Organise your writing part 2

This post takes a closer look at the two methods of organising your writing, it explains in depth the advantages and disadvantages of each, and it’s a continuation of my previous post organise your writing.

Why is it a better idea to give each scene or chapter a title, rather giving them a number, for example scene 1, chapter 2, or scene 30, chapter 29 etc?

Disadvantages of the numerical system of organising your writing

The problem with giving scenes and chapters numbers rather than descriptive names is, it’s possible to forget what each scene or chapter is about.
By the time you have written maybe 50 or 60 scenes and maybe 20 or 30 chapters, you will probably have no idea what, for example, scene 45 and chapter 29 are about.

Advantages of the descriptive system of organising your writing

Using the descriptive system – the system of giving each scene and chapter a descriptive title, a quick glance at the title is enough to help you recall what each scene and chapter is about, you don’t have to look at the content.
Using the numerical system however – the system of giving each each scene and chapter a number, you do have to look at the content to recall what it is about.
This can take quite a lot of time – time that can be more profitably dedicated to actually writing, ie. doing what you are supposed to be doing.
For example, you might have written a certain chapter a few weeks’ ago and you suddenly realise that it can be improved, maybe by adding another scene. You will probably remember what the chapter is about, but the chances are you have no idea what the chapter number is.
Using the numerical system, you have to look at the content of each chapter to find the chapter that you want. Using the descriptive title system, however, you just have to look at the title.

This system of organising writing is only for the temporary convenience of writers

Obviously, when and if the book is sent to a publisher, the titles will have to be removed and replaced by chapter numbers.
However, this should take far less time than the amount of time that you can spend looking through the content of each scene and chapter to recall what it is about.