A book can be written with a hundred scenes and no breaks. The breaks are at the writer’s discretion. For instance: Bob goes to school and kids make fun of him and dunk his head in the toilet. Then he’s eating breakfast with his mom that calls him Dummy Dum. Between these two scenes the writer can either make a break or just write something like “The next morning Bob sat at the kitchen table…” so the reader knows the scene has changed and time has passed.
I have read novels that use this a lot. Vonnegut uses them a ton. I rather enjoy it. He truly gets to the point.
Yeah a single spaced pound sign. # Like so. When it comes to time lapses, you can simply say, three weeks later, but there are more clever ways of going about it.
For example: Let's say 30 days passes between scenes or chapters. One chapter leaves off talking about how there is this really cool party on Halloween, a month from then. The next chapter starts with them at the Halloween party. The reader figures out that it is a month later, and the author never had to say it was a month later.
In manuscript, everything is double spaced (other than contact information at the beginning). The pound sign for a section break is also double spaced, and preferably horizontally centered.
I know everything is double spaced, but you only click enter once. If you set it up as single space # It looks like this. Then if you switch it to double space # It will look like this. I mean, don't hit the enter key more than once.
Usually a scene break signifies a meaningful passage of time and/or space, or a switch to a different point of view. But I recently started noticing manuscripts that will have a scene break, but the scene continues after the break as if the break didn't occur. A few times to the point the break was in the middle of a conversation. (and I'm not implying it only started being done recently, but only that I recently started noticing it) I asked a colleague about it, and we tried to think of examples of this outside of the unpublished amateur/student manuscripts we'd been reading, to confirm it' wasn't just a 'rookie mistake,' but done in published work as well. He came up with Kurt Vonnegut and I noticed the occurrence in a YA novel I'm reading for a class. We both would advise not to do it, in general, and concluded the motivation for doing this could only be some attempt at 'emphasis.' Is there any reason aside from 'emphasis' that anyone can think of for doing this? In my opinion any 'emphasis' created is mostly a construct of the author, as I've never felt it personally as a reader when I've seen it done this way. In fact, because a scene break signifies to me a change of space, time or pov, it usually bothers me if one of these don't change after a scene break. Maybe this is the reason? Some artificial/awkward attempt at creating confusing or imbalance via the format, instead of the prose (a cheap trick, if you ask me, but people do it all the time in poetry, so shrug). Does or would it bother you if a scene break resulted in the scene not actually breaking? Would you or have you done this in your own writing? Any ideas of the motivation behind using the sort of scene break where the new scene opens literally a beat after the other closed?
It doesn't seem like a good idea to do every single time you want to create emphasis. If you did, then it would lose its effect and all the "impactful" stuff would just get annoying and gimmicky as a result of being overdone. With regards to breaking a scene in the middle of a conversation --- maybe if the MC has a motivation-changing point, personality alteration, personal growth, de-evolvement (like for someone losing their conscience one step at a time), etc, then a break there would help to illustrate that. That's the only usage I can think of, though.
Well, it's not a reason so much as a possible explanation: It's what television does. TV shows often break at the height of a scene, to ensure that the viewer will return after the commercial. Maybe your writers have internalized this as somehow the "right" breaking strategy, even when the reason for it no longer exists. ChickenFreak
I've been noticing that a lot in Lord of the Rings, which I'm re-reading at the moment... It seems to be used pretty much like an extra strong paragraph break - like, they get done discussing one issue, there's a conclusion which could be as good as the end of a chapter if he'd felt like changing, but instead he carries on after. It seems to just be a way of separating out thoughts a bit more clearly, rather than emphasis. Pretty old novel now, so perhaps that is more of the reason for doing it than any dramatic emphasis that more modern novels are turning up?
Are you implying Kurt Vonnegut used awkward, cheap tricks? Blasphemy! May the Internet gods give your computer a flood of viruses! I agree if it's overdone it can be annoying and pretentious, but I happen to like my literature a bit unorthodox
sounds to me as if what you're seeing is simply new writer goofs, not emulation of anything that's 'done' by the pros for a good reason...
