How many scenes should your chapters have?

Novelize chapters and scenes

Whether you’re a beginning writer or a successfully published author, you may still wonder how many scenes each of your chapters should have. You may also wonder how long each of your scenes should be. Those are great questions, and we are going to attempt to answer them for you.

Chapters can be long or short

Your chapters can be long or short. Each of your chapters can have only one scene or multiple scenes. There are no rules you have to follow except for what makes logical sense for your story. You’ll probably want to stay away from having lots of very short chapters unless your story takes many dramatic twists and turns. But there is also something to be said against chapters that are too long. Not having the end of a chapter in sight might make your reader feel like they have to work too hard to get to a good stopping point in your story.

Scenes can be long or short

Scenes can also vary greatly in length. Some scenes may have fewer than 100 words, and some scenes may have over 4,000 words. What happens in your story will determine how long your scene should be. If your characters are having a long conversation with each other, then your scene might run to be several pages long. On the other hand, if your scene consists of a quick hit-and-run incident, you might decide to keep it short for dramatic effect.

When to start a new scene

What you really need to know is when you should start a new scene. There are different ways of tackling this topic, but it all depends on your story. Here are a few examples of when it may be appropriate to start a new scene:

  • Change of locations

  • When time has passed

  • When introducing a new problem/situation

  • Introducing a new character

When to start a new chapter

You may also wonder when you should start a new chapter instead. Again, this is subjective and completely up to your discretion. Here are a few reasons to start a new chapter:

  • Changing the point of view of the narrator

  • Taking a big jump into the future

  • Adding a flashback