The Anatomy of a Line Break

Writers can do a lot with a line break.

Whether it looks like the one above or the one below…

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…the line break is a fantastic tool for writers. I’ll admit, I think I have more fondness for it than the average person does. Truth be told, I might use it too much. But no matter—today, I’d like to share my love of the line break with you. Let’s get started.

Line Breaks Suggest A Narrative Shift

In my fiction, some of my weakest writing comes when I’m trying to get my characters from one setting to another. I often find myself over-describing their form of transit, or what they saw during their journey, however brief. It’s rarely important to the story I’m trying to tell and often ends up feeling boring.

That’s why I love the line break. It’s an elegant way to suggest this idea: “Hey reader. We’ve shifted settings.” It cuts down on extraneous words and boring scenes. If a transition scene is a long, windy road through the mountains, think of a line break as a shortcut.

In addition, line breaks are an excellent way to signal point of view shifts, particularly within a chapter of a novel. There’s no better way to write from multiple characters’ points of view without cutting your chapters short.

Line Breaks Suggest a Passage of Time

When jumping from one scene to the next, adding a line break is an excellent way to show that there’s been a slight passage of time since the last event. Just make sure it’s slight.

Are you jumping ahead a few minutes into the next scene? By all means, use a line break. Are you jumping ten years into the future? You probably need something a bit more obvious.

In other words, line breaks are excellent for signaling relatively brief shifts into the future. Less so when we’re talking dramatic leaps forward.

Line Breaks Provide Heavier Meaning to Parting Words

Let’s say you’ve got a profound piece of dialogue floating around in your head. Where should you place it for the optimal impact? I’d suggest just before a line break.

Words often gain greater emphasis when they come at the conclusion of a paragraph, scene, or chapter. Recency plays a huge part in memory, so it makes sense that the last thing we read would be the most memorable.

I hope you now share my love of the line break. Try using it in your writing!

Kyle A. Massa is a speculative fiction author living somewhere in upstate New York with his wife and their two cats. His stories have appeared in numerous online magazines, including Allegory, Chantwood, and Dark Fire Fiction. His debut novel, Gerald Barkley Rocks, is available now on Amazon Kindle.