Something like:
"Why did the chicken cross the road? [...]
To get to the other side."
A normal ellipsis doesn't seem to convey enough and emphasizing it (using brackets here) looks a bit much. And it's confusing, like the intent is to remove text.
Is there a more eloquent way to represent this?
An ellipsis can be used to signify several things and a pause is one of them. A long pause could be indicated by your choice of words.
Don't think most fiction has lots of pauses in it, but if you're writing instructions (like how to tell a joke) you could just say "pause here".
Ignoring any style guide, I could see that typeset using an em-dash.
Perhaps an example can be found in plays by Harold Pinter ... the "Pinter pause"... he often provided stage direction in two different formats: 1. directing "silence" rather than pause ... 2. text [space] ... [space] text
Southpark scripts use the direction of "silence"
I would say that you might string out your dots to indicate an especially long pause, and damn the style sheets, but your typesetter's going to ignore your STETs. Probably only a Dr. Seuss could get away with punctuational frolics.
I believe an ellipsis is the correct character to use, but as PJay said, you may want to use a variant that is set slightly wider to indicate a more dramatic pause, if you can.
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