What is a "soft" and "hard" scene break? What's their difference?

[xahodo]

Apparently I've been using soft scene breaks for a while now in my project. However, the document mentions soft and hard scene breaks. The documentation doesn't explain what the difference is and what they do to the novel when building.

Does anyone know?

[vkbo]

There are different terms and definitions for this, but a "hard" scene break is a more significant transition than a "soft" one, like for instance if you change location, jump in time, or switch point of view. Many authors start a new chapter on such breaks, but you don't have to. Since this is not a very well defined concept, the documentation just avoids defining it.

In novelWriter, you can define two types of scene headings, ### and ###!. It lets you distinguish between two kinds of scene breaks, but leaves it up to you to decide what they mean. You may not need them at all, depending on your style.

It was added because one writer wanted to be able to distinguish between scene breaks where POV changed. Personally, I like the style where POV changes on chapter breaks, like is done in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, and in the Expanse series. In the Discworld series there aren't chapters at all in most books, so instead Pratchett uses two different kinds of scene breaks. If you feel very brave, you can even do a POV switch in the middle of a scene, which is where the #### heading comes in handy for switching meta data. Frank Herbert does it in Dune at least, for effect, but it isn't done often. I recently read the Silo series, and Howey does a lot of POV switching inside of chapters too. I listened to them on audio, so I'm not entirely sure, but I assume they're formatted as different scene breaks in the printed novels.

[xahodo]

Thanks! This clears things up.