How do you separate scenes?

[Pru Freda]

I currently use a row of three or five asterisks to separate the scenes in each of my chapters, but in several books I've read recently, a rather pretty little symbol has been used. It looks like a row of linked infinity symbols. Does anyone know what this is and how it's done, please? And how do you separate your scenes?

[Daniel]

In my first book, I used three asterisks. In the second, every scene was a chapter (I write long scenes). My wife wanted a cute graphic for her books, so I put it in for her (see below). I've since read that using a graphic can cause problems under certain circumstances--I've forgotten why now, but I think it relates to how you generate your ebook files. I build our ebooks manually, so I have full control over the final result. Well, as much control as one can have. EPUB may be a standard, but every device interprets it differently, thus defeating the purpose of the standard. [Oops, how did that soap box get under there?]



ETA: When this response got posted, the way the image looks above reminded me of why images can be a problem: if the reader switches to white on black mode, the image can look crappy. But that can be said for chapter graphics as well, so I believe readers are probably used to a bit of weirdness when they switch modes. Although GIF and PNG image formats support transparency, the Kindle doesn't, and a transparent background with a black foreground would not help you anyway (the image would just disappear).

[Pru Freda]

Lol, Daniel, I don't mind you getting on your soapbox once in a while.

I've heard the same thing about graphics - for a start they boost your file size and you end up paying more in delivery costs - and I've been looking for a simple keyboard alternative. I found the section symbol in Character map § and this may have been what I saw. but it was a row of them rotated through 190 degrees.

§
§
§

And ...rotate!

I'm still working on the rotating - and how to stop Scriv bolding everything I insert from Character Map.

[Suzy]

I used to do three asterisks and then I did squiggles ~~~ but now I've changed it to -o- in bold.

[Alan Petersen]

You can change the separator from Scrivener preference_general select the custom option and then put in what you want in the field:



But if you want to use a fancier image then I think you might have to insert that manually, I'm not 100% sure if you can insert an image file in Scrivener.

I read a book that used a gun as a separator (it was a crime thriller) at first I thought, cool... then it annoyed me, so I like simple. I just use the default ***

[Daniel]

May 4, 2014 11:19:50 GMT -5 Pru Freda said:

Lol, Daniel, I don't mind you getting on your soapbox once in a while.

I've heard the same thing about graphics - for a start they boost your file size and you end up paying more in delivery costs - and I've been looking for a simple keyboard alternative. I found the section symbol in Character map § and this may have been what I saw. but it was a row of them rotated through 190 degrees.

§
§
§

And ...rotate!

I'm still working on the rotating - and how to stop Scriv bolding everything I insert from Character Map.

The trick with using graphics is that you need to make sure you are using one image repeatedly rather than duplicating the image everywhere you use it. In other words, the ebook file contains just one instance of the end-of-scene image, and every place you use it refers back to that same image file.

I would avoid using special characters as your end-of-scene marker, except for common keyboard characters. E-readers are effectively web browsers, and they don't necessarily render unusual characters properly. I also don't think you can rotate them because they are a character of the font, not graphic images. It would be like trying to rotate the letter "C."

The problem with the character map tool is that it shows you the characters of a single font matrix. The unusual characters may translate to something completely different in the font the e-reader uses for display. Your ebook file will include a character code, and the e-reader will pull whatever character matches that code position from the font it's using. That character may or may not match what you intended. HTML offers a technical solution for that problem (called "entities"), but you'd have to be hand-coding your files to use it.

[Pru Freda]

Thanks for the replies, everyone. In the interests of ease and a quiet life, I'll stick with the asterisks.

[Becca Mills]

I feel pretty strongly that one should stick to simple ASCII characters. Otherwise one's likely to end up with something weird when the reader alters the display font or colors according to their preference. I do the * * * with a 1em of space above and below. I think that's the spacing, anyway. I forget.

