What is a scene break?

A shift within a chapter: time passes, the viewpoint moves, or the location changes, without the chapter ending. It is marked with white space, an ornament, or both, and it tells the reader to expect discontinuity rather than to read straight on.

Should I use asterisks or a blank line for a scene break?

Use a visible mark if the book will be printed. A blank line alone fails whenever the break lands at the foot or head of a page, because the reader cannot tell the gap from the ordinary space at the edge of the text block. An asterisk group, a dinkus or a fleuron survives that.

The typographic name for the mark used to separate scenes, usually three asterisks. It also refers to the single character ⁂, called an asterism. In practice most people mean three spaced asterisks when they say dinkus, and both readings are conventional.

Should the paragraph after a scene break be indented?

No. The first paragraph after a scene break is set flush left, exactly as the first paragraph after a chapter title is. An indent signals continuation from the paragraph above, and after a break there is no paragraph above to continue from.

How much space should a scene break have?

Enough to read as deliberate, which is usually the equivalent of one blank line above and below the ornament. What matters more is that the space is consistent everywhere in the book and that it does not disturb the baseline grid, so facing pages still end on the same line.

What happens if a scene break falls at a page break?

With an ornament, nothing: the mark is visible wherever it falls. With a blank line alone, the break disappears entirely, and the reader turns the page into a new scene with no signal that anything changed. This is the single strongest argument for using a visible mark in print.

Do scene breaks work differently in an ebook?

The risk is worse, not better. A reflowable ebook has no fixed pages, so a blank line can fall at the bottom of a screen at any type size the reader picks. Some reading systems also collapse consecutive empty paragraphs. An ornament is a character, so it survives both.

Scene breaks, and how to set them

A chapter ends and the reader knows it. A scene ends inside a chapter and the reader has to be told, because nothing about the page announces it.

The mark that does the telling is small, easy to get wrong, and it fails in a specific way that is invisible while you are writing and obvious once the book is printed.

Why a blank line is not enough

The instinct is to press return twice and move on. In a manuscript that is correct — it is exactly what an editor expects to see.

In a typeset book it fails at the edges. When the break falls at the foot of a page, the blank line is indistinguishable from the ordinary space below the last line of the text block. When it falls at the head of a page, it is indistinguishable from the space above the first line.

The reader turns the page and lands in a new scene, a new viewpoint or three weeks later, with no signal that anything happened. They read two sentences before realising, then go back.

A scene break that only exists as white space is a scene break that vanishes roughly one time in thirty, and always without warning.

An ornament is a character. It prints wherever it lands.

The ornaments

There are a handful of conventional marks, and the choice is mostly register.

Mark	Glyph	Reads as
Asterisks	`* * *`	Neutral, conventional, invisible
Dinkus	`⁂`	Traditional, literary
Bullet	`•`	Plain, modern
Fleuron	`❧`	Decorative, historical, warm
Diamond	`◆`	Contemporary, slightly hard
Short rule	`———`	Quiet, modern, restrained
Blank line	—	Only for ebooks, and reluctantly

Three spaced asterisks is the safe default and by far the most common in trade fiction. It is neutral enough that a reader registers the break without registering the mark.

A fleuron suits historical fiction, fantasy, and anything with a period setting. It is decorative, so it should match a book whose design is decorative elsewhere.

A short rule suits contemporary literary fiction and non-fiction. It is the quietest visible option.

Whichever you pick, use it for the entire book. Two different scene-break marks in one novel read as an accident, because the reader assumes any difference is meaningful.

Setting it correctly

The mark is centred, with space above and below — usually the equivalent of one blank line each side.

Three details separate a well-set break from an obviously amateur one:

The following paragraph is not indented. This is the same rule as after a chapter title. An indent signals continuation from the paragraph above, and after a break there is nothing above to continue from. It is the most frequently broken rule in self-published fiction.

The space respects the baseline grid. If the break adds an arbitrary amount of space, the lines after it stop aligning with the lines on the facing page, and the spread reads as crooked to someone who cannot say why. Space above plus space below should come to a whole number of lines.

The break never sits alone at the top or bottom of a page. An ornament stranded as the first thing on a page looks like a mistake. Well-set books move it, exactly as they move a heading that would otherwise end a page.

The ebook case

A reflowable ebook makes the blank-line problem worse rather than better.

There are no fixed pages, so the break can land at the bottom of a screen at any type size the reader chooses — and they will change the type size. Worse, some reading systems collapse consecutive empty paragraphs, so a break made of blank lines can be removed outright by the software.

An ornament is a character in the text. It survives every type size, every device, and every reading system that strips empty paragraphs.

If you want a scene break in an ebook to be white space rather than a mark, it has to be a styled margin on the paragraph, not empty paragraphs. That is a structural property, and it survives what pressing return twice does not.

The short version

Use a visible mark, not a blank line, if the book will be printed.
Three asterisks unless the book’s design suggests otherwise.
The same mark throughout.
No indent on the paragraph after it.
Keep the added space to a whole number of lines.

Scene breaks are a small thing that a reader only notices when they fail, and they fail at the exact moment the reader is most dependent on them — the page turn.

In Nueel a scene break is a semantic block rather than two empty paragraphs, so the ornament comes from the design, the spacing stays on the baseline grid, and the paragraph after it loses its indent without anyone remembering to remove it. The same break becomes a printed ornament in the PDF and a structural separator in the EPUB, from one decision.

Common questions

What is a scene break?: A shift within a chapter: time passes, the viewpoint moves, or the location changes, without the chapter ending. It is marked with white space, an ornament, or both, and it tells the reader to expect discontinuity rather than to read straight on.
Should I use asterisks or a blank line for a scene break?: Use a visible mark if the book will be printed. A blank line alone fails whenever the break lands at the foot or head of a page, because the reader cannot tell the gap from the ordinary space at the edge of the text block. An asterisk group, a dinkus or a fleuron survives that.
What is a dinkus?: The typographic name for the mark used to separate scenes, usually three asterisks. It also refers to the single character ⁂, called an asterism. In practice most people mean three spaced asterisks when they say dinkus, and both readings are conventional.
Should the paragraph after a scene break be indented?: No. The first paragraph after a scene break is set flush left, exactly as the first paragraph after a chapter title is. An indent signals continuation from the paragraph above, and after a break there is no paragraph above to continue from.
How much space should a scene break have?: Enough to read as deliberate, which is usually the equivalent of one blank line above and below the ornament. What matters more is that the space is consistent everywhere in the book and that it does not disturb the baseline grid, so facing pages still end on the same line.
What happens if a scene break falls at a page break?: With an ornament, nothing: the mark is visible wherever it falls. With a blank line alone, the break disappears entirely, and the reader turns the page into a new scene with no signal that anything changed. This is the single strongest argument for using a visible mark in print.
Do scene breaks work differently in an ebook?: The risk is worse, not better. A reflowable ebook has no fixed pages, so a blank line can fall at the bottom of a screen at any type size the reader picks. Some reading systems also collapse consecutive empty paragraphs. An ornament is a character, so it survives both.