Formatting fiction: scene breaks, POV, and ornaments

Type *** or * * * or ### or ~ ~ ~ — or a fleuron like ❦ — on a line of its own, up to ten symbols. If your manuscript marks scene breaks with blank lines instead, turn on Treat blank lines as scene breaks on the Chapters step. Either way, the Settings step lets you render every scene break as asterisks, a rule, a fleuron, custom text, or your own uploaded ornament image.

Alternating-POV fiction names whose head the reader is in on a line under the chapter title. Write that name on its own line at the top of the chapter — italic, plain, or as its own heading, whichever your document already does — and we set it centred and italic under the title.

Every chapter row on the Chapters step carries the control. Leave Third person POV on for a book with no narrator to name; turn it off and the box beside it holds the name that prints. Both are filled in from your manuscript, so a book that already marks its narrators needs no work at all.

The name is styling, not text: editing it changes what prints and never touches your chapter. So you can name a narrator for a chapter that never had a line for one, rename Aiden to Aiden Shaw throughout, or clear the box to print nothing — and change your mind afterwards.

It also decides where the drop cap lands. Left as an ordinary paragraph, a narrator’s name takes the first-line indent and the opening capital, so the cap falls on the name instead of on the first line of your story.

Every chapter can open with a small decorative image — under the chapter title, or above the chapter number if you prefer — chosen on the Ornament tab of the Settings step. Ten hand-drawn ornaments are built in — crescent moon, moon phases, stars and moon, constellation, sparkle trio, diamond divider, fleuron divider, diamond trio, starburst, and laurel sprig — and one click adopts one for the whole book.

Or upload your own: a transparent PNG at least 360 × 225 pixels works best (JPEG is accepted too), up to 2 MB. At 100% it prints up to 1.2 × 0.75 inches, and a size slider runs from 50% to 200% — the same size in the ebook and the print PDF.

Each section on the Chapters list also gets its own picker on the Ornament tab, so an interlude or a point-of-view chapter can carry a different mark — or none at all. Two easy mix-ups: an ornament used as a scene break is a separate upload (Settings → Theme → Scene break), and the size slider doesn’t touch it; and the Elegant theme’s automatic ❦ flourish steps aside on any chapter that has an ornament of its own.