Adding Signifigant Breaks to Stories on Lit

I'm not sure if I'm using the right term, but the idea is you come to a place in your story where you want to stop, but the story isn't over yet. You want to indicate time passing or a change of scene or something. When I do it, I put in two carriage returns and call it a significant break (SB). It looks like this:


Sometimes I see it done with asterisks. Those look like this:

***

For some reason, none of the breaks I'm adding to my story have come through into the story that gets posted to Lit. I'm using the first method above. I know I have to ask for italics or special formatting, but are these breaks considered special formatting? Do I have to ask for it. Do I just add asterisks?

What if I have a story that's broken into chapters, but it's maybe only three chapters and not a very long story? I could post it in a series, but some of the individual chapters might not meet the minimum requirements for length on their own. Do I just upload the whole thing and write at the top of each "chapter," Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3?

I hope this isn't too confusing.

(I added this post to the "how to" forum earlier today and was told to try reposting over here)

Asterisks don't appear on your story?

That's weird. I use them all the time, and so do many others.






Anyway, if it's a small time gap, I use 3 asterisks:


story
story

***

Later that night, I ...







With some of the other stories I'm working on, I use this: (bold font)

Part 1 of 3: The Ravished Kingdom

story
story

Part 2 of 3: Hello everyone

Two years later. Story
story
story


ect...








I typically break the story apart using this:

*** HELLO EVERYONE READING ***

Several weeks later. I awoke to the sound of so and so...

No, asterisks do appear! In some of my stories, I haven't used asterisks and just went with white space. But if you do that on Lit, all the white space goes away and it looks as if it's just the next line in the story.

It's interesting because I didn't even notice it in my first few stories, but there was one recently published where it really needed the break, but it didn't get it. I'm just going to republish and edited version with asterisks.

I just wondered if you could ask the people posting to put in the white space, like they put in the italics/bold? It's not a big deal. Plinking around tonight, I also noticed a story with a CHAPTER 1 heading at the start of a story, so I suppose that's not a big deal either.

I appreciate your reply! I'm getting used to this place.

Hey welcome to the board.


(There can be some weirdness here, and you also get good answers to serious questions.)

They are particular about some small details of formatting here. Some ways of breaking up parts of text lead to strange long lines and run-over into the sides of the story - ie it's a real problem with the webpage.

I use this:

~#~

and that seems to be OK. I think at one point I was using three little lines, or three equal signs or something, and that was a real problem. It just went into a long line that wrecked everything.

If you want to get an answer from the site on the white space thing, the best way is to PM Laurel. They never answer emails but if you PM politely, they are very nice to you.

Three asterisks is usually enough, with a carriage return either side.

***

If you copy and paste into the submission box, you can preview the spacing.

Sometimes I find that one or two of my blank lines have been lost, and editing in the box can put them back.

I have successfully used rows of 3-5 asterisks or hyphens or equals, with carriage returns on either side. What does NOT work reliably is a row of underscores followed by a CR. Looks good in forum posts:

story
____

story

But too often in story displays, it shows as:

story____

story

Having just extra carriage returns is confusing to an editor. Sloppy writers do that with no intent to have a section break there at all. So, to avoid the confusion, it's best to put in a purposeful section break. I don't see why this should be a problem for you to do.

You can also center the '*' if you wish...

<center>* * * *</center>

I usually use the 4 asterisks with a space between them. I sometimes bold them also...

<center><b>* * * *</b></center>


In my eBooks I have used the asterisks but sometimes I use a gif...


This is what I used in Winds of Change.

Thanks everyone! I didn't realize I could do the formatting myself with HTML in the little preview window. That makes it a lot easier. It sounds like the best way is to use a series of a few symbols, like asterisks or something? I can do it!

Thanks for your help.

On a similar note, what do I need to do to edit a story? Can I use the little preview window to add the edited version, with HTML line breaks and fancy asterisks, to add the breaks back into the stories I've already published?

HuckPilgrim said:

Thanks everyone! I didn't realize I could do the formatting myself with HTML in the little preview window. That makes it a lot easier. It sounds like the best way is to use a series of a few symbols, like asterisks or something? I can do it!

Thanks for your help.

On a similar note, what do I need to do to edit a story? Can I use the little preview window to add the edited version, with HTML line breaks and fancy asterisks, to add the breaks back into the stories I've already published?

Click to expand...

Add the html to your story before you place it in the submission window. It's much easier to add it in Word or whatever processor you use than to go through the text after you paste it in the submission form.

