Presuming, as you say, that all the content in the scenes are needed, then the scene will be as long as needed to show what happens.

If characters board a spaceship, and the ship's description is important, that scene could be one descriptive paragraph. The 10-hour battle they fly through could take 10 pages because there's so much action to show.

You, the author, have to determine the scene's importance to the story - action or characterization - and the level of detail needed. Deep characterization in the mind of the POV character takes more than simply saying she did something. Showing every blaster-ray hit takes more than saying, "Yeah! We won!" How important are battle casualties? Are you showing consequences like mourning or the psychological impact of command responsibility? The degree of depth you choose can turn a flash fiction into a novella.

A short scene, I think, can have more of an impact. I'm trying to explain what I mean by that, but not doing very well - I mean its straight to the point, bang! in your face... immediate. Yeh?

I used to write a lot of short scene. A lot of my novels were full of short scenes - which when I realised, I wasn't happy about. Hence, now I try to have a mixture of long and short. The story I'm working on now, though, has a lot of long scenes, and very few short. Why? Because a lot happens to the characters that can't be told in short scenes. So again, it depends on what you have to say and how much you need to say.

A lot of short scenes all after each other, for me, gets annoying, its hard to get into a story when it chops and changes every couple of minutes. On the other hand, very long scenes can become tiresome too.

Also, professionals tend to connect scenes in ways that beginners do not. Don Wollheim once asked Samuel Delany why he had a whole scene in a novel in which a character, crossing a stream, slips and gets wet. Delany points to a later scene in which another character crosses the stream without slipping.

You can build tension with shorter scenes. You can make a 900 page book a page turned if each chapter is short too. After all, why go to bed now if the next chapter is only 5 pages long?

Genre matters too. If you look at thrillers/suspense novels, those chapters are shorter to build tension. Literary tends to have longer chapters.

It also depends on what you consider the end of a scene. Is it a change in location? Maybe. Is it a change in topic? Possibly but not always. Is it a "change" in POV? Not if you are in full Omni but probably every other time.

If all chapters are 30 pages then the mental hesitation a reader will have in picking it up will be greater. If all of them are 3 pages, you have the opposite problem.

Christopher Moore does a great job with breaking up long and short chapters. In Love Bites he has one bit of humor that is a stand along chapter and about 6 lines of dialog. Too many of those and I'd put it down though. He balances well and his really short chapters are usually mini-punchlines.

That sounds so simple, but when you're staring at the screen and looking over at notes or outline....

How do you make that decision?

I mean...most story events can be developed long or short.
One might assume that a major event is long, a minor detail is short. John walking along the riverwalk talking with Susan as he decides to kill her, is probably a long scene. John buying the tarp to wrap her body in is probably a short scene.

However, depending how the story is developed, it could be the reverse. The walk is focused narrowly to the few moments of his decision and what triggers it while the store introduces his attempts to avoid the cameras, the nosy customer or clerk, all sorts of things could be added to develop the idea into a much longer incident.

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You can build tension with shorter scenes. You can make a 900 page book a page turned if each chapter is short too. After all, why go to bed now if the next chapter is only 5 pages long?

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I agree with that. I'm reading two books now (one non-fiction), and one has short, short chapters. I can't put it down. The other has these huge chapters that I dread. I know once I start, I'm committed for at least another hour. (Who wants to stop mid-chapter?)

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How do you make that decision?

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My feeling is that each scene will have a purpose. It does something to the story, the characters, the world, whatever. I start there, tacking down exactly what that thing (or things) is.

That, in itself, might tell you something about length. It isn't just what the scene will tell or what the characters learn, the scene might also be there to build tension or to show the development of a relationship between two characters.

Another factor is the weight of the scene. Some scenes I might decide or key scenes. I want the reader to remember them. It might be there is a clue in the scene, or a setup (the old gun on the mantle) or it might just be a turning point for the character. If that's the case, I will draw it out a little more. I add extra detail and go a little deeper into the thoughts of the PoV character.

Then there is pacing. I'm still trying to get a grasp on pacing. I think it has a lot to do with tension, though. But I think if a scene falls between two longer, heavier scenes, it might be refreshing to slip a shorter scene between them (if it has a purpose.)

So it's try that nearly any scene could be short or long. I think you got the essence of it, though. The importance of the scene and the elements in it are probably what lends to the decision factor.

In the case of John that you used, what effect will it have on the story? Will readers want to know and understand why John kills Susan? If so, will they feel cheated if you shorten that scene. "John took Susan down to the beech that night. As they walked along the shore, barely talking, John decided he should probably kill her. He would need a tarp...."

So the story does dictate to a degree how long the scene should be, but you are the one developing the story. You are the one who will decide which scenes are important enough to draw out.

Anyway, I doubt it's quite as perfect as I assume, but I noticed that about it, and it makes me want to aim for something similar in my work because it seems that these "easy to bite off" chapter lengths are part of the appeal to the HP books, IMHO.

I don't think there's just one way to decide scene lengths and I certainly wouldn't write to achieve some notion of an ideal length, except in the sense of making it fit publisher's requirements for a short story or novella or novel. Each writer will have his or her own way. But FWIW here's the process I'm using.

It's based on the idea that the story will decide for itself the right scene lengths -- although I as the writer have some say in the matter too.

The story decides because, as it grows, the need for additional scenes evolves -- to explain character motivation, locations, strange worlds and cultures, some fictional science or the mechanics of a fabulous device. The scene too decides its length, perhaps starting by establishing location, smells, tastes and so on, so that when the action happens the reader is fully immersed.

I have a say because I try to think on behalf of the reader (will they understand that?), I'm trying to think about pace as others have mentioned; and there's also my sense of the aesthetic, fun, and dare I say style.

My process, then, is something like this: Start with notes on plot, characters, backstory, world, etc. Then decide the key scenes that the plot demands, and their sequence, on the basis of dramatic impact, interest, fun, mystery and aesthetics. Either in thinking it through or during writing, I realize the reader needs further information. I'll add it to existing scenes if it will fit, or create new ones, using the 'show don't tell' principle. These 'helper' scenes are short to start with, but to 'show not tell' they often grow to include extra action that's peripheral to the plot but explains motivations and establishes the strange world - which itself needs motivation, location, smells and sounds and could lead to additional scenes, and so on, until enough is there to tell the original story.

Then, step back and review the whole thing for logic and pace and scenes that are too long to sustain interest, and change things around until I'm happy.

How to decide this in detail is, I think, a question of individual style, aesthetic and art.