Understanding Scenes in the Novel Factory

This article will explain the concepts of Scenes within the Novel Factory app, and their practical application.

What are Scenes?

In the Novel Factory the main ‘unit’ of writing we use is a scene.

You can use your own rules to define a scene, but we usually consider it a contained piece of writing of anything from a few paragraphs to a dozen pages which has a (loosely) consistent point to it. Scenes usually stay within a single character’s point of view (we’d argue that if you’re changing POV it’s a new scene) and they will often have a goal, conflict and end with a disaster.

A Scene in the Novel Factory contains the following elements:

• Title
• Summary / Synopsis
• Contents

The Title is fairly self-explanatory, it is the title of the scene. It will just be a few words, or at most a short sentence.

The Summary / Synopsis is a short overview or synopsis of the content of the scene. This is usually no more than a paragraph or two.

The Contents are the meat of the scene – the actual words that make it up. Scenes usually contain around 2,000 to 3,000 words, though this is a very rough guide.

Scenes in the Manuscript area

The manuscript area is the only place where you can see the full contents of any scene. These are displayed in the main content area in the centre.

In the manuscript area, you can also view a scene’s title and summary / synopsis.

The title is displayed above the contents.

The summary / synopsis is displayed at the top of the Related Info Sidebar, in the format of an index card. (If you cannot see this, you may have the Related info sidebar collapsed – look for the little arrow tab towards the bottom right in order to expand it).

Scenes in the Plot Manager

In the Plot Manager you can get a quick overview of all of the titles and summaries of your scenes, formatted to appear as index cards. This allows you to get a ‘God’ view – or a high level overview of your whole plot, without getting bogged down by thousands and thousands of words of prose.

Scenes in the Subplot Manager

The scene titles and summaries can also be viewed down the left hand side of the Subplot Manager. They also display in index card format.

This allows you to cross-reference your scenes with individual subplots.