(click to show/hide)

Harry receives call from Monica who wants to meet. Harry receives call from Murphy to look at crime scene. Harry walks there, does his clue finding. Harry leaves, gets picked up by Marcone. Harry returns to his office to meet with Monica.

Would that be considered one scene? Or are there little scenes throughout?

[Lanodantheon]

Thanks for all the responses. I guess I mostly got confused wondering if the scene breaks were indeed in the books where there were spaces left in between sections of the paragraphs, or if it was literally just from one course of action to another.

So let's just go with the beginning of Storm Front.

(click to show/hide)

Harry receives call from Monica who wants to meet. Harry receives call from Murphy to look at crime scene. Harry walks there, does his clue finding. Harry leaves, gets picked up by Marcone. Harry returns to his office to meet with Monica.

Would that be considered one scene? Or are there little scenes throughout?

Actually that much into Storm Front would be quite a few scenes.


Numbered list of scenes:

(click to show/hide)

• Harry talks with the Mailman
• Harry's self-introduction
• Monica's call
• Murphy's call
• Harry's Travel to the scene/leaving the note for Monica
• Harry's meeting with Murph
• Harry going over the Crime scene and talking witht he cops
• Harry getting picked up by Marcone(could also be seen as 2+ scenes depending on how you break down the chapter)
• Harry returns to his office to meet Monica Sells.

Or at least that's how I'd breakdown Storm Front.

[meg_evonne]

^^^ yep that would be my interpretation