# Novel Planner: Plan Your Novel Scene by Scene - Feldar > Outline each chapter as scenes, edit the plan, then write it yourself or let Draft Page draft it at your word target. With a worked six-scene example. - URL: https://feldar.com/features/scenes - Site: [Home](https://feldar.com/) · [About](https://feldar.com/about) · [Blog](https://feldar.com/blog) · [Careers](https://feldar.com/careers) · [Pricing](https://feldar.com/pricing) · [Download](https://feldar.com/download) · [Changelog](https://feldar.com/changelog) - Machine index: [llms.txt](https://feldar.com/llms.txt) · [full site content](https://feldar.com/llms-full.txt) --- - [Home](https://feldar.com/) - [Features](https://feldar.com/features) - Scenes ### Plan your novel scene by scene, then write the chapter In Feldar, every page of your book has its own Outline: a short list of scenes with a title and a line or two each. Write the plan yourself or have Feldar suggest it, change it until it is right, then write the chapter with the scenes beside you, or let Draft Page give you a first pass. [Start writing free](https://feldar.com/login) [How to outline a novel](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel) Free to start with 500 credits, no credit card. Planning by hand never uses credits. #### A novel outline you can actually keep A plot outline for a whole novel is usually wrong by the middle of the book. The characters learn things you didn't plan, and the outline in the other window goes stale. Feldar's plan works at the size of a chapter. You plan the chapter you are about to write, knowing everything the earlier chapters taught you, and the plan sits on the same page as the prose. Plotters can outline every page before writing a word. Writers who discover the story as they go can plan only the next chapter, or no chapter at all. The Outline is there when you want it. #### How it works 1 ##### Open the Outline Each page has one. In Feldar a page is usually a chapter. 2 ##### Describe the beats Say what happens next in a few plain lines, choose a scene count, and press Generate scenes. 3 ##### Make the plan yours Edit any title or description. Add, rewrite or delete scenes until the chapter is right. 4 ##### Write it, or draft it Write from the plan yourself, or press Draft Page for a first pass at your word target. #### Each step, in more detail ##### Generate scenes, then edit them In the Outline, describe the next story beats: who wants what, what goes wrong, where the chapter should leave the reader. Choose how many scenes you want and press Generate. Feldar writes a title and a short description for each, using what it can gather from your pages and your [Canvas](https://feldar.com/features/canvas). Then it is your plan. Select a scene to change its title or what happens in it. Rewrite scene asks for a new version of one scene. Delete scene removes one. Add scene puts a new one where you need it: Write blank to type your own, or Continue from here to have Feldar plan the next few beats from that point. If you would rather not use AI for planning at all, start with Write blank and type every scene yourself. ##### Write the chapter yourself, with the scenes beside you You may never press Draft Page, and the Outline is just as useful without it. Keep it open next to the page while you write. You can see what this scene has to do, what the next one needs from it, and where the chapter ends. When the draft takes a turn the plan didn't expect, change the plan: edit the scenes that are left, so the outline describes the chapter you are really writing. #### Draft Page and its Generation settings Draft Page writes a page from that page's scenes and your Generation settings. It writes only when you press it, and Feldar keeps your settings for next time. Treat the result as a first pass to write over, not as finished prose. ##### Pages to generate How many pages Draft Page writes in one run, from 1 to 10. ##### Words per page: Auto On by default. Feldar sets the length of each page to suit its scenes. ##### Target words Turn Auto off to set a target yourself, from 500 to 5,000 words a page. ##### Regenerate existing pages Off by default, so pages that already have text are left alone. Turn it on only when you mean to replace them. #### A worked example: one chapter in six scenes The Weighing House is an invented novel set in 1911 in Hollin Staithe, a market town on the edge of the fens. Nell Orrin, twenty, keeps the town's public scales after her father's stroke. The Drainage Board wants to cut a channel through Wash Fen, the common land where the poorest families dig peat and set eel traps. (Its first Canvas is on [the Canvas page](https://feldar.com/features/canvas).) Chapter seven is where the book turns. Here are the beats the writer types into the Outline: Beats, as typed Nell's first market day alone. Pryor brings the Board's barley and asks for the old half-hundredweight. The loads come in