Today’s question is a tactical question on formatting a scene in a manuscript.
Morgan posted this question on my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page:
How do you show a break between scenes in a single chapter? I’ve seen some books where they put something (like a symbol or stars or dots) and I’ve seen others where there is a lengthy space before the new scene begins. Does it matter?
Randy sez: This is a good question and opens up several other questions on formatting scenes.
To answer Morgan, you show a scene break in any of those ways. I generally put one line with three asterisks centered as my scene break within a chapter. You can just add an extra blank line. The one thing you don’t want to do is to do nothing. You need to give the reader some visual cue that the scene has changed.
Since we’re talking about scene formatting, let’s address the various other issues that can come up. Remember that your publisher has a typesetter to take your manuscript (typically in Word .doc format) and convert it to the final typeset form. So you don’t need to stress much about making camera-ready copy. You just need to present it to a publisher in a format they’re expecting.
Here is how I format my manuscripts for submission to publishers. Much of this I learned from Sol Stein years ago in a small group that he taught in Laguna Beach. Sol edited about 1600 manuscripts, plus he authored a number of books. His advice is timeless. The main thing is to make the manuscript readable for the editor and to put as few speed-bumps on each page as possible.
- One inch margins on all sides.
- All text is 12-point Times New Roman (or Times Roman). Don’t use Helvetica or any other font without a serif. Don’t use Courier (that went out with typewriters).
- In the header for each page, put your last name, right-justified. (Not your title. If the editor hates the title, she’ll be reminded of how dumb it is every time she turns the page.) All word processors let you define a header that will be on every page.
- In the footer for each page, put the page number, centered. Just put the number, without prefacing it with the word “page”. Editors are pretty smart and they know it’s a page number.
- Double-space all text in the main body of your manuscript.
- Begin the book with a title page that has the title in 36 point type, centered on the page. Beneath it, in a normal font size, type your name.
- Begin each chapter on a new page. Space down about four lines (each of which is double-spaced, so it’s really eight lines). Type the word “Chapter” and the number of the chapter. This should be centered on the line. You should make this a larger than normal font size. I typically use 18 points.
- On the next line, include any dateline or scene information for the scene, if you need it. Most novels don’t, but sometimes it makes sense to have a date or even a time-stamp for the scene. I always type the name of the point-of-view character on this line, centered and underlined. Most authors don’t do this, so this is strictly optional. I do it because it reminds me who I am for this scene, and I think it helps the reader. I first saw this in Irwin Shaw’s book RICH MAN, POOR MAN. If it’s good enough for Shaw, it’s good enough for me. But some editors may ask you to remove it. When my editors have asked if it was really necessary, I’ve always told them “All my other editors have let me do it.” Peer pressure works great here. For some books, you may include even more information, such as a location. In Audrey Niffenegger’s book THE TIME TRAVELER’S WIFE, she always gave the date and the ages of the characters. She gave the date because she told the story out of order in a beautifully non-linear way. She gave the ages because Henry was always time-traveling around. In my novel, THE FIFTH MAN, which I coauthored with John Olson, we gave either Mars local time or earth local time. These get out of sync by 39 minutes per earth day, so it was necessary to keep track.
- Indent each paragraph. Your typesetter will later change this so the first paragraph of a chapter is not indented. Let him do that. You indent every paragraph. The correct way to do this is to use a style in your word processor that automatically indents each paragraph half an inch. The wrong way to do this is to manually insert a tab or several spaces at the beginning of each paragraph. These will screw up your typesetter’s life, so save him some grief and do it right to begin with.
- For scene breaks within a chapter, insert one line with three asterisks centered.
- Don’t use underlines or boldface anywhere in the text of your story.
- Use italics sparingly.
- Don’t use all capitals in your text unless your name is J.K. Rowling and you are selling zillions of copies.
- You are allowed one semicolon in your entire working life as a novelist. You can use more than that if you insist, but quite honestly you have a disease that should be treated and I refuse to be an enabler for you.
I’m pretty sure those are all the main formatting guidelines that I use. If I missed one, my Loyal Blog Readers will post a comment to ask me about it and then I’ll edit the above to be more complete.
If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer in public on this blog, hop on over to my “Ask A Question For My Blog” page and submit your question. I’ll answer them in the order they come in.
Why are semicolons deadly? Are they contagious? I find I do use them and never considered them dangerous.
Authors like Michael Crichton or Dan Brown include diagrams and drawings in their works. It’s atypical so I guess it’s the kind of thing that makes typesetters miserable. What’s your take on these?
