Well, this of course is assuming that you use line breaks at all in your story.

What I am referring to is a physical break in texts when you are writing a story. On FIMFic, we have the horizontal line, but I have felt that that is a little lackluster. Lately I've taken to inserting my own images of line breaks, such as this:

Of course, I've seen other kinds of line breaks besides image insertion. Commonly, I see a trio of asterisks:

Some opt to use the underscore. Some even resort to a plethora of equal signs and other characters uncommonly used in writing (such as the caret symbol, ^).

So do you use line breaks if you end up writing a piece that needs breaks in between sections? If so, what do you use?

I tend to use the Enter key a lot because that's my writing style. If I want to make a sentence stand out, I press the Enter key and make it in a new line. When I actually make a new paragraph, I put an empty line between the old and new paragraphs. When changing setting, I put two. It's my version of a line break.

4877662
I used to use three asterisks centered on the page, just like you showed above. Got tired of adding the centered command with each one, so I stick with the good ol' :

now. Quicker to use, still manages to get the point across.

Yours looks pretty nice up there, though. To each there own. I've never had my opinion of a story change for good or ill because of the line break.

4877662
I use this totally nonsubliminal series of random meaningless dots. It's super-classy!
UpvotethistoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethistoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethistoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethistoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethistoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethistoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstoryUpvotethisstory

Other than that tried-and-true method, which people really seem to upvote a lot, I use random symbols that amuse me or which go with the story theme.

4877662 I used to just use the horizontal rule function, but I stopped when I switched my formatting to medium light (or whichever it is I use... I forget) because the horizontal rule didn't show on the screen when I did. I decided that I'd want a proper line that actually showed up on many more formats (I assumed not many people use pitch black backgrounds) and went looking for a proper black horizontal rule png.

These days I import classy looking line breaks, and now and then do a custom one. Like these, for a story to do with changing the seasons:

I try and keep them somewhat unassuming, but since line-breaks are supposed to break the flow a fair bit, I'm generally comfortable with them being a bit colourful. It's the one example of sticking images in stories I'm pretty cool with.

I'm fine with the *** thing so long as it's centralized, not just had spaces slapped on until it looked somewhere near the middle. You'd think it'd be a straightforward matter, but apparently not always...

4877662 I use the standard Horizontal Rule, but occasionally use three asterisks for a weak scene break. (For instance, a fade to black exposition dump)

Fancy rules are nice, but keep in mind that for people who download and read the story as an epub, images won't show up.

4877662

I use (center)~~~(/center) with the parentheses replaced with brackets. It looks like this.

I like it, and it makes my work a little bit different from the other writers that I see on the site!

Just use the

That being said, I really like it when authors do a special header that fits their story.

If you have multiple perspectives you can also use the cutie mark of the pony you are switching to as scene break. It helps both in making the story look better and read easier.

4877662

On FIMFic, we have the horizontal line, but I have felt that that is a little lackluster.

Put several [ hr ]s next to each other and it becomes a little less lackluster, I think.

How's that look to you?

4877690 Okay, that last part is genius.

4877678 It says, "Upvote this story..."

WELL I WONDER WHAT THAT MEANS LUMINARY HUH WHAT ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME

4877679 Actually, I've seen the spaces between asterisks in several novels before. It always looked weird...

4877697 Eh... like a bar code. Kinda sloppy and stiff, I guess. If that makes sense.

4877697

I didn't know you could do that. I stopped using them, because they're kinda hard to see in stories. But I bet a bunch'd be hard to miss.

4877701
N-no it doesn't.
Noitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn'tNoitdoesn't

It's just random noise, like the above!

4877712 Well, surely, it mustn't! It cannot be! No it doesn't! It's not like subliminal messaging or anything like that, that's for sure!

4877705
Makes sense to me.

Does that help it look any better?

4877707
Eh, I probably use them too often, but I only use them in comments...

4877662

I must be different at all costs!

See?

