Tuesday Tip: Breaks

Tuesday Tip

There are three types of breaks commonly used in fiction. These include:

1. Chapter break: A chapter break comes at the end of each chapter. This indicates the start of the next chapter on a new page. It is best to use a page break to indicate a chapter break, as this will keep the page numbering continual without having to change anything.
2.  Soft break: These occur when you need to break a scene into separate sections. These breaks are used when there is no lapse in the time, but the author switches from one character's POV to another. This may also be used to continue the same scene and character, but with a bit of a time lapse. In a book, these are often designated by an empty line between sections of a scene. To indicate this in your manuscript, (space) would be centered on a blank line between the sections to be broken up.
3. Hard break: This break occurs when a large amount of time has gone by in the action or when starting a new scene in a different place within the same chapter. Hard breaks are often used when switching POV characters when they are in a different place than they were in the prior scene. These breaks in a manuscript are generally shown by centering no more than four characters on a blank line, such as #### or ~~~~.