Maia, are you accusing Vonnegut of making new writer goofs? (Admittedly, at some point he was a new writer and certainly must have goofed.) However, I feel confident that his unconventional break was as professionally necessary as his hand drawn doodles of his sphincter, which adorned more than a few of his books. An aside on KV. He always claimed that he never wrote more than one draft. That would search for exactly the words he wanted, even if it took hours to write just a few sentences, and then leave it. It was done. He's about the only well known author I can think of to make this claim. There was no point in that, and I realize that it is not germane to the OP, so just ignore that please and get back to discussing scene breaks.
I haven't searched much, but just happened to notice this being done in the novel I'm currently reading. I'm not saying it's right, but I don't think it can be completely explained simply as mistakes by new writers.
Yeah, that's kind of what we discussed with Vonnegut, but it's been enough years I don't recall him doing this specifically, but the idea was the 'emphasis' would be like how a stanza break in poetry can sometimes not introduce a new idea or direction, but act to emphasis a point. To give a conclusion to a 'movement' as a new one is introduced, even if it's the same scene or even the same conversation, as you mention, sort of like a strong paragraph break. I don't personally see the point, but I hope the people doing this (in published works especially) made a deliberate decision to do it. I just wonder why. I'll try to find examples as I read, but don't have the time to do specific research on this issue. I do wonder if I'll see it more in novels or short stories. My gut says novels, but no real reason why.
Well, in short stories there's less time for scene breaks, so they would be more significant. In a novel people sometimes stop 'cause they need the loo and a cup of coffee, and when they come back, hitting return twice feels like progress.
I think I can see how this could be used successfully... you know when someone says something that makes the whole conversation pause? I think putting a scene break in the middle of a conversation suggests a pause like that.
I dunno, unless it was a natural pause rather than an emotionally weighted one - basically, a run out of things to say pause, instead of any dramatic revelation or any idea that was too heavy to immediately respond to, you'd need to describe the pause rather than just physically show it.
While writing in scene, I try to keep things as 'real' as possible. If there's a small pause, I create a small pause. If there's a long contemplative moment, I find things to fill the space. With this thinking, I don't know how to explain a scene break in the middle of a scene that isn't changing something, whether pov, space or time, so I've never done it. I appreciate some of the ideas coming out as possible reasons why a writer would do it, though. Learning to think from different perspectives is important in learning and teaching writing, so it's helpful. I like the 'saw it in tv shows' idea. The phenomenon where a wife says 'because I'm pregnant!' and they cut to commercial with a stunned husband, then return from commercial and play the 'because I'm pregnant' again and this time let the husband react. That seems like plausible motivation, especially since a lot of aspiring writers seem to fall prey to film 'tricks' (like characters muttering under their breath RIGHT NEXT TO the person they're muttering about, instead of just giving the reader internal insights into what the character is thinking/feeling). Or I could see some reasoning as wanting to provide a single, compact 'movement' of a scene, and using a scene break to emphasize a transition of topics or mood, I suppose. That is sort of a 'change,' but to me not big enough to warrant a scene break. It's interesting the things writers do, and trying to decipher why. I'm hoping someone who does this will come in and give their reasoning. I'm not yet convinced it's 'wrong' to do, just different from what I do (and probably different from the 'standard'), and I don't find much wrong with that if there's good reasoning behind it.
...of course not!... erik... that's what i was referring to... not to the vonnegut exception, since i have to assume kurt had a 'good reason'...
The only place I could possibly imagine using this technique would be in a long-winded dialogue tangent that has several key concepts. I'm pretty sure there's better ways around that though I personally use scene breaks in the way the previous posters have stated they expect them to be used. But that's just me. Carry on.
I have a scene I have trying to write since Christmas and everything in me is refusing to write. I know I need to do it, I am not blocked I know what it contains and I know really I just need to push it. It is not a case of forcing myself to write since Christmas day - I have written a 20K novella, 10K of this book (avoiding said scene), eight short stories and started two new novels. I'm not unproductive. How do you get the courage to write the really difficult stuff ? The stuff you know will make you weep, wail and gnash of teeth?
