Cartoon One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach are long stories. Cartoons and novels are different, but there are many stories in the novel that are more than 30 books. It is also one main character. The books I've read about novels say that at most 60 to 80 scenes in the novel. But it wasn't. I analyzed long stories according to the theory I learned in the book, but the scenes were well over 300. So, are they simply out of the rules of the story? Wasn't it fun? Was it a failure? Some may have been, but some are still popular. It wasn't, as I thought. But how it can be is still confusing. How does the story structure work in a long story? How does a long story come together? Is there any book or theory that explains this?
I may just be an uneducated inexperienced layman here, but making up rules about scene count seems totally arbitrary and pointless to me.
I've never read any advice about the maximum number of scenes. Now, I have read advice about the maximum length of a novel, especially a first novel, if you want to be traditionally published. And of course a non-infinite novel length means a non-infinite number of scenes. But other than that, I don't see why someone would decree that you must have no more than 80 scenes.
from a book 'story template' Amy Deardon (Author) say " The scene is the basic unit of the story. There are normally about forty scenes in a screenplay and up to sixty or eighty scenes in a novel. In many newbie manuscripts that I’ve critiqued, and even some published books, there may be a lot of action but I find I can’t always identify how this scene pushes the story ahead. I’ll find myself thinking, Who are these people? What is at stake? Why should I care? This chapter will review how to plan each scene so you don’t run into this problem. For the least amount of writing frustration and for a shapely story, I recommend you repeat this process of scene planning for each scene before you dive in to write. Once you plan your scene, write it in draft form while your ideas and enthusiasm are fresh. Then, and only then, should you start to work on the next scene. Don’t worry if your words aren’t perfect because that’s what editing and a second draft are for. (See Chapter Sixteen on editing). This sequence of exercises will bring clarity to your scenes, and help to prevent the common newbie problem of unfocused writing. Just like you did for story boarding (Chapter Twelve), you need to answer the five W’s and H of the scene, this time in closer detail in preparation for writing. Let’s go through these: " If the number of scenes in general is well over, what happens to the intervals between them? If the whole story follows the stages of a hero's journey, wouldn't it be different between a four-volume hero's journey and a 40-volume hero's journey? But in order to write a good story, the 40-volume hero's journey will also have to follow the rules of the story. If you've finished talking about a hero's journey, how do you go about it again? Is the story repeated many times in the journey of heroes? Or is the whole story just a journey of a hero?
Where did “volumes” come in? Do you mean books, chapters, or scenes? And I don’t understand what you mean by “intervals between them”? Do you mean the bits of text sometimes needed to link one scene to the next? Why would that change with more scenes? Amy Deardon appears to have written one self-published novel and a bunch of self-published books on writing novels. That’s not a combination that would lead me to put much value on her advice.
I know what you're talking about. I'll forget the advice of the book. But I still wonder. What about the story of water in a series like Harry Potter or the structure of a long story? There are many books that talk about the structure of movie scenarios or plot structure of novels. But why not have a book about structure for a long story? I've never seen this before.
You can simplify the scene-writing thing a lot if you simply ask yourself, before you start to write it: "What do I need this scene to accomplish?" Answer the question specifically—not some vague waffle, but specifically—then write the scene, and make sure it accomplishes what you said you needed it to do. By using the word 'accomplish' you will force yourself to keep the story arc in mind as you write, and you won't end up writing scenes that go nowhere 'just for fun.' As for counting scenes? I wouldn't bother. Just get your story written. Nobody ...and I mean NOBODY ...is going to count your scenes unless they are doing specific research about number of scenes in your book. Word count, yes. That will matter, as @ChickenFreak pointed out, if you are planning to submit to agents for traditional publication. But scenes? Nobody is going to notice.
I think the takeaway message from the quoted text is that each scene should have stakes and be a set up or a consequence. In a four hundred page heroes journey, you might have a scene where the hero tries to impress a girl by riding a dragon, but he’s afraid the dragon won’t cooperate. Lots of tension and lies and conflict, but it isn’t necessarily a step on the heroes journey (though the girl might be the mentor or the threshold guardian or the one asking him not to leave or whatever).
The Japanese manga industry works quite differently to the western publishing industry I believe. In the manga industry, I think artists tend to make the story up as it goes along, and they keep drawing/writing for as long as there's a market. It's why manga/anime tend to go on forever, and why after a certain point in most anime, you'll notice there's not much semblance of plot and things get wilder and crazier with each successive climax. I believe it's not uncommon for the anime and manga to be written side by side - eg. at the time of the anime's release, the complete story hadn't actually been written yet. Wasn't it the case with Naruto that the anime overtook the manga? I think I heard something about Naruto's ending being affected by readership reaction, but not sure if that's true, if I remembered correctly. This wouldn't happen with a novel, because at the time of release, the ending would already have been written. A novel is much more finite than a manga series, so I'm not sure it's wise to be comparing the two. It's like comparing apples and oranges. A novel should be finished at the time of pushing it out to a publishing agent. I don't pretend to know how to get into the manga industry in Japan, but I believe artists are signed on a chapter by chapter basis and finally allowed their own manga series if their chapter-by-chapter work catches on a large audience. What I'm saying is, studying manga and anime is not going to give you a good idea on how to structure a novel, esp a novel geared towards the western market.