Deadly contagious semicolons I am so busted as for drawings and diagrams, not going to happen. Don’t think my imagination is contagious, dangerous possibly some of my thoughts I put to paper so to, you get it right.
How do you guys feel about run on sentences?
Thank you for that information one problem I can solve is when I convert my completed Word doc.in Calibre ..to a Epub file and view it all the scene breaks are out of alignment….It there a way to prevent this happening?
Excellent! Thank you Randy. I usually have to piece all this information together from various sites (that usually contradict each other lol). Nice to have it all in one place.
Why does tabbing my indentions mess up the typesetter?
Modern typesetting software automatically indents paragraphs correctly. When you add in a tab character to do it manually, you are increasing the amount indented. It was already correct, so now you have made it wrong. The typesetter will now need to remove all these tabs. Don’t make their life harder.
Randy, I pulled the copy from this blog and saved it in my Wordpad. Then I set up a blank Manscript document template from it in Word.
From now on, all my writing will be done in Word from that template. Thank you so much for this concise reference.
Thank you Judith that was a great idea
Late checking this, but I laughed out loud at the one semi-colon per lifetime in fiction. It’s easy to understand. We don’t speak in semi-colons; we should write as we speak, short sentences, sometimes not even complete ones, and certainly not strung out on run-on sentences, divided by a ton of commas; stop to take a breath, for heaven’s sake!!!!!!!!!
What’s the lifetime limit for non-fiction? (I jest.)I’m pre-editing a manuscript where the content is valuable, but the writer uses semi-colons for commas. 🙁
Thank you so much for such a thorough listing. It’s great to have everything in one place!
Thank you so much, Randy. I have seen a lot of English writers, though, who use a lot of semi-colons . . . and I have learnt it that way. So what is dangerous or deadly about it? I’d like to know before I die.
As a reader, to me the problem with semicolons is that often it feels contrived, pretentious or forced… if it’s even used correctly. Even at best when it’s being used correctly, it often has the unfortunate side effect of breaking the flow or just feeling… awkward. 0_o
I agree with you, Melissa! I think it’s because it reminds us of grammar lessons in school. Bleh… x)
I agree about the semicolons. Anything that is distracting and will pull the reader out of the story should be eliminated. I have a quick formatting question for you. Should you create the title page as a separate document? Otherwise, when you include everything in a single document, MS Word’s auto page number feature mistakes the title page for page one, and that puts the opening page of chapter one on page two. Or do you know of an alternate formatting solution?
Randy sez: Put the title page in the same document. Word will allow you to create your document in “sections” each of which can be numbered independently. But it hardly matters to me what page number the first chapter starts with. I don’t really care.
I love semicolons. Also em-dashes.
I always end up overusing one or the other in anything I write.
I’m writing my first 🙁 and whilst the story is flowing nice and fast, I had no idea about correct formatting, so wrote the first 40,000 words in a normal Word doc, and then heard about the margins. So, then the margins were done, and the font and size were corrected, and I discover there is a Word template for manuscripts. I then download the template, and drag all my text across, and finally have a nice manuscript with everything but paragraphs. It ate my paragraphs, and the entire left margin is totally justified. When I can face it again, and go through my now 55,000 words, and recreate paragraphs, will it indent them automatically? If not, pleeeeease can you tell me how to fix it?
Ingrid, if you are serious about writing, I cannot stress this enough having lived through the pain of my first 130,000 word manuscript, DUMP MS WORD. The bigger your document gets, the more Word will struggle to cope with it. You’ll select sections, try to change the paragraph indents, and the ruler will disappear, forcing you to change the indents 20 pages at a time. The bigger the file gets, the slower it will run, until you’re waiting for it to paginate. It will crash and not only corrupt your working document but the autosave document too and you’ll lose a full day’s writing.
A product like Scrivener (and no, I don’t get anything for recommending software) will change your writing life. You’ll be able to plan your entire novel, write in a beautifully structured way, in any font or layout that you like, and then compile the entire novel in any format (including MS Word), with any font or layout with just a few clicks of the mouse. It’ll take a while to learn Scrivener (it’s very powerful and can do almost anything except make the tea) but you won’t look back. Good luck!
Seconded. Word sux. Scrivener is v. good. If you don’t want to buy software, check out Lyx and forget about formatting. It will allow you to concentrate on content. The format is dynamically chosen upon export. If you must, once the document is complete, export in plain text and pull it into a Word template.
