Is there a 'best' way to switch scenes?

Simple is generally better. Most agents and editors I've heard seem to prefer a single # or *, centered and separated by a blank line above and below. I've seen ### or *** (which is what I use), or even ---. Really there is no "right" way, but the best way is the way an agent/editor/publisher wants to see it.

Not yelling at you, but the easiest thing to do is to look in some of the novels on your bookshelf and see how other writers have switched scenes in the same chapter.

Just be consistent. And you won't get shot for using four, or even two or one asterisk.

theunbrilliant said:

What is the best way to format this?

I've been putting four asterisks between my scenes, but I doubt that's correct. Is it simply line breaks?

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You can do it any way you please while you're actually writing, but when it comes time to submit the manuscript to an agent or publisher, the standard format is to double-space, then center a hash mark #, then double-space and start the new scene.

This is a layout issue.

What the agent or editor wants might not be the same convention that the layout ultimately uses. Looking in published books might not give you what they want. And different folks might have different preferences. While cruising agent and publisher submission guidelines last year, I remember very few that specified a convention.

In the olden days of the typewriter, we used only an extra blank line to separate scenes. The lineotype operator kept it that way until a scene break and page break coincided, something we couldn't predict by looking at galleys. When that happened, the operator inserted the publisher's convention at the bottom of the page, often * * *.

I do not miss the olden days of the typewriter.

Another convention is to indent the first lines of all paragraphs except the ones that open chapters and scenes. Those paragraphs have the first line flush left along with the rest of the paragraph.

In Word I use a normal paragraph style for regular paragraphs, a firstparagraph style for scene and chapter openings, and a scenebreaker style for whatever separators I need to use. That makes it easier to reformat a manuscript according to the specifications of the recipient.

Today, with e-books having different page breaks depending on the reader's preferences, you need some kind of separator. I found a nice ornamental symbol for that, which looks nice in a print edition too.

For e-books, don't use extra blank lines for anything. They get eaten in the conversion to mobi and epub. As do double-spaced formats. Use your word processor's paragraph spacing settings in the style to make extra space between paragraphs.

Bufty said:

Not yelling at you, but the easiest thing to do is to look in some of the novels on your bookshelf and see how other writers have switched scenes in the same chapter.

Just be consistent.

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This isn't always the best way to research it, however, as final format in a published book isn't necessarily what is asked for in the submission process.

Agreed, but it's often the easiest and fastest, and most obvious and too often overlooked solution to many questions posed here.

If when submitting one is asked for a particular format one would follow it, but if on checking novels on one's own bookshelf one sees several ways of doing something it's usually because it's not a desperately important issue and there's more than one way of approaching it.

Google "manuscript format," and you'll find many "standard" descriptions and a few different ways to do it.

Nothing I've read suggests a well-written, tight, interesting manuscript with a good story will ever be tossed out because of formatting issues.

Well, unless you send the agent a ZIP of individual chapters. Or, like, print each page onto kittens and shove them through the mail slot.

Jonathan Dalar said:

Simple is generally better. Most agents and editors I've heard seem to prefer a single # or *, centered and separated by a blank line above and below. I've seen ### or *** (which is what I use), or even ---. Really there is no "right" way, but the best way is the way an agent/editor/publisher wants to see it.

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This is what I do, enough to where it's become a habit.

theunbrilliant said:

Thanks, guys. Lots of good help here. I'm new to novel writing and am scared of an agent throwing out my manuscript because of a formatting issue.

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A manuscript will never be thrown out because of a formatting issue, unless that issue is so damning that it makes the manuscript unreadable. They'll comment on how they'd rather you do it, but your manuscript will be accepted on merit alone.

HoneyBadger said:

Well, unless you send the agent a ZIP of individual chapters. Or, like, print each page onto kittens and shove them through the mail slot.

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I'm pretty sure that this is standard industry practice. Famous Russian cat novelist, Vladimir Purrovich Meowkovsky, got his start as a manuscript kitty.

