: Do writers use highlighting to clarify ideas in their work in progress? In programming we often use syntax highlight in order to have a better picture of what the role of particular bits of

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Personally, I use different formatting methods like fonts, colours in my planning documents where I write things like tentative plot, backstory of characters which may or may not get mentioned, timelines, history of the world etc.

But I never use them in my drafts. One should always keep reader in mind while writing drafts. Some writers include footnotes for better organizing, but other than that you better keep your writing understandable by itself.

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I mostly agree with Malvolio's first paragraph. I think color-coding might be useful in early drafts as you're settling pieces on the chessboard, but you should have each character's distinct voice very early on. You shouldn't allow yourself to use it as a crutch. You need to experience your writing as the reader does, as best you can.
@alexchenco , given the writing samples you've showed us here, I think for you it would be useful in the first or second draft to flag dialogue vs. narration, as Dale suggests, so you can balance your scenes better. But again, this is a crutch, and shouldn't be used later on as your drafts become more sophisticated.

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This is a terrible idea. If you, who wrote the damned thing, are having trouble telling characters apart, keeping track of scenes, identifying key ideas, reflect on how much more trouble your reader, whose only source of insight will be the black-on-white text, will have! Seriously, if things are that dense and confusing, time to back up and rethink what you're doing.

I'm a little skeptical even of ordinary organizational tools like time-lines and outlines. Again, how can the reader digest all this information and keep it in his head if the writer can't? The only reason I give them a pass is because the much greater time involved in the process of writing compared to that of reading.

Whenever I see a novel of fiction with a map, a family tree, or, God help us, a glossary, I'm strongly inclined to discard it unread. Although certainly fine novels have had these features (many people enjoyed the Lord Of The Rings books, which had maps; I, Claudius started with a tree of the Claudian family; later editions of A Clockwork Orange came with a nadsat dictionary) but I think those are the exceptions rather than the rule.

In general the reader's, and the the writer's, understanding of a work should come from the text. We are writers, not typographers, illustrators, genealogists, or cartographers, and we should be doing what we are (supposedly) best at.

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I've heard of a number of uses for colors:

Highlight each character's dialogue in a different color. This allows you to quickly read through each character's dialogue to see whether the character's voice is consistent (or perhaps whether it changes the way you want it to). It also allows you to read quickly through all of the dialogue in the story, to see whether it is vivid and compelling.

Highlight dialogue in one color, action in another, description in another, ... This can draw your attention to balances and imbalances among these elements of the story.

I suspect that these techniques are more useful when you're preparing to edit or rewrite. It would be horribly distracting to attend to this stuff while drafting.

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