Scrivener is interesting for some things. I disabled auto back up because it failed. Saved 1000 words for 98,000 document. Fortunately I saved it to an email.
My problem was figuring out Scrivenir. The directions said… you shuld now have a space to write… or something like that. There wasn’t. The space was write prevented. The Inspector wasthe first place that allowed me to write. then the index cards.
The directions didn’t specify to get by the unwritable area, the user had to drill down to another level in order to write in the editor.
I jsut found out that Word can say it saved the document when it hasn’t. I have lost one small file, because Word saved it to a temp file unredable file, even thought it said the document was saved.
Some weird file like CHYG.gz
Some kind of zipped file.
Alternatively, you can keep your chapters separated in their own file in Word, and then only amalgamate them when you’re finished and ready to send it off. Keeping it separate makes editing much easier too.
I’m developing something (!) on paper for the first time and hoping for a short story, I’d be thrilled if it turned into anything. Is it okay to create a work of fiction based upon true people and events as long as you change out their names? I don’t want to be sued for libel.
I use semi-colons, and I’m not ashamed to admit it! Properly used, they do not distract from reading or break the flow, any more than full stops do. Punctuation is neither evil nor optional. You should use whatever punctuation is least confusing, best conveys your shade of meaning, sounds best, and is most grammatically correct (in that order), and often that is a semi-colon.
Some sentences will be long, others short; it’s probably not good to have all of either.
Here, here! PTxS
I agree. The advice here not to use semicolons is ridiculous. Not all writing needs to opiate the masses with a third grade reading level… unless of course you have a partially clad, bronzed hunk on the cover of your novel.
Good on you Carrie. Fight the punctuation haters. If there were any onus placed on grammatical syntax remaining within our public education system, the haters wouldn’t be so scared.
I know this blog has been here a while but I just found it and must say it has been incredibly helpful. Thank you!
This is terrific advice. However there are a gadzillion of absolutely Right Hand of God novel formats. It’s enough to drive me nuts. You DO talk the talk and walk the walk better than other editors though. I’m still horribly confused. But I put so much time and effort into my novel that I HAVE to follow through. If all else fails and I find that book editors are the ogres for correct style over content, which I suspect is true, I’ll do an audio book. I’ve 30 years in the AV biz narrating, writing and producing AV productions plus on the air announcer experience. So I KNOW how to do that. And there’s no schlemming around with horrible Times type faces. As a contributing editor/writer for a trade magazine, I use Microsoft Word. It looks great as I write, compared to the novel editors preferred Times and whatever other type face. I don’t even double space. All my esteemed editor cares about is if it’s “in by Tuesday and spelled right.” Thus my original mss is in my dearly loved Microsoft Word, and I’m now translating that into the Times face, which looks terrible on my word processor. Enough kvetching already! Thanks a million for the advice. I sure hope it’s the right advice! ###
I found you advice about putting the page number at the bottom of the page to be most helpful because I’m adding scene breakers, and it would otherwise screw up my pagination. Now it a simple thing to have that page number as a paragraph breaker, so I can start the next page. Of course, the header will off. But then all I have to do is fetch that from getting shoved further down the next page and copy/paste that for a new header.
Writing itself is lot of secretarial work.
Are you lame? Sorry – that may be offensive. I meant in the region of your brain. Microsoft Word has many fonts. Are you perhaps referring to Arial, which comes in more than one option, in that typeface?
Just an additional thought. Adding scene breakers is like breaking the story up into movie scenes. In fact, the formatted traditional movie scripts are like mini-novels. That’s changing, too. People are making movies WITHOUT scripts! I can’t imagine that. I went through several scriptwriting classes. And there definitely is an accepted format. Following that makes writing so easy.
Dear Sir,
I am Steven Burnette i am first time writing a novel. I have question regarding italic word in story and scene break. how to format for scene breaks?
Hi , I am attempting to publish. Through CreateSpace. I read in their articles that Times New Roman is more commonly used for newspapers than books, and was invented to be a newspaper font. I have used Georgia 12 point for the main body of my text, Georgia 16 pt for chapter headings and Franklin Gothic Heavy 26 point for my half title page. I used a preset font for the cover as I used a template from their cover creator. They specify not to use more than 2 different fonts in the body of a manuscript .
Lulu.com on the other hand, has no formatting specs for proof copies. I just submitted a proof to CreateSpace and it was accepted for printing and is now printed and on its way to me. I wrote my novel in last november’s NaNoWriMo . I am currently deciding who to self- publish through. I guess your article relates to the traditional publishing route? Is TNR a standard font for all traditional publishers and one that MUST be used, or an optional font to be used ?
