Mark a scene break with a visible glyph, centred on a line of its own. Never leave a blank line and expect it to be read as a break. The paragraph after the break starts flush left, with no first line indent, exactly like the first paragraph of a chapter.
Why a Blank Line Fails
This is the rare formatting rule with a stated mechanical reason rather than an aesthetic one. The reference document for manuscript format is explicit:
"Don't just leave the line blank. As you edit and revise your manuscript prior to submission, those breaks can shift up or down, and word processors often hide blank lines that fall at the top or bottom of a page."
That is the whole argument. A blank line is invisible when it lands at a page boundary, and it lands at a page boundary sooner or later because every edit above it moves it. Your reader then runs two scenes together and blames you for the whiplash. A glyph cannot be swallowed by a page break, so it survives every revision.
The same logic explains why the mark is still there in typeset books, where a designer might reasonably prefer clean white space. A break that falls at the foot of a page needs something visible, which is why professional interiors carry an ornament or an extra rule at those positions.
Which Glyph
The convention names one: "center the symbol '#' on a line by itself". That is the literal specification, and if a market asks for standard manuscript format by name, # is the answer that cannot be argued with.
In practice three marks are all read correctly by any editor:
#, the specified mark, common in genre magazine submissions.- *` `**, three spaced asterisks, the most common mark in novel manuscripts and the one most readers recognise from printed books.
- **
*****, unspaced, the same thing without the breathing room.
What matters more than the choice is that it is centred, on its own line, and used consistently throughout. Do not alternate. Do not use a horizontal rule drawn by your word processor, which is a border property rather than text and frequently vanishes in conversion.
Avoid inventing an ornament. A dingbat or a decorative flourish belongs to the typeset interior, where a designer chooses it deliberately. In a manuscript it is noise.
The Paragraph After the Break
Flush left, no indent. The reason is the same reason a chapter's opening paragraph is flush left: an indent signals continuation from the paragraph above, and after a scene break there is nothing above to continue from. The Chicago Manual of Style describes this flush left opening as a convention more than a rule, and notes that most publishers follow it anyway.
A scene break also resets the reader, so the first sentence after it usually needs to re establish who, where and when. That is a craft point rather than a formatting one, but it is the reason a badly marked break is more damaging than it looks.
What Deckle Does
Deckle handles scene breaks structurally rather than as typed characters. Because a chapter is made of scene documents, the boundary between two scenes is a real object in the manuscript, not a line you remembered to type.
On DOCX export, each boundary becomes a centred * * * paragraph carrying a dedicated Scene Break style. Being a style rather than direct formatting means an editor or typesetter can restyle every break in the manuscript in one action, which is exactly what a typesetter will want to do when the book is laid out.
The paragraph after each break is given the First Paragraph style, which is the body style without the first line indent, so the flush left rule above is applied automatically.
There is one option that changes this. Scenes on New Page, in the Compile options, starts every scene on a fresh page. When it is on, the boundary becomes a real page break and the * * * is dropped, because a glyph immediately below a fresh page start reads as redundant. That substitution only applies to boundaries between scenes. A break you inserted inside a single scene with the editor's Scene Break button always stays as the glyph.
For the surrounding convention, see what is standard manuscript format and font and spacing for manuscript submission. For how chapter openings are handled, see how to format chapter headings in a manuscript.
Common Mistakes
- Leaving a blank line. Word processors hide blank lines at page boundaries. This is the single most common scene break error.
- Using your word processor's horizontal rule. It is a paragraph border, not text, and it does not survive conversion reliably.
- Indenting the paragraph after the break. It starts flush left, like a chapter opening.
- Mixing marks. Pick one and use it for the entire manuscript.
- Adding decorative ornaments. Save the ornament for the typeset interior.
- Marking a chapter break as a scene break. A new chapter starts on a new page and carries a heading. These are different things.
FAQ
Q: Hash or asterisks?
A: The written convention says #. Novel manuscripts overwhelmingly use * * * and no agent will object. If a market asks for standard manuscript format by name, use #.
Q: Should there be extra space above and below the mark? A: In a double spaced manuscript the existing line spacing is enough. Do not add empty paragraphs around it.
Q: Does the mark appear in the printed book? A: Usually yes, as a small ornament or extra space chosen by the designer, though a break at a page foot needs a visible mark for the same reason it does in a manuscript.
Q: How many scene breaks is too many? A: A formatting page cannot answer that. Mechanically there is no limit.
Q: What if a scene break falls at the end of a chapter? A: Remove it. The chapter end already is the break.