(It's the actual break that I use)

4877662 I just use this one.

4877781 People like to have identity.

Or ponies.

I don't even know anymore.
Sometimes, it's in character, but sometimes it isn't.

4877739 Hmm, it actually looks somewhat decent.

Lately for my romance/romantic stories, I've been using this.

[center ] * [color=red ][size=2em ]♥[/size ][/color ] * [/center ]
(without the spaces before the ] marks)

Big intricate images with broken BBCode attached so that it breaks the formatting for the entire story and makes it god-awful to read.

4877662 I use
FuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuckYooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooou

None of my editors ever seem to notice

4877705
Actually, now that I think about it, a bar code would probably be an interesting custom line break:

Now if only I could come up with a decent enough excuse to use this.

4877662 In the story I'm currently working on on Fanfiction, I use this set of symbols-

The first means that less than an hour has passed, the second, that an hour or more has passed, and the third means that a day or more has gone by.

4877802 I, um... don't actually know what that means... BBcode?

4877662 I didn't even know that they had a line break installed in the website at all! That said, seeing 4877679's fancy line breaks (I want to use those or at least something custom so badly...) and now yours, I'm a bit jealous of those nice looking line breaks...

Aw well, the line breaks I use depend in perspective at hand. Breaks into a different scene would use this line break for first and third perspective.

While stories only on first perspective use this line break if a different person is speaking

And then I'm here with this:

Viola! It amuses me.

4877662
I just use

With images, a lot of people forget that not everyone uses a white background when reading and just use a jpeg with a white background. looks horrible having a white box around whatever little image it is. You've got to use a .gif or .png with a transparent background for that kind of stuff.

If I ever did a Sweetie Bot story I would use this.

4877662
I use the asterism:

It's the original ‘three-asterisk-separator’. It makes me feel nicely superior to the plebeians.
…Wait, did I say that out loud?

4877872

If I ever did a Sweetie Bot story I would use this.

~00010 - 01111 - 10100~

Your five-bit bytes unsettle me.

4877917
Heh, I've used that! ^.^
Then again, over time, I think I've used every type of break mentioned here.

4878110
Eh, only needed 5 digits for the binary numbers since they were all under 32.
It's 2 - 15 - 20 which if you use the corresponding letters is B-O-T.

4877678

Well, along that line, I bet this line break would look classy, and it makes a nice pattern.

--arcum42

4877802

Big intricate images with broken BBCode attached so that it breaks the formatting for the entire story and makes it god-awful to read.

A site moderator everyone!

4878127
No, that would be 01000010 01001111 01010100.

The prefixes are important, mkay? That's what identifies it a letters, and capital letters at that.
Bots are precise.

4877662 I either use the standard line break, like this:

Or I use three tildes in the centre of the page, like this:

4877662
Your line break image will not show up at all for people who read on black background colour scheme. If you use something like that, you should consider giving it a white outline.

I do centered * * * for my normal breaks, and ~~~ for transition to/from dream/flashback scenes.

4878135
4877872
You should take some actual sentences and translate them into bitcode. Then, if someone is bored enough to merge all your line breaks and translate them back he gets a secret message.

4877678
Hmm.

I feel a sudden urge to just go upvote Lumie's stories.

Must be my fimfiction sense kicking in.

Should go do it, it's never been wrong before!

4877662

I like using spoilers, personally:

4877662
I tend to use an ellipsis (...) instead of asterisks, but it depends on the story. I much prefer to find symbols to use in place of either, assuming I can find them. I haven't found any sort of good line break for Fluttershy or Dash, though, and while I'm certain I found balloon emojis once, I can't seem to figure out where they were.

4877662

Either a section sign, an ellipses, or asterism.

