Scenes vs Chapters (Writing Advice)

What's the difference between Scenes and Chapters? Find out in this video.

Get Brandon's horror/thriller novel BAD PARTS:

Get Brandon's supernatural thriller novel ENTRY WOUNDS:

Follow Brandon McNulty:

0:00 Intro
0:36 What is a Scene?
2:33 Scene Structure
4:12 Scene Structure Examples
5:12 What is a Chapter?
7:38 Scenes VS Chapters
10:07 Outro

DISCLAIMER: Some of my videos and/or descriptions contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. This helps support the channel and allows me to continue to make videos like this. This does not affect my review of products. All opinions are my own. Thank you for the support!

#WritingAdvice #WritingTips #Writing #author #betterstories #authortube #booktube #authortuber #howtowrite #BrandonMcNulty #WriterBrandonMcNulty #BadParts #WritingCommunity

=======================================

CHECK OUT MY OTHER VIDEOS:

Mastering Scene Structure:

Writing Scenes that Flow:

5 Fatal Mistakes that New Writers Make

5 Time-Saving Tips for Writers (And Readers!)

5 Scientific Inaccuracies in Movies, TV, & Books

Query Letter Survival Tips

The BEST Writing Exercise Out There

How to Write a Book Pitch

Writing Villains #1 - Start with Your Hero

Writing Villains #2 - Goals

Writing Villains #3 - Motivation

Writing Villains #4 - When to Introduce Your Villain

Writing Villains #5 - Plot Points for Villains

Writing Villains #6 - Impacting the Hero

The Anatomy of Story REVIEW:

Save the Cat Writes a Novel REVIEW:
=======================================

[michaelhenry]

Brahm Stoker made chapters based on journal entries, diaries and letters. Your break down of chapters is the most helpful i have ever heard.

[shmeebs]

One method of labeling chapters that I really like is numbering them but instead of a chapter title, there will be a quote from the chapter. It fun to see that quote knowing the line is coming up but not know the context. It can add some foreshadowing or suspense if there is a hint of things to come.

[lauraroberts]

Naming chapters is always fun! The hero of my last effort was a rock drummer so many of the chapters were titles of songs by Led Zeppelin.
For example:
Dazed and Confused has him waking up in the past.

[grokness]

Plain numbered chapters are fine. They don’t distract from the story. I think clever alternatives are good if they add to the reader’s context in a fun or useful way, but I would be skeptical of adding them initially. Comic novels have more leeway in this, as with the other elements of writing, such as footnotes, etc.

[Anonymous-bpix]

My favorite way is by number. Being a beginner, it feels safer (conventional). But good art allows anything, so I am open to other labeling styles.

[Writercatloverbakonn]

I am highly grateful for this! I'm a beginner and a pantser at that so I don't usually outline... however this is going to help me very much! Thank you for this riveting summary of scenes vs chapters... it's been eating my mind for a long while but now I finally understand! 😁😌

[tomlewis]

Once again, you nailed it. One of the most difficult things to codify for me as a writer is to define where the scene boundaries are. That compartmentalizes things into units of story that I can regard separately, in order to examine in revision whether they have all the necessary or proper elements in them. But as you say, those boundaries are often fluid, and they can be arbitrary (one writer may define the boundaries between scenes very differently than another writer, and I might define a particular scene boundary one way on a Monday and a different way on a Thursday!)

That's what makes it difficult and makes it important to also regard a scene in the larger context of a sequence, act, story arc, or trilogy arc, rather than only in the vacuum of it being a single scene.

The irony there is that a reader may or may not recognize when a scene ends and another begins, but it really does not matter to them whatsoever. They are not there to identify scene boundaries at all. They just want the story. Often, you want those boundaries to be invisible to them. But I find it of paramount importance as the author to define those boundaries to myself.

I began titling chapters by numbering them and adding a phrase that was a placeholder, simply for my own purposes as an author trying to have a note—a reminder of what happens in a chapter I wrote. I would take the most expressive phrase from within the chapter and add that just as a personal reminder, expecting to remove them all later.

But then I realized if I looked at the table of contents, these phrases actually were somewhat intriguing, in that seen together in that list, they could create curiosity in the reader. So I left them in. Chapter numbers plus a short phrase expressing something to come in the chapter.