@Mckk has touched on a point that I think needs emphasis, because it crops up quite often on this forum. We hear from people who love a TV series and want to write a novel that's similar. People who play roleplaying games and want to write a novel based on one of them, or something similar. People who loved the Lord of the Rings movies, and want to write fantasy based on them. Studying another form of storytelling (manga, soap opera, short story, movies, TV shows, plays, etc) in order to learn how to write a novel can be a mistake. The forms are different, the methods of portraying a story are VERY different, and so are the expectations of your audience. If you want to create manga, study manga. If you want to write novels, study novel-writing. Better yet, read novels. Lots of novels. Get to know your medium. The ideas you get from other media can be similar, but the presentation won't be.
I don't think the author of the book you're reading is making up new rules, though, she is giving advice and instruction in a way that can seem that way. I think the take away is like @John Calligan said. What's at stake? That's something that I ask myself all the time while writing and even after while editing. Sometimes it's important to consider where writing advice is coming from. I tend to prefer reading stories over how-to books and find that I learn just as much that way. Though, when an author I like puts out a book about writing I often give it a read. I don't think how to books really teach anyone how to write. Reading stories works much better for that, in my opinion. As far as scenes go, I've never given much thought to how many I have or how many I should have. I'm not sure you want a bunch of really short scenes one after the other in a novel, but I also don't think you have to keep count.
Boy, if only I was able to write short novels. I know that when I come up with an idea that I can stretch and manipulate, it will be a novel. The idea can sprout a lachrymal cloud. You can have 'intervals' and it will continue tp progress with different perspectives and events. When there's an idea that moves me or provokes me to ponder; I'll just write a short story about it. I know that I won't be able to squeeze out 100k words from it so that's that. The only thing is that my short fiction has no genre. I mainly write about different things all the time. When I write novels, I need to make sure that they will fall into a genre. I'm currently still working on my novel. It is a cross between fantasy and horror, I suppose. I started it before I was aware of genre rules.
I have written one 240K word story, and am writing the sequel which will be just as long. I think a long story has to be complicated enough to keep the reader's interest throughout. This means, for me, not just one story but several, interwoven, not just one major character but several, all interacting. There was some discussion about what volumes might be, and I offer that a volume is several chapters, a major subset of the novel. In mine, one volume might be the convoy of Roman ships leaving the Red Sea for China by way of India, covering about 20 chapters. (spoiler alert) There is a hijacking and a double cross, one ship is separated and the other two also hijacked. Those two ships have to be recovered and put back on course, with a plan for at least one of them to get to China, thinking the third is lost. In the meanwhile, the other ship has to come up with an unlikely alliance, for it to continue on to China. I think that set of chapters, ending with their partially accidental rendezvous in the S. China Sea (the following ship knows they are days to a week behind, the other hasn't a clue till the the unique Roman triangular topsail appears behind them), I think that set constitutes a volume. Out of that, our major characters are developed, and several second tier characters who will play major roles later emerge. It sets the stage for the next volume, arrival in China, court intrigue and ultimate catastrophe in court, then the final volume, escape from China overland. As to how to do this, if I had attempted to plan this, I would never have started. The story was just too daunting. My approach was this: while I had a general idea how this would turn out, and I had a vague idea what had to happen in the next chapter, I didn't know exactly how it would work out until I wrote it. Writing felt much like watching a TV series, wanting to see what happened next. For me, it worked. Reviews (unsolicited) indicate that it reads like a TV series. I am trying the same in the sequel, with the same characters ten years on, but this is more complicated. I have ten characters who start out in Mongolia, China, the Middle East, Rome and Northern Italy. They each need to start to move to come together in the Middle East, each for their own reasons. Some know there may be war looming between Parthia and Rome, though they expect it to be limited to Armenia; it wasn't: Rome invaded and took all of modern Iraq, until a major Jewish insurrection, Parthian-inspired in my version, broke out throughout the eastern Med. This will pose a challenge to the Jewish rebel/deckhand from the first book, who has found a respectable niche for himself as a newly-minted centurion. Which will he pick? His loyalty to his legion, or to the religion he hasn't practiced in a long time? The group moving west does not become aware of this until they are close to the Parthian border. So I have multiple stories between which I have to alternate, instead of a single, generally collected group moving together with multiple internal threads. The good thing is that I can jump some major chunks of time, particularly with the westbound group, so I can dispense with the sightseeing of the major cities on the Silk Road: they came to Osh, then to Samarkand, then to Bukhara, then to Margiana, mountains, streams, camels, horses, wagons... boring!