If I cannot decide who to self- publish with, it is ok to then go and publish traditionally if I find an agent who will accept my work?
Hello,
Something not mentioned here is WHY we (or most of us, especially nowadays) indent every new paragraph except the ones at the beginning of a chapter or the first paragraph after an asterisk. I know this is generally the rule, but why? My guess was because this signals an even further break f thought or story flow. For example, one chapter is basically a segment of the story and therefore one continuous thought. Therefore, the first paragraph doesn’t need to be indented but every one following it does to show that break in thought, but there is no break needed at the beginning of a ‘thought’ (or chapter). Is this correct?
Also, if my theory is correct, then why don’t all books using the indent formula follow this rule. I find most do; especially recently, in the past 30 years or so. If you could help clear this up for me, I would be very grateful. Thanks.
-Xander
For a scene break, I found the asterisks on the keyboard pretty weedy and set too high. So in Wordpad I typed ‘✱ ✱ ✱’, then saved the document as TXT before changing it to HTML. Now whenever I need a scene break while typing in Microsoft Word, I can just copy/paste from the HTML document I created. Simples!
Right, I’ll try that again:
For a scene break, I found the asterisks on the keyboard pretty weedy and set too high, so in Wordpad I typed ‘
✱ ✱ ✱’, then saved the document as TXT before changing it to HTML. Now whenever I need a scene break while typing in Microsoft Word, I can just copy/paste from the HTML document I created. Simples!Nope, it hates my code even when it’s wrapped in correctly formatted
tags.I wondered about spacing between sentences in the same paragraph. I was always taught two _ _ but I think I read somewhere that one is now appropriate. Can you published authors advise?
I’d like to add more text to fill out my 30,000 word manuscript. Will the blank page
breaks follow the order of pagination? I’m using USB for backup. Is it a good idea to put
the entire ms on 8 mg. Will chapters be hard to organize ? My first attempt I have
a long way to go.
This was some nice advice until I reached the semicolon part. Semicolons, colons, em dashes, and hyphens are all mandatory in the ‘English’ language.
You read any piece of classic literature and you will quickly notice that great writers use their tools thoroughly and to great effect. If a publisher or agent is avoiding work with semicolons then they should be removed from such positions and marked with the idiot brush.
The reason most modern literature is so awful is because it’s a series of short, fruitless sentences that reads like a dial tone. I actually tried to read Harry Potter a few months back out of curiosity, and within twenty pages, I put it back on the shelf and continued with Jules Verne.
DO NOT avoid semicolons or other mandatory writing tools. However, don’t overuse them either, especially if you’re unsure when and where they’re needed.
Are we as writers allowed to let a chapter end with a half a page, or do we have to make sure that every page within a manuscript is completely filled with words? The plot of my story isn’t allowing me to place the chapters where I want them.
Dorothy, start each chapter on a new page. The chapter can end on half a page or whatever.
Hi
Thanks for all the information.
I have finished my story, is there any way to insert a page break after all chapters as part of a style command or do I have to do each one manually?
Thanks
Semicolons have a function; other punctuation just won’t do.
Seriously, some characters talk by joining related independent clauses. Thus, I use semicolons for their speech. But in general, for the prose, they are not needed.
Otherwise, this page contains some useful advice.
Remember, submission format is different from book format, as you know.
Peace,
Tex Shelters
I find an em dash looks much nicer in a novel than using a semi colon and works in a similar way. But in general I agree, all punctuation was invented for a reason so why are some so taboo? I guess it’s because they have been so misused in the past, but that shouldn’t detract a writer from using them correctly. I had a conversation with my editor along these lines recently.
I have completed twelve chapters of a memoir and have each chapter on a separate document. When I paged numbered each chapter, I had to manually type in the first page of each chapter (then Word automatically took over). But of course this sets up a problem – if one chapter is extended, I now have to go through the entire twelve chapters and re-number.
I’m assuming that in writing novel, one should just continue a new chapter on another page? ie. 300 pages of continuous writing and not separate documents for each chapter.
Thanks!
Awesome blog! Do you have any hints for aspiring writers?
I’m planning to start my own blog soon but I’m a little lost on everything.
Would you advise starting with a free platform like WordPress or go for a
paid option? There are so many options out there that I’m
totally overwhelmed .. Any suggestions? Thanks a lot!