[ulla]

I have to comment before I even watch the rest of the video: I really like how you define scenes here. I've often see definitions that say scene ends when there is jump in time or place or something like that. But when I'm writing, I often find myself in a situation, that the characters are (either literally or figuratively) sitting in the same room for a long while, but still my gut feeling has said that it's still two or three scenes. Now looking at your definition, it agrees with my gut feeling, because those have been situations, where there has been two or three distinct positive to negative or negative to positive changes.

[oldguyinstanton]

Thank you for this video.

Question of the day: I prefer chapter titles that hint something major about that chapter. My goal is to get the reader to see the title and go "hmmm... I want to know more."

For example, I might have a chapter title of "On-Ice" because the chapter introduces a part of the book where a person is detained under house arrest, and various things happen.

[nevisnebis]

I really wasn’t expecting this video to be as helpful as it was 😅 I honestly just expected a drawn out explanation of each definition. As I watched on however, I realized that from the positive-negative and negative-positive scene flow to your slightly in depth explanation of how you can play with both scenes and chapters, this video was honestly one of the most helpful I’ve ever watched. Can’t wait to see more from you, and take care!

[ssjbears]

This was so helpful! You made it so easy for me to grasp the concept, and also so easy to apply that knowledge to my story and other existing stories. Thank you so much!

[WriterBrandonMcNulty]

How do you prefer chapters to be labeled? With numbers, dates/times, or something else? Let us know!

[benjamindover]

Good stuff. I love to think about the technical structural aspects of storytelling. My first outlines consist of a list of scenes noting the location, the characters, the conflict and the outcome of it.

[gamewriteeye]

My chapters are usually finished with all the scenes in it when it completes talking about the topic or theme for that chapter (it may also pertain to the name for the chapter). In my first novel, the chapter may usually open with the topic from a character's perspective, or it may be told through dialogue later in that chapter.

*An interesting note, is that I use what I call "real-time" pacing where scenes generally follow each other linearly one after another, where if it switches to another pov or scene in the same pov, a line break may be used, scene breaks in 3 asterisks, or if necessary, switch to 3rd person with the scene break but it's unlabeled.

*side note: the structure I use if you like the idea is rigid, but chapters adhere to a certain "arc" or parts within the story and all chapters revolve around that. Do with that numbers, labeling and whatnot what you will, but a detailed table of contents helps, too. I've divided my story into 6 arcs following a three act story structure, and there is 2 arcs for each act.

[ThatPurpleGirl]

This is a HUGE help for me, especially the explanation of what a chapter is compared to a scene. I was worried I wasn't doing chapters "right, " but now I see I can do them how I want as long as the right scenes are put together in the right chapters. 😅

[Astronomator]

When it comes to chapter titles, I generally use numbers. I remember reading a chapter book in grade school about kid sleuths who solved mysteries. The chapters had titles that basically summarized the events in the chapter. In "Chapter 4: The Chase", the presumed villain gave chase to the young gumshoes, with the kids hiding out in the school library when the chapter ended.

Of course, the reader is left wondering if the villain would find and capture them. The suspense (for a kids' book, anyway) was palpable. And of course, the reader was compelled to continue reading the next chapter to find out if the kids would manage to get away.

Imagine my dismay when I turned the page and saw the next chapter title: "Chapter 5: CAPTURED!"

So yeah, I just use numbers now.

[StampinDivaUK]

Thank you for such a clear description! Very helpful!!

[polygrind]

Putting more scenes in the same chapter can be seen as phrases connected to form a sentence. Two or more situations can be adding or contrasting to each other, they can be the effect or the cause of one another etc. The importance is to keep the same theme.

[prismagraphy]

Thanks for the video, I always just assumed when a new scene started, then it was a new chapter.

[tomarnold]

I use chapters like bookmarks, choose titles like the location took place, or the event going to happen, so I can jump from one section to another comparing notes, because quite often I mistakenly repeated something, or misspelling a name or location and have to go back and check. I may also relocate an entire chapter to smoothen the timeline. Once I'm satisfied, I then rename all chapters to a more appropriate title.