How should I indicate a break in the story?

[QuietElegance]

What's the generally accepted way to put a break in a literotica story? I usually add an extra space between paragraphs to shift to another perspective or indicate that a little time has passed, but those have been edited out after submission for previous stories. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.

 

[TxRad]

What's the generally accepted way to put a break in a literotica story? I usually add an extra space between paragraphs to shift to another perspective or indicate that a little time has passed, but those have been edited out after submission for previous stories. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.

*****

Seems to work best

 

[HeyAll]

The most common way is with

(Section end)

***

The next day....

 

[NotWise]

That depends on the size of the break.

If it's just a small time or scene change, then I use a left-justified "* * *"

If it's a bigger break, then I'll give it a chapter number.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Agree the above.

* * * *

I use four stars, left justified. I did use centering for a while, but then several stories suffered html fail of various sorts, so now I don't use html codes at all.

 

[WoolyWorm]

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

•.•.•.•.•

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

or

§

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

§§

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

§§§

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

or

PRATTLE

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.


DRIVEL

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

or

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

* * * * *​

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

 

[yukonnights]

There's a number of ways to do this;
1) If it's not a big change in time/place, etc I use *****

2) A simple; Part Two, Part Three, makes things clear.

3) I've used a theme of short 'rhyme' or 'prose' in one that foreshadowed the next chapter content. For example: The flames grew hot as the north wind raged... The fresh spring breeze whispered of renewed hope... note: Obviously, all the 'chapter breaks' need to correlate with one another into an ongoing theme along with the story itself.

4) In one of my latest (not yet published) the timeline is a little confusing and complex so each new section had a Month/year designation. In this one there were several months of time between the "chapters" or "parts" in some cases.

 

[Hypoxia]

* * * * *
is a delimiter

**** JANICE ****
shows a new POV

** 2 Jan 2017, London **
sets a time-space point

** CH 03: DRAKE'S REVENGE **
delimits chapters within a piece

I don't think Homer or Josephus used these tricks.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I used to use * * * *'s but got tired of looking at them.

So I switched to ~~~~ but soon was tired of them too.

Now use ~~~~ LW ~~~~

The initials are the story title. Sometimes I get real fancy...

oO~~~ LW ~~~Oo

As long as lit accepts the characters you can use anything you want.

 

[KeithD]

What's the generally accepted way to put a break in a literotica story? I usually add an extra space between paragraphs to shift to another perspective or indicate that a little time has passed, but those have been edited out after submission for previous stories. I'd greatly appreciate any suggestions.

As you note, an extra line return is only going to be taken as a mistake. I've always used * * * * (flush left here; centered in the mainstream).

 

[Paul_Chance]

The use of three or five asterisks is pretty common, but I have always preferred breaks be denoted by Chapter designations (e.g. "Chapter One", "Chapter Two") if they're a significant length of elapsed time in the story itself or a change in POV.

Within a short story, the cleanest way to do it is just denote it in the text itself.

e.g. "Several weeks later..." or "He didn't see her again for six months...".

 

[redzinger]

I've uploaded some stories where a double return worked to separate paragraphs. And some where it didn't.
I now use the *****.

BTW, what do all you self publishers use on Amazon? I checked out one of mine which I could've sworn I'd used the indent/no indent with larger line spacing, and it's all mushed together.
Apparently, there's the same problem in my trad stuff, which is annoying.

 

[Paul_Chance]

It's rare that delimiters are used in published fiction, though they're common enough in non-fiction. Any editor worth their salt is going to push you to writing the transition in the text itself descriptively.

I suspect that in self-publishing, such as on Lit, they really don't care. Online writing allows for more visual break transitions than published work does. In published fiction, it's the chapter designation that separates major transitions. In "pop" fiction it's not unusual to see very short (two or three page) chapters for that very reason.

 

[KeithD]

I've uploaded some stories where a double return worked to separate paragraphs. And some where it didn't.
I now use the *****.

BTW, what do all you self publishers use on Amazon? I checked out one of mine which I could've sworn I'd used the indent/no indent with larger line spacing, and it's all mushed together.
Apparently, there's the same problem in my trad stuff, which is annoying.

I'm not self-publishing, but I have nearly 200 titles at Amazon and nearly 100 in the mainstream with publishers. They are formatted a bit differently between those two--Amazon (and other e-publishers) and mainstream publishers. Paragraph openings are flush left in my Amazon works and indented (except for the first paragraph after any sort of marked break) in the mainstream. Section dividers for both are centered * * * *, though. Spacing is one and a half spaces at Amazon and single spaced in the mainstream. No extra line feed between paragraphs in either. Full justification for print in both Amazon and mainstream, but ragged right for e-books at Amazon. I don't know whether the submission format is preserved for e-books at Amazon, though, as I don't order finished copies from there.

 

[yukonnights]

Just to add a new twist to the confusion; I've had a comment that I need to break up the paragraphs...so those reading on a phone don't get 'eye strain'

Sorry, that's just not going to happen. Call it short attention span disorder, or whatever...but IMO if one wants to read a book or short story, the small screen of a phone isn't the best choice and writing in one or two sentence bursts would really screw up the formatting we're discussing here. (and before someone gets their hair up; It may work in some stories...but not mine.)

 

[ElectricBlue]

Just to add a new twist to the confusion; I've had a comment that I need to break up the paragraphs...so those reading on a phone don't get 'eye strain'

Sorry, that's just not going to happen. Call it short attention span disorder, or whatever...but IMO if one wants to read a book or short story, the small screen of a phone isn't the best choice and writing in one or two sentence bursts would really screw up the formatting we're discussing here. (and before someone gets their hair up; It may work in some stories...but not mine.)

It's not just small screens, it's the old cry, "Give the reader white space." There is merit in not giving readers "walls of text" on any electronic device, I think. It's to do with differences in the direction of light - screens project light at you, paper bounces light. More scientific minds than mine will know more, but it's a well established physiological fact, not a fad, I believe. I read older books, and sometimes die; "A paragraph break, soon, would be nice," I'll mutter to the writer.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Just to add a new twist to the confusion; I've had a comment that I need to break up the paragraphs...so those reading on a phone don't get 'eye strain'

Sorry, that's just not going to happen. Call it short attention span disorder, or whatever...but IMO if one wants to read a book or short story, the small screen of a phone isn't the best choice and writing in one or two sentence bursts would really screw up the formatting we're discussing here. (and before someone gets their hair up; It may work in some stories...but not mine.)

The phone app does tend to be hit or miss on how it strips out a lot of the carriage returns placed in the story. I read things on my phone as the desktop is too big to be hauling into bed with me. The formatting goes to shit on the Lit App. It even runs past the bottom of the page for a line sometimes.

I hate to say it is a poorly written app. I have others on my phone which are much better, but I have to download the story to use them for lit stuff. Which means a lot of copy and pasting.

 

[BB47]

I simply change the font size for the first letter of the next section. if you are writing in 12 point, just change the first next letter to 24 or something.

 

[KeithD]

I simply change the font size for the first letter of the next section. if you are writing in 12 point, just change the first next letter to 24 or something.

Does that really work for you at Literotica? I thought everything reverted to one font size when it was posted to the Lit. file. Maybe you better check your stories as posted.

 

[ElectricBlue]

I simply change the font size for the first letter of the next section. if you are writing in 12 point, just change the first next letter to 24 or something.

Change away, you're wasting your time. As KeithD notes, Lit defaults to a common font size - I did a curiosity check on your latest, BB47, your text is all the same size.