Scene Breaks

Generally, (and this varies on the genre and target audience), you'll go with chapter breaks for major scene changes or time differences.

For minor breaks within a chapter, one thing I've seen people do is a triple-space, with asterisks (*), pound signs (#), or a short horizontal line (-----). While not technically indicating a scene change as far as I know, it breaks the narrative, allowing you to effectively start-over in a way. Beyond that, in the next opening paragraph, you need to effectively communicate that the scene is different, through location, time, or characters.

Or you can add a couple of extra blank lines, and not indent the first para of the next section. That works too.

Look at some standardly-published books. I assume that's what you're trying to emulate.

caw

As others have said, either a couple of blank lines or an asterisk (or similar) is fine. Whatever you see in published books.

The problem with using blank lines is that when they fall at the foot or the top of a page in either a print or ebook, it's not always obvious it is a scene break. As Old Hack pointed out it's advisable (and good style) to make the paragraph that follows the break flush left (ditto with chapter titles) which is a good indication it is a new scene, but I don't think all readers will notice.

Best to use a symbol. For ebooks, stick with those on a regular keyboard such as asterisks or tildes; for print you can be more creative with dingbats, fleurons, and ornaments. If you decide to use ornaments in ebook chapter titles and scene breaks you have to import them into your files as graphics. These work fine on ereaders with a white background, but not on sepia or black because a solid rectangle will surround the graphic and mar its effect. This is because ereaders do not, at present, support transparency, i.e., no matter what format you use for the graphic (jpg, gif, png), it will import with a solid background.

Maggie, nice covers!

For print I generally put a tilde ~ centered. In ebooks I've also used · which is exactly what it sounds like: a period in the center of the line not at the bottom.

Maggie makes a good point. I've noticed that books that do just use blank space will often have to use an asterisk at the top of a page to make the scene break explicit, in which case why not just use asterisks throughout.

If you're breaking the scene inside a chapter, *** works well, or underscores. If you're going for style in print, you can work up a little symbol or design. The little stars in my sig are sprinkled throughout my book, so I used them.

Thanks, Laer.

The purpose of the line space is to give a discreet feeling of change, such as a break in time (what in acting is called a beat) or a change of character viewpoint (though there are other ways to do that). So anything which calls attention to itself is counter-productive. Still, if for some reason (good or silly) you want more than a blank line space, there are several ways to do that.

Easiest is to use your keyboard. Here are some you could use, centered on the page. The hash mark is also a copyediting symbol for line space, so I use that in my draft MSs. The last two are lower-case O and X. (I don't like the asterisk because it's not positioned on the line or at the mid-line but at the high-line.)

# + - ~ | * o x

MS Word lets you easily insert special symbols. Here are some you could use: the Greek letter phi, the dagger and double dagger, the bullet and white bullet (like a degree symbol but positioned in the middle of the line), and the card character diamond.

ϕ † ‡ • ◦ ♦

Each of those has an HTML code, so they can be used in ebooks. Examples are † and ‡ for instance.

Print books go all ways. I've got some that only have spaces, some only have symbols (with * * * winning over anything else), and some have spaces with symbols when the break hits a page break. Some books indent the first paragraph after a break and some books don't, though no indent is more common. This is all from bigger publishers, so there's room for variation.

But in ebooks, scene breaks with spaces alone really don't make sense, as they'll be lost if they hit a page break (and you don't control the page breaks). I have seen big publishers do it, but mainly because I think they copy/pasted their print file. Some of the same books have weird hyphens in words, which I assume was where the word split onto two lines in print. And a few scene breaks with symbols, which was likely where it came at a page break. Which I take more as a cautionary tale about needing to proofread different formats, rather than an example of how to do it.

This is an interesting thread. I have always used page breaks to indicate a change in scene. A lot of print books I've read use this method. Should I not be doing this? I've also seen them with the asterisks and with several spaces instead. I just always thought a page break looked cleaner...

MaggieDana said:

The problem with using blank lines is that when they fall at the foot or the top of a page in either a print or ebook, it's not always obvious it is a scene break.

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Polenth said:

But in ebooks, scene breaks with spaces alone really don't make sense, as they'll be lost if they hit a page break (and you don't control the page breaks). I have seen big publishers do it, but mainly because I think they copy/pasted their print file. Some of the same books have weird hyphens in words, which I assume was where the word split onto two lines in print. And a few scene breaks with symbols, which was likely where it came at a page break. Which I take more as a cautionary tale about needing to proofread different formats, rather than an example of how to do it.

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I've been reading ebooks regularly for just a few months, and have seen some of this - the scene breaks that are at the bottom of the e-reader screen and aren't noticeable - I read the next paragraph, assuming it's connected somehow to the previous - and then have to go back to reread once I've figured out something's fishy.

As a reader, I prefer the ### or *** or something similar. When I used to turn in journalistic copy I always had to add a # or -30- at the end. Don't remember what the -30- was for ... or perhaps I'm remembering incorrectly (long time ago).

MaggieDana said:

As Old Hack pointed out it's advisable (and good style) to make the paragraph that follows the break flush left (ditto with chapter titles) which is a good indication it is a new scene, but I don't think all readers will notice.

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I only started noticing this once it was pointed out here!

(is that the blushing smilie? That's what I wanted)

cwbrowning said:

...I have always used page breaks to indicate a change in scene. A lot of print books I've read use this method. Should I not be doing this? ...

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You can follow usual practice for page breaks. But page breaks are tools for you to use, not some divinely "Thou Shalt under pain of Death" rules. Use them creatively, for whatever purpose you believe helps tell the story you want to tell.

The most common ebook usage seems to be a centered row of three or five asterisks.

Blank lines work fine on paper, but with scrolled/flowed text they can get lost. Not to mention the things that can happen during an automated conversion between file formats.