This was something I was wondering about too.

Like if I had character A running around, fighting bad guys, and then I wanted to switch to character B who is doing something like falliing love or etc etc, but totally unrelated to 'A', how would I switch between the scenes without doing chapters?

would starting a new page be an acceptable way of doing this, or possibly just **** or something similar dividing. Thanks for the info by the way so far in this thread. It helps knowing what others do.

Glad you found the thread helpful but if you've read the thread - and any novels at all - you will know the answer to your question.

layzer phish said:

This was something I was wondering about too.

Like if I had character A running around, fighting bad guys, and then I wanted to switch to character B who is doing something like falliing love or etc etc, but totally unrelated to 'A', how would I switch between the scenes without doing chapters?

would starting a new page be an acceptable way of doing this, or possibly just **** or something similar dividing. Thanks for the info by the way so far in this thread. It helps knowing what others do.

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I usually find some dingbats I like that fit the mood of the story and use a few of them as a separator. Like for my new book which is about the paranormal I am using a crop circle dingbat. Of course you have to take these out for the ebook version!

Another convention is to indent the first lines of all paragraphs except the ones that open chapters and scenes. Those paragraphs have the first line flush left along with the rest of the paragraph.

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This is a very nice way to do it in a modern elegant way, but as someone who used to do page layout for a living, please Gods don't do this in a manuscript, it's just way too easy to miss or "fix" by accident. My experience was that you just couldn't trust an author's file, particularly on "structural" things like indents, line spacing, etc. so I'd strip almost all formatting other than bold/italic and redo everything.

This is probably even worse if you're looking at self-pubbing because all the conversion systems seem to have issues with indents. I strip all that out of even my own files.

If you want the final book to look that way, instead put *** or ### or one of the other conventions and indicate the above is what you want in the final production--if you get to make that call.

I usually find some dingbats I like that fit the mood of the story and use a few of them as a separator. Like for my new book which is about the paranormal I am using a crop circle dingbat. Of course you have to take these out for the ebook version!

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You can use an image and you can create an image in photoshop or GIMP out of a single letter/dingbat. It'll have some issues with translation to more obscure formats, but would work for a specific Amazon book for example. It's a lot of work for a dingbat though.

It's about proofreaders' marks. Editors have always used these so everyone would be on the same page when editing a manuscript. A single # is the proper way to indicate a scene break. It always has been, even in the days of the typewriter.

For that matter, when I was a kid, every English book, starting about sixth grade, had a set of proofreaders' marks included. Almost all still do.

A # means "insert a space". If you use three of them, as in ###, they'll probably know what you mean, but you're actually telling the typesetter to skip three spaces.

When you get a copyedited manuscript back from an editor, it will probably be filled with proofreaders' marks, and you need to know what they mean. A good set can be found here: http://webster.commnet.edu/writing/symbols.htm

Looking at a published novels does no good. Publishers want published books to be unique and attractive. One published may use no symbols at all, another may use a line, yet another may use a line of roses. None of this has anything to do with proper manuscript format.

Dear writer,

I absolutely loved your story but in the manuscript you haven't used the proper proofreader marks for scene separation so - dreadfully sorry, but I have to reject it.

Wish I could use it, but you know...

OK, here's the bottom line.

Yes, you can indicate scene breaks any way you please while writing the manuscript.

Yes, published books signal scene breaks in a variety of ways, from blank lines to asterisks to funny little wavy lines that one editor described as whale penises.

No, an agent is not going to reject you because you used three asterisks instead of one hash mark. He will probably not even reject you if you use marks that look like whale penises.

But.

The most commonly used standard for a formatted manuscript is a single hash mark, centered.

If you do this, you will not look like an amateur. Agents and editors will be absorbed by your words instead of being distracted by whale penises or other decorative but non-standard marks.

There is no reason NOT to do this way, unless you want to stand out for the wrong reasons.

Agreed.

Us Brits don't tend to get too up-tight about these things.