Please forgive my ignorance if there exists a thread dealing with such matters. I am working on my labor of love, and every now and again I wish to break up a chapter without ending it and starting another. At such points I have placed three astrixes between lines and continued on. Is this an acceptable practice? Also, I have noticed when reading published works that occasionally you will see a little symbol something like a ~ or sidewards 's'. I was curious as to its purpose. Would I be able to use such a device for my desired aim of dividing a chapter without splitting into two chapters? Thank you kindly for your time, -Max
Many authors break up chapters with some sort of symbol. I don't think what you use is a make-it-or-break-it as far as getting accepted by an agent or publisher. If the publisher has a particular method they prefer, I can't imagine it would be a big deal to change it.
Yeah, it's no big deal. People tend to use whatever convention they're most familiar with: some people use one star, which I have fallen into, just because the 3 stars need to be spaced in my own private rules of what looks best, and it is less annoying to just do one. Some stories use an image instead, such as a thin bar with, like, flowers winding around or it something. Anything thematically significant that fits between the lines. It might be worth looking through the Symbol options on your word processor to find some cool unicode symbol that might suit: if I was writing something, say, all about card games or something, it might be neat to use the Spade, Club, Heart and Diamond between every chapter. Corny example, but you get the idea.
Good to know. At least it's something that one can easily do a 'find/replace' when the ms is completed.
yes, the single asterisk [notice correct spelling] is the standard method among professional writers... whatever you see in published books does not apply to mss you would submit, it's only that publisher's house style, or their book designer's choice...
I used to use asterisks, but I got tired of them adding to my word count, since Microsoft Word considers them a word of their own for some reason, so now I just put an extra space in between my lines. It's good to know that the manuscript standard is the #.
As a reader, I prefer publisher's that show breaks by capitalizing the first the words of the new graph. As a writer, the above methid indicates a break but doesn't add to the word count, so it's what I use. I think it looks better too.
leaving a blank space/line between paragraphs is a major no-no for mss you want to submit... doing what publishers do is another one!... if you submit your mss like that, leadbelly, you'll might as well put 'I'M A CLUELESS AMACHOOR' in bold red in your header... do what the pros do, if you want to be one... place a single # in the center of a line break line and leave no lines blank other than those between chapters...
As someone who plans to self-publish, I'm going to do what publisher's do in my final product. However, if I ever decide to shop a ms, I'll be sure to heed your advice.
