If you must insert a long string literal and want flake8 to shut up, you can use it's shutting up directives. For example, in a testing routine I defined some fake CSV input. I found that splitting it over more lines that it had rows would be mightily confusing, so I decided to add a # noqa: E501 as follows:

csv_test_content = """"STATION","DATE","SOURCE","LATITUDE","LONGITUDE","ELEVATION","NAME","REPORT_TYPE","CALL_SIGN","QUALITY_CONTROL","WND","CIG","VIS","TMP","DEW","SLP","AA1","AA2","AY1","AY2","GF1","MW1","REM"
"94733099999","2019-01-03T22:00:00","4","-32.5833333","151.1666666","45.0","SINGLETON STP, AS","FM-12","99999","V020","050,1,N,0010,1","22000,1,9,N","025000,1,9,9","+0260,1","+0210,1","99999,9","24,0000,9,1",,"0,1,02,1","0,1,02,1","01,99,1,99,9,99,9,99999,9,99,9,99,9","01,1","SYN05294733 11/75 10502 10260 20210 60004 70100 333 70000="
"94733099999","2019-01-04T04:00:00","4","-32.5833333","151.1666666","45.0","SINGLETON STP, AS","FM-12","99999","V020","090,1,N,0021,1","22000,1,9,N","025000,1,9,9","+0378,1","+0172,1","99999,9","06,0000,9,1",,"0,1,02,1","0,1,02,1","03,99,1,99,9,99,9,99999,9,99,9,99,9","03,1","SYN04294733 11/75 30904 10378 20172 60001 70300="
"94733099999","2019-01-04T22:00:00","4","-32.5833333","151.1666666","45.0","SINGLETON STP, AS","FM-12","99999","V020","290,1,N,0057,1","99999,9,9,N","020000,1,9,9","+0339,1","+0201,1","99999,9","24,0000,9,1",,"0,1,02,1","0,1,02,1",,"02,1","SYN05294733 11970 02911 10339 20201 60004 70200 333 70000="
"94733099999","2019-01-05T22:00:00","4","-32.5833333","151.1666666","45.0","SINGLETON STP, AS","FM-12","99999","V020","200,1,N,0026,1","99999,9,9,N","000100,1,9,9","+0209,1","+0193,1","99999,9","24,0004,3,1",,"1,1,02,1","1,1,02,1","08,99,1,99,9,99,9,99999,9,99,9,99,9","51,1","SYN05294733 11/01 82005 10209 20193 69944 75111 333 70004="
"94733099999","2019-01-08T04:00:00","4","-32.5833333","151.1666666","45.0","SINGLETON STP, AS","FM-12","99999","V020","070,1,N,0026,1","22000,1,9,N","025000,1,9,9","+0344,1","+0213,1","99999,9","06,0000,9,1",,"2,1,02,1","2,1,02,1","04,99,1,99,9,99,9,99999,9,99,9,99,9","02,1","SYN04294733 11/75 40705 10344 20213 60001 70222="
"""  # noqa: E501

These are all great answers, but I couldn't find an editor plugin that would help me with editing "implicitly concatenated" strings, so I wrote a package to make it easier on me.

On pip (install paragraphs) if whoever's wandering this old thread would like to check it out. Formats multi-line strings the way html does (compress whitespace, two newlines for a new paragraph, no worries about spaces between lines).

from paragraphs import par


class SuddenDeathError(Exception):
    def __init__(self, cause: str) -> None:
        self.cause = cause

    def __str__(self):
        return par(
            f""" Y - e - e - e - es, Lord love you! Why should she die of
            {self.cause}? She come through diphtheria right enough the year
            before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she
            was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling
            gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl
            off the spoon. 

            What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of
            {self.cause}? What become of her new straw hat that should have
            come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched
            it done her in."""
        )


raise SuddenDeathError("influenza")

becomes ...

__main__.SuddenDeathError: Y - e - e - e - es, Lord love you! Why should she die of influenza? She come through diphtheria right enough the year before. I saw her with my own eyes. Fairly blue with it, she was. They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon.

What call would a woman with that strength in her have to die of influenza? What become of her new straw hat that should have come to me? Somebody pinched it; and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in.

Everything lines up easily with (Vim) 'gq'

Available options:

• backslash: "foo" \ "bar"
• plus sign followed by backslash: "foo" + \ "bar"
• brackets:
  • ("foo" "bar")
  • brackets with plus sign: ("foo" + "bar")
  • PEP8, E502: the backslash is redundant between brackets

Avoid

Avoid brackets with comma: ("foo", "bar") which defines a tuple.

>>> s = "a" \
... "b"
>>> s
'ab'
>>> type(s)
<class 'str'>

>>> s = "a" + \
... "b"
>>> s
'ab'
>>> type(s)
<class 'str'>

>>> s = ("a"
... "b")
>>> type(s)
<class 'str'>
>>> print(s)
ab

>>> s = ("a",
... "b")
>>> type(s)
<class 'tuple'>

>>> s = ("a" + 
... "b")
>>> type(s)
<class 'str'>
>>> print(s)
ab
>>> 

Using black [https://github.com/psf/black] I format it like this.

   help=f"""filters, lista de filtros para cargar las base de conocimiento.
   Pueden mandarse solo algunos filtros ya que no son obligatorios,
   por ejemplo, si no se manda sts, se cargarán todos las bases de todos los estados.""",

I tend to use a couple of methods not mentioned here for specifying large strings, but these are for very specific scenarios. YMMV...

• Multi-line blobs of text, often with formatted tokens (not quite what you were asking, but still useful):

  error_message = '''
  I generally like to see how my helpful, sometimes multi-line error
  messages will look against the left border.
  '''.strip()
  

• Grow the variable piece-by-piece through whatever string interpolation method you prefer:

  var = 'This is the start of a very,'
  var = f'{var} very long string which could'
  var = f'{var} contain a ridiculous number'
  var = f'{var} of words.'
  

• Read it from a file. PEP-8 doesn't limit the length of strings in a file; just the lines of your code. :)

• Use brute-force or your editor to split the string into managaeble lines using newlines, and then remove all newlines. (Similar to the first technique I listed):

  foo = '''
  agreatbigstringthatyoudonotwanttohaveanyne
  wlinesinbutforsomereasonyouneedtospecifyit
  verbatimintheactualcodejustlikethis
  '''.replace('\n', '')
  

message = f"Variable : child({type(child)}) -> is not of"\
        " type Node."

This syntax worked for me. Note the indentation of the second statement, it should be indented correctly.

I've used textwrap.dedent in the past. It's a little cumbersome so I prefer line continuations now but if you really want the block indent, I think this is great.

Example Code (where the trim is to get rid of the first '\n' with a slice):

import textwrap as tw
x = """\
       This is a yet another test.
       This is only a test"""
print(tw.dedent(x))

Explanation:

dedent calculates the indentation based on the white space in the first line of text before a new line. If you wanted to tweak it, you could easily reimplement it using the re module.

This method has limitations in that very long lines may still be longer than you want in which case other methods that concatenate strings is more suitable.