HuckPilgrim said:

On a similar note, what do I need to do to edit a story? Can I use the little preview window to add the edited version, with HTML line breaks and fancy asterisks, to add the breaks back into the stories I've already published?

Click to expand...

To revise an already-accepted story, submit your revised version with the word EDIT appended to the title, and a note in the NOTES box telling Laurel that it's a revision. It won't show up on the NEW lists but at least you'll have the version you want out there.

breaks, using only open space are sometimes ignored when publishing on Lit. For e-publishing breaks of more than three returns screw up everyhting. I use the asterisks, every time but use a format change to center them. This seems to work

Zeb_Carter said:

Add the html to your story before you place it in the submission window. It's much easier to add it in Word or whatever processor you use than to go through the text after you paste it in the submission form.

Click to expand...

This is an excellent idea. Helped me a lot. Thank you!

robertreams said:

breaks, using only open space are sometimes ignored when publishing on Lit. For e-publishing breaks of more than three returns screw up everyhting. I use the asterisks, every time but use a format change to center them. This seems to work

Click to expand...

Yup, this is what I'm going to do from here out.

Hypoxia said:

To revise an already-accepted story, submit your revised version with the word EDIT appended to the title, and a note in the NOTES box telling Laurel that it's a revision. It won't show up on the NEW lists but at least you'll have the version you want out there.

Click to expand...

Thanks Hypoxia! This is what I've done.

In standard print books where paragraphs are indented on the first line and don't have space between them, that type of minor break or scene change within a chapter is done just by having a blank line or two between paragraphs.

On the web, basic html has no way to indent and all paragraphs have a blank line between them (there are ways around this, but it takes extra effort and full control of the page source) so the minor breaks have to be indicated with some sort of divider, be it a horizontal rule (the <hr> tag) or a short row of typographic symbols (asterisk, hyphen, tilde, etc.)

People are mentioning that html can be inserted by authors into the story submission box. Is there a guide somewhere as to what tags are valid? I assume italic and bold are legal at the very least.

PervOtaku said:

People are mentioning that html can be inserted by authors into the story submission box. Is there a guide somewhere as to what tags are valid? I assume italic and bold are legal at the very least.

Click to expand...

I got the <center> tag to work. A list would be handy.

PervOtaku said:

In standard print books where paragraphs are indented on the first line and don't have space between them, that type of minor break or scene change within a chapter is done just by having a blank line or two between paragraphs.

On the web, basic html has no way to indent and all paragraphs have a blank line between them (there are ways around this, but it takes extra effort and full control of the page source) so the minor breaks have to be indicated with some sort of divider, be it a horizontal rule (the <hr> tag) or a short row of typographic symbols (asterisk, hyphen, tilde, etc.)

People are mentioning that html can be inserted by authors into the story submission box. Is there a guide somewhere as to what tags are valid? I assume italic and bold are legal at the very least.

Click to expand...

You can do <i>italics</i>, <b>bold</b>, <center>center</center> and <blockquote>blockquote</blockquote>.

The general formatting for Lit is to indicate a scene break with a series of asterisks: * * * *. This seems, to me, to be more or less universal. Laurel and Manu (the site owners) like to keep things uniform, from what I've seen. And really, there shouldn't be any reason to want to include any other formatting in a story. Efforts to do so seem to be a particular author's desire to somehow differentiate their stories through "clever design" rather than trust in their ability to write effectively.

PervOtaku said:

In standard print books where paragraphs are indented on the first line and don't have space between them, that type of minor break or scene change within a chapter is done just by having a blank line or two between paragraphs.

On the web, basic html has no way to indent and all paragraphs have a blank line between them (there are ways around this, but it takes extra effort and full control of the page source) so the minor breaks have to be indicated with some sort of divider, be it a horizontal rule (the <hr> tag) or a short row of typographic symbols (asterisk, hyphen, tilde, etc.)

People are mentioning that html can be inserted by authors into the story submission box. Is there a guide somewhere as to what tags are valid? I assume italic and bold are legal at the very least.

Click to expand...

On Lit the only way to indent is has Willie as suggested, accept that form indents on both ends of the "paragraph".

The way that eBooks handle the first line indent is that they except only .doc word documents or .epub documents and as far as I know, only Smashwords excepts the .epub format.

Their processing software will read the formatting options in the .doc or .epub document and if you have specified a first line indent it will be processed and used in the eBook output file. Whether that format is .epub, .mobi, etc.

Or if you have a website which you can code yourself, then you can do whatever you wish, however you see fit.