Do I have too many” I just finished my final edit on my new work, Sting of the WASP and just for kicks I checked to see how many scene changes I had. There are 117 changes in 60,000 words. I originally wrote this as a screenplay, and when I went to put it in the narrative, I was constantly jumping to another scene or POV. This is an edited down version of a typical chapter. (The bold is also a change in POV.) Daniel called and found out Jess had turned everything about 'the letter' over to Homeland Security...... *** At Beldon Labs, Sean called for a team meeting. He pulled the four teams’ leaders together:...... *** That morning, Jess texted Daniel, “Your guys need to keep my name off any record........
Have you considered how many of those changes are to scenes that have been previously used? Lots of books/movies/comics use the same places for scenes, so just because the activity/dialogue changes within them, does that mean that there are really as many in your own works? Unless of course your characters literally travel to 117 new locations, never revisiting the same place twice.
Yeah, I think Cave Troll has hit on a good point here. If you feel you're jerking people in and out of scenes too often, perhaps you should look on crafting smoother transitions. Or maybe eliminating all 'scenes' that readers don't actually need to witness. It's okay to skip over scenes, with a line or two of 'telling.' Instead of giving us a scene where the characters are walking to work while having an argument, you can indicate they've walked at the start of the scene where they actually arrive, and let us witness the tail end of the argument. Skillfully done, we'll get the drift without having to actually watch that walking scene. Possibly work at combining important character development scenes, rather than showing each character's development separately. Also, ask yourself if you're repeating things. Have you already given us a scene where the reader figures out that character A is in love with character B? You can eliminate one of those. Trust that the reader will 'get' it the first time. I now always ask myself BEFORE I start writing any scene: What is this scene supposed to accomplish? Not what it's going to contain, but what its overall purpose will be. That can eliminate a lot of repetition, and keeps me from rambling around. Took a while to learn that trick, but it's a very useful one.
You could do a scene review: break down a scene into Summary, PoV, Goal, Content, and Change. For example, lets say that the scene includes content, but has no goal or change. You might then delete that scene, and move the content into another scene.
Great advice.... I will work from that angle. Some of the changes will have to stay as they're changes to POV as it is third limited.
Well, there isn't any number of scenes you must or must not have, so you might actually be fine as you are. It all boils down to transitions, really. Make sure you orient the reader at every scene change, so they know exactly where and when the scene is happening in relation to what just came before, and you'll probably be fine. It's like anything else. Some will like frequent scene changes and some won't. Just like some people hate changes of POV characters, while others either don't mind that or actually prefer that. As long as your choices are having the effect YOU want them to have, you'll be on the right track.
It's worthwhile to note, however, that you change scenes on the average of every 513 words (dividing 60,000 by 117.) That does seem a WEE bit often. Are you sure you're not moving through the story too quickly? Do your scenes give your reader time to settle a bit?
Busted...I had comments from beta readers saying the same thing. I don’t really have an excuse other than I wanted to get back to my historical fiction as I feel more comfortable there. Most of the changes are between the FBI, Daniel the MC, and Sean the villain. It’s a bit like that old song that breaks with “Meanwhile back in the jungle..” I will use this book as a learning curve to be able to write in third limited. And a million other things I’ve picked up along the way.
I finished reviewing an unpublished spy thriller by a well-published author, no names or titles so no spoilers. He had about four or five scene shifts in a single chapter. I found it a bit disconcerting, but as it was an action-packed book, the jumping around was not problematic after I got into the story. In my WIP, I haven ten characters in 112AD from Mongolia, China, the Middle East and Italy, all converging on the Middle East for different reasons, in time to get sucked into the Roman invasion of Mesopotamia. So I wind up with a lot of scene and POV shifts as well. I try to limit the shifts to a max of two per chapter, however, and mostly one only. Since my author friend owed me a favor, he also beta-read my WIP, though it is only half finished, and did not find the shifts disconcerting. In fact he liked the story and wanted to see what happened next. I think your figure of 513 words per shift, however, is a bit abrupt, basically about every page and a half. See if you can consolidate some of the scene shifts into a single chapter and stay with it longer, then at most, a little scene shift at the end to show what someone else is doing.
