In the first draft of my novel, ‘The Spa Resort’, I presently have 42 chapters and 190 scenes. I may not make any changes to the number of chapters. But as I edit, I definitely will be dropping or combining many of the existing scenes to something more digestible to the reader. In my editing, I will be going over each transition from one scene to the next to ensure that they flow seamlessly and are clear to the reader.

Did you ever read a book that had no chapters? It ends up ominously looking like one whole long chapter. Chapters are just another manner of creating a scene break. It’s the author’s choice whether or not they use them, or just write scene breaks into an ongoing story. Most authors though, utilize both chapters, and scene breaks to manage the flow of their novel. Personally, I prefer a book with chapters. It gives the reader a place for a bathroom break if nothing else. Individual scenes could be as short as a single sentence. Though in most novels, scenes run on average between 750 words all the way up to 5,000 words. You should be careful that your scenes don’t end up being interchangeable, or if nothing much changes from one scene to the next.

There are many reasons to end a scene and begin a new one:  (more…)