Scene: Charlie goes to the pier, sees promenade, gives us some background on himself and town. Then sees girl in water.Another factor that determines the tone of a book is the structural device you use in order to divide it into different sections. Take a look at the novels on your own shelves and you will see that novels are broken down in different ways depending on their nature.
Stories are made up of component parts. Splitting them into logical and manageable chunks makes the reader’s job a lot easier. They can think, ‘I’ll read one more chapter before I go to bed.’ Another reason for logical divisions is pace. Linear, direct thrillers may have a simple, dynamic structure, with something like a cliff-hanger ending marking the close of each section. More complex stories will tend to be rhythmic in nature, moving from fast to slow, teasing the reader a little from time to time. If your work fits the latter category, marking its natural pauses will allow people to break in the right places. They can stop on a reflective moment, and think about what they’ve read. Or they can halt on a fast action scene and look forward to unravelling what’s happened later.
Think of your own reading habits. How often do you flick ahead to see where the next pause is, then aim for that before putting the book to one side? Divisions help the reader enjoy your story. It’s a good idea to give your audience a hand whenever you can.
There are three standard building bricks for a story: scenes, chapters and parts.
Scenes
The fundamental element of any story mosaic is the scene: a singular continuous piece of action or description seen from the same point of view. The end of the scene is marked by a change of point of view to a different character or a shift in location or tone. For example: ‘Charlie goes to the pier. Afterwards he rides off to see Sally’s grandfather and talks to him.’ These are two separate scenes. Because the point of view remains the same they could be run together in the book.
Or you could divide them: ‘Charlie goes to the pier. Afterwards Sally goes to talk to her grandfather.’ These are two separate scenes with two different points of view. They would not normally be run together. Some kind of divider is generally essential.
Chapters
Chapters are collections of scenes tied together by some aspect of the story, such as a plot element, a time frame or a location. They can include scenes with different points of view and different locations.
Parts
These are collections of chapters gathered together to form longer divisions within the book. Parts will normally have some overall thematic connection which links the chapters it contains. You could label the first structural act of a story ‘Part One’, for example. Or if you were writing a historical novel you could set a specific time period in a part: ‘Part Three – Prelude to War (1817–1821)’. Or simply, ‘Day One’.
Every book has scenes. Many will have chapters. Parts were once very common but nowadays tend to be restricted to more complex stories.
Let’s imagine you’re writing a fast-moving linear thriller, one that takes place over a short period of time, perhaps in the first person. The format: scenes and scenes alone.
Scene: Charlie goes to the pier, sees promenade, gives us some background on himself and town. Then sees girl in water.
Scene: Talks to girl in water, persuades her to come out.
Scene: Bad guys come along in black car and make girl get in car.
Scene: Charlie sets off after them.
For something a little more complex we might stick with chapters and scenes alone. In this instance we could enclose all the above scenes in one chapter, perhaps with a label ‘Chapter One – Charlie Goes to the Pier’.
If this were a bigger, more prolix project we could adopt the parts methodology.
Part One: A Mermaid in Distress.
Chapter One: Charlie Goes to the Pier.
Scene …
Do we need titles such as, ‘Charlie Goes to the Pier’? That’s entirely up to you. Depending on the writing software you’re using it may be necessary to label an outline heading for your own convenience when navigating the book. This will be required in Word since you will need those labels for your navigation bar. You can easily remove them later for submission. The same goes for chapters and parts. If you feel the titles add something, use them. If you think you’re putting them in just because you’re ‘supposed to’, you’re mistaken. Should an editor feel they’re needed, it’s easy enough to ask for them (I suspect you never will be, by the way).
How about numbers? Do you need them as well? Not always. If I were writing a breakneck thriller designed to be read in one go I’d skip them and offer the reader nothing but short scenes. No one will complain. Dividing scenes without numbers is very simple. If you’re delivering a manuscript to an agent or publisher you just type a hash mark # in the text. This is a sign for a scene break. In the finished book – or your own formatted ebook if you’re self-publishing – they will be replaced with a line break. Then, in print and sometimes in ebooks, the first line of the opening paragraph of the next scene will be set full out, without an indent (like paragraphs following section breaks in this book).
You should have that separator whether your book is composed of nothing but unnumbered scenes or scenes within chapters. You could if you like set up your word processor to have an opening paragraph style. That would have no first-line indent and an extra line space above it to set it from the final paragraph of the preceding scene. But that’s not necessary. That hash mark will be recognised as having the same function.
One slight oddity should be mentioned. There are two conventions for numbering chapters within parts. One is to run the numbering on across the book.
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part Two
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Or you can restart with each part (which is what I do because I always find it odd to read something like ‘Part Three, Chapter Forty-Four’).
Part One
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part Two
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
The division format you use is a personal choice. Just make sure it’s consistent and, in the case of most popular fiction, breaks up the book into manageable chunks. Which brings us to …
Whatever division method you use it’s a good idea to stick to some rough benchmarks for length. In my own work scenes tend to run between fifteen hundred and three thousand words, though occasionally they will be short snatches of seven or eight hundred, usually in action sections. There are no fixed rules about length for scenes, chapters or parts. Let common sense guide you. A fast-moving story will demand short, punchy scenes. A reflective and complex one can be more relaxed.
But be consistent. Readers will be confused if one scene is nine hundred words and the next five thousand. The same goes for chapters and, in some cases, parts. It’s usually best to try to aim for some rough conformity over length. You want your reader to break off from the book at a point which leaves them wanting more. Making it easy for them to judge when a moment for pause is about to emerge will help keep them engaged in the story.