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Please let me know how long (in words) an average scene is for you, by length of piece: short story, novella, novel etc. If you don't have an average length, please provide a range. If you don't have that, please guess.
This is in support of an idea for a new (additional) challenge.
posted
A scene? Not a chapter. Hmmmm....well, in my current story I've got scenes with as few as a couple hundred words and others as long as several thousand.
Usually, though, I'd say my scenes are 1k-2k words.
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Well, in my full-length novels the scenes average at about 1,000wds. But in my short stories it's more like 300-500. Posts: 811 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
so we're looking at a range of approximately 500-2,000 words, heavily weighted towards the 500-1,000 word end.
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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posted
I've been told by a professional screenwriter that a scene should be no longer than two and a half pages (of script).
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
Average? That's hard. I have a few stark scenes that are no more than a hundred words, and other scenes that are over 4,000 in the novel I'm working on. It seems to me that varied scene length is like varied sentance length: it's a good idea, and it can place emphasis on different ideas. I think in a long novel, it would seem stale if all the scenes were the same length, just like a paragraph full of sentances with similar structure is leaden.
Posts: 189 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
I model my scene lengths based on what I'm writing. Short fiction scenes will obviously be shorter, but some novel scenes can be just as short as short fiction scenes. If I'm writing two stories at once and want one to seem to progress faster, I use shorter scenes with a faster pace. If I want one to go extremely slow, I pace a single scene over an entire chapter and split it into sub-scenes.
Doing scenes is one of those pieces of the puzzle that are extremely complicated, but almost simple in how intuitively you can place them.
quote:and other scenes that are over 4,000 in the novel
I suspect, if you look more closely, what you think is one scene is more likely several closely related scenes. The aforementioned screenwriter was in discussion with the director of Star Trek IV about the ending while the actors are in the water. The director complained about a seven page scene, but the screenwriter convinced him it was really two scenes, each of three pages and change. (The screenwriter isn't the writer credited inthe film.)
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I looked at the three 4000-word scenes in my novel. For the first two, you're right: if it was film, those would be split in two, but it just flows nicer without the scene breaks. The last one is my climax scene -- continuous action in one local from the MC's POV. And that works for this novel. I had two people critique it at once when the scene was much, much shorter: both complained that I had rushed the climax, and it seemed, well, anti-climatic and rushed. Largely because I'm scared to death of writing fight scenes -- they're hard for me. Because of their comments, though, I gave that scene full justice. My critiquers like this a lot better -- the length gives it more importance. I know 4000-words isn't the norm, thank heavens, but on occasions I think there's good cause to have a scene that long. A 500-word climax in an 80,000 word novel just doesn't work.
Posts: 189 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
so we're looking at a total range of approximately 500-4,000 words, heavily weighted towards the 500-1,000 word end in shorter works and near 2,000 words in novels.
Posts: 2710 | Registered: Jul 2004
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Merial, don't get the impression that I'm saying you are wrong to have a scene that long or that your scene is not 4000 words. I just think it a good exercise to look at your work that way from time to time.
Posts: 2 | Registered: Aug 2010
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posted
No offense was taken. It was interesting to go back and look at my longer scenes and how they are -- it was a good exercise. Learned some things. Thanks. Posts: 189 | Registered: Jul 2005
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