Calixto

When you format a manuscript and you want to show a letter or note someone is reading, do you have to indicate the line break like you would use a line break while shifting POV?


Ex.
Blah blah blah blah blah
#
Letter or note
#
Blah blah blah blah blah


OR can you just leave the breaks


Blah blah blah blah blah

Letter or note

Blah blah blah blah blah


Also, do you have to use the # or can you use * ?



Thanks,
Calixto

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The Wrong Writer

Hard to figure out what your asking here.

But there are several ways of doing this. I like the simplest ones best, but a lot of people just love esoteric tags like

INSERT
Note from Mary:
Dear John,
You suck
Love. Mary

But why not just say something like


John opens the letter and reads it with a stricken expression.

LETTER

Dear John.
etc.


It needs a slug on a new line, then a new paragraph for the content.

The Wrong Writer

Oops, sorry. For some reason I thought you meant a script.

So much for doing things the easy way.

Yeah, it should be a separate paragraph. Not a bad idea to have a blank line before and after it.

Calixto

But do you have to indicate the blank line? When you have a POV shift I know you're supposed to show a blank line like this:

Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text.


Text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text text.

__________________
I just write what I wanted to write. I write what amuses me. It's totally for myself.
~JK Rowling

The Wrong Writer

No. I don't where that idea is coming from, but you just separate paragraphs with the return key.

The idea of using something to do a "POV switch" is total, absolute, complete rot. There is no such thing punctuation for POV. You could do well to just knock that whole term out of your vocabulary frankly. It does absolutely nothing to help you write and just messes up the heads of writers who get into it.

A paragraph is a real thing. A "POV shift" is a chimera. POV can shift in the same paragraph, even in the same sentence. Seriously, don't get sucked into that nonsense. All you need to set the letter apart is a double space. Some writers wouldn't even do that, would just use quotes. Especially if it's a short note.

The Wrong Writer

Just our of curiosity, where did you hear this thing about using pound signs to separate points of view? Where the HELL are people getting this?

eggo

I've always thought that tab breaks with perhaps italics is the way to show this;

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahBlah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahBlah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah,

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah


Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blahBlahBlah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah

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The Wrong Writer

But those aren't tabs they are returns. paragraphs.

Oh, yeah....duh... forgot about italics. Some do it, some don't. For a longer missive, some cut the margins in to produce a slightly narrower block of type.

I just did a thing with italics and margins reduced by .5 left and .4 right. Looks pretty good.

One nice thing about that formatting...if it runs onto another page it's visually apparent immediately.

The Backward OX

I think you need to provide more background on the protag in the opening.

And that PoV change half-way through is really off-putting.

Liked the summary at the end. It really all came together.

Fun read.

The Wrong Writer

But no character arc.

Beja-Beja

Really I just skip an extra line and change the font, is that wrong?

The Wrong Writer

Only kosher if you change the font to Comic Sans

The Backward OX

qwertyman

I must live in a different world, this is my understanding.

# is used at the end of a chapter.

Quote:

Originally Posted by WrongWriter I just did a thing with italics and margins reduced by .5 left and .4 right. Looks pretty good.

I think the extra indentation works well and I would recommend it, but italics...

I understood that italics were not to be used in courier because they are difficult to diffentiate, editors prefer underlining to be used to indicate italics (QED).

POV switches in the middle of a scene, paragraph, sentence?

Every time I've tried this people start screaming at me. I think I managed it once alternating paragraphs with different POVs (only two people in the scene) but nobody agreed with me.

I'm amazed that nobody has jumped on this suggestion and pummeled it into a paste. Taken the paste applied it liberally to your body and applied a thousand yellow stickys stating:

Thou shalt not change POV's in the middle of a scene.
Now go to your room.

The Backward OX

If I've interpreted both the OP and TWW's waffle correctly, it all looks more like something on the same level as little boys playing choo-choo, rather than a serious approach to formatting for submission to a publishing house.