Scene separators and ebook generation

Operating System Mac OS Big Sur 11.6

Papyrus Author Version 10.08b

I am thinking about the formatting of my novel. It will be an ebook so I want to know how you format scene separators for ebooks? I can’t find anything about this in the help or on the forum. I want the scene separator to be centred and preferably in a format that I like eg: ***. Your default template doesn’t seem to do any of this. Why not? It is a standard thing for novels to have centred scene separators, but inserting scenes between parts of a chapter doesn’t create them. How do I ensure the document is formatted so that it recognises the scene separator and will format it correctly when the ebook is created?

Also can you insert graphic scene separators or do they have to be the traditional characters; # or * In other words will converting to ebook retain a graphic separator if I create one? Atticus does this beautifully.

thanks
Cathy

You can easily create your own, preferably as a style:

  1. Place the text cursor in a blank line
  2. Select Paragraph > Styles
  3. Click on »New« to create a copy of the Standard style
  4. Change the name to »Scene Separator«
  5. Click on »Enumeration/Table of Contents«
  6. Change the Format Description to: »* * *«
  7. Click on »HTML«
  8. Change the HTML block element to »Main text < p >«
  9. Change the CSS class to »center« (this may only be available after you export the EPUB at least one time)
  10. Click »Apply« and close the dialog window.
  11. Apply the new style to the current line (it will be left justified)
  12. Change the justification to »centered« in the icon bar
  13. If needed, change the spacing above and below the paragraph at Paragraph > Advanced Paragraph Formatting

Every time you need a scene separator, you just select the style for it. If you later change your mind and need different characters for the separator, you can change the format description to your needs and it will be applied to every scene separator in the document. ★ ★ ★

2 Likes