Write a Scene

Novels are built out of chapters. Chapters are built out of scenes. Scenes are where you do your writing. Every writer has their own way of creating a novel. Some writers like to plan all/part of a novel before they start writing. Others dive write in and start writing. Still others mix and match. Writing Shed lets you adopt any of these approaches.

For now though, to keep things simple, we will follow the second path. So, the first thing is to create a new scene.

  • Make sure that the Scenes item is selected (highlighted in grey), if not just click on it. Then click on the toolbar button labelled  New.  A dialog will popup in the window where you can enter the name of the scene.

Let’s call it ‘My First Scene”. Enter this then click  Add  to create the new scene.

  • The window changes to reflect the new context

    • The toolbar buttons change.

    • The navigation panel expands the Scenes item with the name of the new scene, and the number in brackets changes to 1 to show the number of scenes in the novel. You will also notice that the arrow now points downwards to indicate that the Scenes item is in its expanded state. Clicking the arrow will return it to its collapsed state.

    • A typing area appears containing a blank sheet of paper (the typing area is outlined with a grey line). There is a ruler at the top containing a collection of formatting controls.

    • A new panel appears on the right. This is the Information Inspector. You can hide/show this by clicking the Info  button in the toolbar. More about this later.

Add text

You are now ready to start creating your novel. Click inside the typing area and start typing. For demonstration purposes I have entered some well-known Latin doggerel. Note that there is no need to save the text entered for a scene. Saving is automatic.

If you don’t like leaping in to write a scene without first doing some planning, then maybe writing an outline is for you. We’ll leave the details of this until later, but have a  look at how to write a scene outline to get a taste of what’s involved.

You can create as many scenes as you like, but it is chapters that make up the novel. You can choose to forget about attaching scenes to chapters as long as you like. Or you can start assigning them to chapters from the start.  Here’s how to add chapters and assign scenes .

An  important feature of Writing Shed is it’s ability to support multiple versions  of a scene. See  Versions  for more details.

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