light. She checks the ledgers, tests the weight in town, finds it filed. She takes it to her father, who can't speak. That night the bell rings for the sluice and Kit is out on the fen. Scene count: six. Below is the plan after the writer has worked on it. We wrote these scenes to show the shape a good plan takes; what Generate scenes gives you for your own book will differ, and you will change it too. Scene 1 The beam sticks. Dawn, and Nell opens the Weighing House alone for the first time. The beam sticks; she oils the pivot the way her father did, talking to him in her head. Kit comes in wet to the knees: surveyors' stakes went in across Wash Fen overnight. Scene 2 Forty sacks of barley. Mr Pryor arrives with the Board's carts and asks for "the half-hundredweight your father always used." Nell weighs forty sacks bought from Wash Fen families. Every one comes in light. Pryor watches her write the figures and thanks her for her care. Scene 3 The ledger press. At noon, door shut, Nell reads back through the ledgers. The Board's loads have been light for six years. The oldest entries are in her father's hand. The newest are in hers, made without knowing. Scene 4 Four ounces. She carries the weight to Haddow's, the ironmonger, and sets it against his sealed pounds. Four ounces short. Haddow looks at the filed base, then at her, and says that nothing will be said in his shop. Scene 5 Her father's hand. At home, her father lies propped by the window, unable to speak. She puts the weight on the blanket by his good hand. His fingers close round it and will not open, and she cannot tell whether he is asking her to forgive him or to keep it hidden. Scene 6 Two strokes. Past midnight the town bell rings twice. The sluice at Denny's Gote is open, water is going onto Wash Fen, and Kit has his traps out. Nell works the weight free of her sleeping father's hand, puts it in her coat and runs. ##### Why this plan works - Every scene changes something. Nell goes from suspecting nothing, to suspecting the Board, to knowing her father was part of it, to having to choose. - The descriptions name concrete things. The pivot, forty sacks, four ounces, two strokes of the bell. A scene description with an object in it is easier to write from, by hand or with Draft Page. - The last scene opens the next chapter. The flood is the question the reader carries over the page break. ##### Changing the plan Say the chapter feels rushed between the ironmonger's and home. Use Add scene after scene four and choose Write blank: Nell walks back along the staithe with the weight in her apron, and the town looks at her differently, or she thinks it does. Or say scene three gives the secret away too soon. Rewrite its description so Nell only finds that the loads were light, and move the handwriting to scene five, where her father's hand is already the subject. For the whole method, from premise to a full scene list, read [how to outline a novel](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel). #### Questions about planning in Feldar What is a scene-by-scene outline? A list of the scenes in a chapter or a book, in order, each with a line or two on what happens and what changes. It sits between a one-page synopsis and the draft. In Feldar, each page has its own scene list. How many scenes should a chapter have? There is no rule. A scene is a stretch of story in one place and time where something changes. Some chapters are a single scene, some hold six. Plan by what has to change in the chapter, not by a number. Do I have to use Draft Page? No. The Outline is useful on its own, as a plan you write from. Draft Page is there if you want a first pass to work over. How long are the pages Draft Page writes? With Auto on, Feldar chooses a length to suit the scenes. Turn Auto off to set a target from 500 to 5,000 words a page. Draft Page can write up to ten pages in one run. Will Draft Page overwrite a chapter I have already written? Not unless you ask it to. Regenerate existing pages is off by default. Leave it off to keep the pages that already have text. Does planning use credits? Writing and editing scenes by hand never does. Generate scenes, Rewrite scene, Continue from here in the Outline and Draft Page use the AI, so they use credits. The free Starter plan includes 500 credits to try them. Is this a novel planner for plotters only? No. Plotters can outline every chapter first. Discovery writers can plan one chapter ahead, or skip the Outline and write. Either way the plan lives next to the page, so it can change as the book does. #### Keep reading [Guide How to outline a novel, scene by scene A full worked example and a free template.](https://feldar.com/guides/how-to-outline-a-novel) [Feature The Canvas A story bible on a board, next to the manuscript.](https://feldar.com/features/canvas) [Product AI for novelists What Feldar's AI does, and what it leaves to you.](https://feldar.com/ai-for-novelists)