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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24094
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/24094
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Stories are made up of incidents. Each incident is a distinct unit of storytelling. Incidents lead the protagonist closer to or further from their goal. Each incident has a structure of its own, its own build and its own payoff. In long works, incidents may themselves be made up of incidents.

Some incidents may be separated from others in time or in space. Some may place the protagonist in different places, circumstances, or with different characters. The larger the break in continuity between scenes, the greater the need for the author to signal the change to the reader.

There are many tools a writer can use to indicate the extent of the break between incidents, for blank lines to paragraphs. to sections, to parts, to books. How many of these you need and of which kind depends on the kind of continuity breaks you need over the full arc of the story.

So, not so much a recommendation as an observation, but the division of a work into large units, such as parts, would seem to be effective where there are large breaks in continuity between incidents.

Original score: 0