A book you bring in: chapters and scenes

Finished books are usually written in chapters, not in scenes. During unpacking every chapter becomes one scene.

What happens during unpacking

The book is split into chapters, and every chapter takes the same path as a scene written here: its intent, its memory, its place and its time of action are gathered from it. That way a book you bring in gets the canon, the plan and everything else a novel started from scratch has.

Where this is not exact

A chapter is often wider than a scene: it may hold several places and several spans of time. For such a chapter the place and the time are set roughly — by the main action.

You see it in the scene plan, on the places map and in the illustrations: the picture for a long chapter will show one place out of several.

What to do about it

For reading, analytics and exporting the book this is no obstacle.

If you are going to continue the book or illustrate it, check the place and the time of the long chapters and correct them yourself. Write the new scenes of the continuation as scenes: one place, one span of time.

If the manuscript is still in progress, mark it up in advance so that a chapter boundary matches a scene boundary — the unpacking will come out more exact.