[Deleted]

My scenes can be anything between 1,000 and 3,000 words, so I can practically treat them as chapters. My chapters have a title, my scenes a roman number. Both chapters and scenes start on a new page.
(This makes it practical to take notes about characters, places and events. E.g. I'm now writing scene 07.06.04 — Book 7 in the series, chapter 6, scene 4).

If the focus shifts within a scene I just use a blank line, and start with a non-indented paragraph like at the beginning of a scene.

[Rinelle Grey]

In ebooks, I use asterisks. I really wanted to use a graphic, but I just wasn't happy with the white space around them on the different backgrounds. I really wish kindle supported transparent backgrounds!

I do use images for chapter headings, but I make sure they're rectangular, so no white space around them.

[Deleted]

I just put in an extra space. I tried asterisks once, but I found them distracting. I sometimes have pretty short segments. I noticed that lots of books I read just had the extra space, so I stuck with that.

[lindymoone]

For ebooks, I like asterisks with spaces between them. It's much easier to find the breaks for the purposes of formatting, and also easier to see if I've changed the first paragraph after the break to no indent. (I really dislike it when there's an indent after the break.)

For print books, I'm with Rosalind: I like extra spaces between the paragraphs, instead.

[Deleted]

For ebooks, I stick with the three asterisks, for reasons mentioned above. For my print versions, I like to get a little more fancy, with dingbats for scene breaks. For my vampire novel, literally bats.


Edited to add: Now that I think of it, just an illustration of a bat. If I "literally" used bats, a winged mammal would fly up in my reader's face when they got to the scene break, and I don't want that. But then, it's a horror story, so maybe I do... 

[Daniel]

May 5, 2014 9:14:34 GMT -5 @johnchamilton said:

Now that I think of it, just an illustration of a bat. If I "literally" used bats, a winged mammal would fly up in my reader's face when they got to the scene break, and I don't want that. But then, it's a horror story, so maybe I do... 

LOL! That would keep them on their toes.

[cbedwards]

* * * * *

[Deleted]

May 5, 2014 12:05:22 GMT -5 cbedwards said:

* * * * *

This is what I do, although I haven't formatted any ebooks yet.

[removinglimbs]

I use ~ ~ ~. Either 3 or 5 of them.

[Becca Mills]

May 5, 2014 9:14:34 GMT -5 @johnchamilton said:

For ebooks, I stick with the three asterisks, for reasons mentioned above. For my print versions, I like to get a little more fancy, with dingbats for scene breaks. For my vampire novel, literally bats.


Edited to add: Now that I think of it, just an illustration of a bat. If I "literally" used bats, a winged mammal would fly up in my reader's face when they got to the scene break, and I don't want that. But then, it's a horror story, so maybe I do... 

Heh. That'd be startling.

I used a little thematically appropriate glyph for the scene breaks in the Nolander paperback. Why not? Looks nice. It did take a while to find a free font that had a workable image, though.

Rosalind, the disadvantage of using a blank line(s) to indicate a scene break in an ebook is that you have no control over how the pages will display on different devices. If the scene break happens to fall at the bottom of a page, the reader may not notice it's there.

[Deleted]

May 5, 2014 11:53:27 GMT -5 Daniel said:

May 5, 2014 9:14:34 GMT -5 @johnchamilton said:

Now that I think of it, just an illustration of a bat. If I "literally" used bats, a winged mammal would fly up in my reader's face when they got to the scene break, and I don't want that. But then, it's a horror story, so maybe I do... 

LOL! That would keep them on their toes.

It would redefine how we think of "pop up books." 

[Daniel]

May 5, 2014 15:44:18 GMT -5 @johnchamilton said:

May 5, 2014 11:53:27 GMT -5 Daniel said:

LOL! That would keep them on their toes.

It would redefine how we think of "pop up books." 

As well as "interactive" stories.

Given her reaction the last time we had a bat in the house, I'm quite certain my wife never wants to interact them.