What is a scene???

A chapter is a logical unit of 1 or more scenes. Scenes can span across chapters, but a chapter must include at least one or more scenes.

(Well, actually, a chapter can contain zero scenes -- such a chapter is made up of narrative only. A philosophical musing, for example. Or a summary of what happened in the past without breaking up into individual scenes. Or a letter. Or a diary entry... or ... you get the idea.)

A scene is generally an event (or events) that happens at a location. It has kind of a beginning (or entrance), middle, and end (an exit). Sometimes a the entrance and exit are murky because you can have transitions, from one scene to another. Most scenes happen at a single location -- if you switch locations, it is generally considered different scenes.

For example, two characters got in a taxi, talked, then got off the taxi and went into a bar and got into a fight.

Is that one scene or multiple scenes? To me, those are two different scenes with a transition. The taxi is one scene; the bar is another -- both have an entrance, middle, and exit (the entrance and exit could be abrupt, without any kind of transition. In media res). For example, the beginning of the scene, the characters are already drinking at the bar... and the scene ends when one guy is being knocked unconscious. No transitions before or after.

A scene is a unit of prose in which something significant happens, usually through a continuous period of action. But it is a little fuzzy.

tailstrike said:

I an basic writing terms what is a scene and what sets it apart ffrom a chapter???I have been writing for awhile i just write i dont think too much about it and i have never really understood this...

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Conceptually, I find scenes easier to describe in terms of TV and movies - with an TV episode, there will be a number of scenes: periods of connected action defined by the continuous thread of action. Sometimes, though rarely, an episode will be one long scene, but more often it is a bunch of little scenes, broken up by shifts in time, place, characters etc.

So, once you have that concept down, you can look in a book and see similar breaks in action, by a change in time, place, or character POV.

In a first person novel, the POV character is always part of the scene, so the breaks are going to be time and location and other characters. But in a multi-point of view novel, third person novel, or omniscient person novel, the break can also be POV - though then you might see the same scene multiple times from multiple points of view.

So, for example, in a chapter a character might start out at home with his parents for breakfast, and then there's a break in action or some short transitional period (like he's riding in the car) and then he's at school, and the chapter shows him in three different classes. Well, that probably involves at least 4 and maybe 5 scenes - scene 1 = breakfast, scene 2 = car ride, scene 3 = hallway and class 1, scene 4 = class 2, scene 5 = hallway, bathroom and then class 3. Now, depending on how it's written, it might be more or less scenes, but the different locations and players probably make home and each of the classes, at least, different scenes, IMO.

You can also look at play - ie, they are broken up by scenes, within acts. and that visual, written break might help you see it.

hope that helps.

~suki

Scene = something is happening.

Where, what, why, how and who with is up to you. But that's just the way it is. SImpler than you though isn't it?

A chapter ends with a hard page break, and generally a number at the top of the next page. It can be as long or short as you want it to be. A scene...doesn't.
That's in prose. In drama, a scene has the same function as a chapter in prose fiction or nonfiction. It stops things, and then starts them again.