4877679
I know this has been dead a long time... but may I resurrect it for a moment to ask where can I learn how to do that? I'm helping a buddy with his story and he is looking for a custom page break. I want to make him one with this
https://www.clipartmax.com/middle/m2H7H7m2b1m2Z5H7_crystal-empire-emblem-by-emkay-mlp-my-little-pony-crystal-heart/
3 things
1. Am I allowed to use this image that way?... it says personal use... does that count?
2. CAN I use this in a page break
3. HOW do I make a page break with it.
finding information on these questions has been difficult as I am still fairly new here and I don't know how fimfic works yet.
I am going to keep looking around for answers while I await your response IF you are willing to give one.

7472628
holy necropost, batman!

As far as your question goes, I'm 90% sure that the custom page breaks are just embedded images. The way Fimfic handles images makes it so they will always separate text in the position they're inserted in, given that they are large enough and the [figure] tag isn't used.

7472628

1. Am I allowed to use this image that way?... it says personal use... does that count?
2. CAN I use this in a page break

It says that it is fine if you share it with others and use it on your page/blog. They don't specify what kind of license this is under, but I believe that if you use it non-commercially and include a link to the original source in your blogs/author's note, you should be covered.

3. HOW do I make a page break with it.

You need to download it, make sure the background stays transparent, and then upload it somewhere else for image hosting. Once there, you just copy the image's URL and embed in in the place where you want the line break to go, like you'd do with any other kind of image. This also means that if you post it somewhere safe (like private DeviantArt Sta.sh, for example), you'll have much better control over the image and there'll be a smaller chance the link stops working.

7472628 Hey there.

To use an image as a horizontal break you simply need to embed it in the text with bbcode. These are functions that can be found on your fimfic toolbar, but you can type them out manually as well.

For example:

[*img]https://cdn-img.fimfiction.net/story/hr4h-1617269423-492115-full[/img*]

Removing the asterisks within the brackets will cause the bbcode to display the image the link is for. In this instance, I used the url for the coverart of Rogue Sunset. You could use a custom horizontal line.

Some practical things to note is that you need the image to be a .png, or at least some kind of image that handles transparency, so that it doesn't end up having a block of white behind the image. Back when I still liked using custom horizontal rules, I would always composit them myself (usually by taking some clip-art of whatever, adding some lines to them, and resizing them to make sure they were mostly uniform). If you can find horizontal rules that work, that's fine, but as a paranoid man I always wanted to be hands-on.

Another thing to note: when I was still using custom horizontal rules, fimfic looked a bit different than it does now. If I recall there was no night mode, and this is the biggest problem you're going to have with using horizontal rules today. Fimfic has two modes; one light and one dark. On light mode, a black horizontal rule looks pretty good. On dark, a black horizontal rule may end up not working so great. The automatic horizontal rule fimfic uses got upgraded as well, and is not much more overt and noticeable. Be a bit cautious with your horizontal rule selection, and check beforehand whether it looks right in both light and dark modes. You can change the mode you're on in your fimfic settings.

Additionally, after imgur stopped serviceing Fimfic, all my custom rules went offline, which meant I had a lot of stories with horizontal rules that no longer existed. Custom images can sometimes break, so be wary of that. Long story short, I tend to stick with fimfics horizontal rule these days.

As for can you use custom page breaks... well, in my experience, yes, absolutely. I used them and, whilst they were online, they worked very nicely and looked very pretty. I liked how they added a bit to stories like One Week Year, which is where I used them originally.

As for whether you're allowed to use other people's horizontal rule breaks... well, I don't know. That's going to depend on where you get them from. Personal use is generally fine, but it's something to check. This was another reason why I preferred to composit my own, although even then we have to square with the fact that I was often using some clip-art I just nicked somewhere without permission. These days I'd probably draw the whole thing from scratch.

7472630
Oh! Hey again... oh, I need to go back and respond... I got busy...
Thank you for your reply... here and in ADP...

Edit:
Awesome, I was hoping I could use it.
Private... hmmm... good advice.

7472637

I would always composit them myself (usually by taking some clip-art of whatever, adding some lines to them, and resizing them to make sure they were mostly uniform).

THIS! Is that what you did here?
4877679

I really wanted it to be custom. I will be giving him the final image when I am done.