Hi there,
Thanks for a wonderful, clear article. I have one q – should I indent the first paragraph after a scene change? Or leave it unidented as with a new paragraph?
Thanks
Dev
Thank you for this information! It has really helped me.
Helpful tips. Thanks.
The semicolon disease comment was funny; it’s a disease alright.
Thank you for this. Very helpful.
thanks for this
I don’t know what t do as have written around 600 000 words, and it is all in MS Word. Every single paragraph is indented via a manual tab. What can I do about this at this stage? Anything?
It did not occur to me to do it otherwise. I haven’t had any trouble with large amounts of text, moving text around etc. I can’t conceptualize Scrivener, how to use it, what it can do for me.
I am keen to get rid of semi colons, I have never liked them and good to have that confirmed. Also bold and italics I had a feeling overwhelmed the reader.
Thanks.
I have a question. What do you do with the the name/author line if you want to use a pen name for your novel. I can not seem to find what to do with that any where.
I am keen to get rid of semi colons, I have never liked them and good to have that confirmed. Also bold and italics I had a feeling overwhelmed the reader.
In reading books recently, some do not have chapters. Is it necessary to have chapters? I’m finding it difficult to know where to transition my work.
Thanks
Ms Xielolicii
am keen to get rid of semi colons, I have never liked them and good to have that confirmed.
Excellent! Thank you Randy. I usually have to piece all this information together from various sites (that usually contradict each other lol). Nice to have it all in one place.
Love your site. I wrote my first autobiography and just got it back from my editor. She sent it to me in google doc and I am having a hard time it finding my saved correction in google doc. I know it states changes saved to disk at the top of her email but when I go into google doc it gives me a bunch of manuscripts that has some of my changes. Now to find the right one I have to go through all. not sure how to maneuver through them. Can you give me a hint?
“You are allowed one semicolon in your entire working life as a novelist. You can use more than that if you insist, but quite honestly you have a disease that should be treated and I refuse to be an enabler for you.”
You cite your claim to ‘madness’.
Our disease may be related to that which causes thugs’ wannabe quacks to use “should”.
No reference to your punctuational qualifications? So what do you recommend to replace your forbidden marks?
I note the weasel’s voice: I am allowed? By? The prompter? Your thugs? Baby Jesus?
What if I use two? Are you from the land that delights in concealed weapons where infants congregate?
By the way, the cats seem right. Some of them know how to treat bullies
.
Finally, how can you refuse what I forbid you to do?
This was really, really helpful; especially formatting. (I used my ONE semicolon on you :-)) I had already written a book in Word and now was ready to edit and format it properly. This was a world of help.
In our modern day of ebooks and online everything, it’s a HUGE no-no to use the ‘Enter’ key to put space between chapters to start on a new page. The only time that would be okay if if you’re printing it out for a hard copy and mailing it old school. And you might still be required to submit electronically, so why bother?
A proper page break using a keyboard shortcut, or finding it in the ribbon is recommended to make final formatting into ebook significantly easier.
I also don’t see the harm in using semicolons, though probably it’s not wise to sprinkle them around like stars throughout your manuscript as that would be distracting to a reader.
I also don’t see the harm in using semicolons, though probably it’s not wise to sprinkle them
In our modern day of ebooks and online everything, it’s a HUGE no-no to use the ‘Enter’ key to put space between chapters to start on a new page. The only time
For scene breaks, I use 3 asterisks (per guidelines) but I want to put an extra blank line above and below the line of asterisks. My scenes fast-forward over a block of time, and, to me, the extra white space seems to make this more clear. “We’re in a new scene now.” But guidelines make it sound like editors, publishers, and agents want just the one line with the asterisks on it.
Is it bad to put the extra blank lines cushioning the asterisks line? Does the publisher’s software translate the scene breaks properly with just the one line of asterisks for scene breaks? If I didn’t add extra blank lines between scenes, but used just one line of asterisks, is that the way the finished book would be printed – or does their software add lines around the line of asterisks?
Any thoughts or insight at all would be greatly appreciated.
Hi Audra: Feel free to add those blank lines if you like. The publisher is going to use software that knows how to make the book look best, and it really doesn’t matter if you put in blank lines or not–the software will change it to the publisher’s standards. They may replace the asterisks with something else or use them, depending on what their interior designer thinks will look best. Write the best story you can and don’t sweat this kind of detail. Your goal is to give the editor something readable so they can decide whether to buy your manuscript or not. Have fun!