Scene & Chapter Organizer
Scene board
one scene per lineShape of the story
Longest
The chase · 2000 words
Shortest
The letter · 800 words
Point of view
- Mara3 scenes · 3500 words
- Dev1 scene · 2000 words
Board as markdown
## 1. The pier _POV: Mara · Setting: Harbour · 1200 words_ ## 2. The letter _POV: Mara · Setting: Kitchen · 800 words_ ## 3. The chase _POV: Dev · Setting: Rooftops · 2000 words_ ## 4. The return _POV: Mara · Setting: Harbour · 1500 words_
Export and import
[
{
"title": "The pier",
"pov": "Mara",
"setting": "Harbour",
"words": 1200
},
{
"title": "The letter",
"pov": "Mara",
"setting": "Kitchen",
"words": 800
},
{
"title": "The chase",
"pov": "Dev",
"setting": "Rooftops",
"words": 2000
},
{
"title": "The return",
"pov": "Mara",
"setting": "Harbour",
"words": 1500
}
]Scope and limits
Word counts come from the numbers you enter; a scene with no count contributes zero, so fill the fourth field for a meaningful total. Points of view are grouped by the name you type, so spell them consistently.
This is a planning board, not a manuscript: it does not import a Scrivener project, does not read your draft to count scenes, and cannot detect continuity problems. The board lives in this browser and in whatever you copy or download.
The scene and chapter organizer is a scene board you type as plain lines, with point of view, setting and word count, and the statistics a novel needs to see how the words distribute.
What is Scene & Chapter Organizer?
A scene organizer earns its place when a draft has outgrown a single document and the writer needs to see the shape of it. This one is deliberately plain: each scene is a line, written as Title, point of view, setting and word count, separated by pipes. From those lines the tool builds a board, counts the words, groups them by point of view and names the longest and shortest scenes. There is no diagram to drag and no canvas to learn — the board is text, and text is what survives a copy, a paste and a diff.
That choice matters because a scene board is a working document, not an artefact. You keep it beside the draft and edit it as the story changes, and a text list is quick to edit and easy to back up. Chapters are handled the same way: a chapter is whatever grouping you choose to show in the order of the lines, and the tool reports the totals you need — total words, the average scene and the median, which is the number that tells you whether one enormous scene is skewing the book.
The point of view tally is the feature writers ask for most often, because a dual point of view novel goes wrong quietly: one narrator quietly takes over the second half and nobody notices until a reader does. Grouping the words by point of view makes that imbalance arithmetic rather than opinion. The settings count and the longest and shortest scene labels do something similar for pacing, where a stack of tiny scenes in the same location is usually a sign that a sequence wants to be one scene.
Because the board is just text, it is also the easiest way to keep chapters straight while the manuscript is in pieces. A chapter is a run of scenes, and seeing the run beside the totals tells you whether a chapter is carrying its weight or quietly holding the book back. The board exports as JSON and as a markdown document with a heading per scene, so it can live in the same folder as the draft, move between machines by copy and paste, and be read by any tool that understands text. When the draft is finished the board becomes a map of the book: a list of every scene, its narrator, its place and its length.
The board is stored in this browser and exports as JSON, so it moves between machines without a server, and it also renders as a markdown document with a heading per scene for pasting into notes. Scenes with no word count contribute zero, so the totals are only as good as the numbers you enter, and the page says as much rather than guessing. Nothing is uploaded, nothing is looked up, and no part of a manuscript is read to build the board.
What the scene organizer does not do is as clear as what it does. It does not import a Scrivener project or a Word outline, does not read your draft to count scenes, and cannot detect continuity problems between them. It is a planning board and a set of honest totals, and it is honest about being exactly that.
How to use Scene & Chapter Organizer
- Write one scene per line as Title | Point of view | Setting | Words.
- Leave the later fields blank when you do not know them yet; blanks count as zero.
- Read the shape panel: total words, the average and median scene, and the settings count.
- Check the point of view tally to see whether one narrator has taken over.
- Copy the board as markdown or export the JSON to keep it.
When to use Scene & Chapter Organizer vs related tools
Use the scene organizer when a draft needs its shape checked rather than its prose read. When the totals you care about are the whole manuscript's rather than the board's, the Word Count Tool counts a single text, and when the question is what changed between two versions of a scene, the Document Diff Viewer compares them.
If the board is really a record of the draft's progress over time, the Draft Versioning Tool tracks the word count from version to version instead.
Privacy & Security
This tool runs entirely in your browser — no data ever leaves your device. There is no server round-trip, no upload, no logging, and no account required. Your input is processed locally using client-side JavaScript and is never stored, transmitted, or accessible to anyone else. When you close the tab, everything disappears.