yWriter Comprehensive Help File

This document was recovered from the lost yWriter google sites page, and is still a work in progress

HIGHLIGHTING AND COLOUR. How do I?

? highlight a character?s names when running spell check?

Answer needed

? highlight text and what for?

Answer

? highlight the ''scene title? in a different colour??

Answer needed

? remove a highlight from words in the Content page?

Run your cursor over the text you wish to un-highlight and double-click on the dropdown box 'Clear selected highlight?

? make use of highlighting to assist me write a novel?

Ideas welcome!! Possibilities:
(1) Put all dialogue in blue, (2) use different background colours to express the underlying emotions in a scene. For example, red = anger, yellow = fear, purple = jealousy. When you go to the scene-list and scroll down the list of scenes you get a swift feeling for the emotions involved. You can of course increase intensity and hue of colour to demonstrate deepening passions.

?use background colour?

Ideas welcome! One use might be to have white for the scene (action) and another colour background for the sequel (reaction).
Some might want to put all flash forward of flashback scenes in colour.
Others might want to let the background colour represent the dominant mood of that scene that you wish to convey.

?use highlighting to review the content of my chapters?

You could colour code action in blue, speech in orange, effect on other characters in red, characters own reaction to persons, things, circumstances in green; descriptions in pink, facts in orange, feelings in mauve

? use colour coding to make your work easier? Summaries in green? What else?

Answer

? use lots of colours for different things or will this slow up the program?

Answer

Can scene notes be highlighted?

No

In the Scene editor window the drop down only offers one color, yellow. How do you change this?

In the editor window, click Settings>Custom colours>Set up highlight colours. There you can create your own.

Why does the description box change colours and can I change this?

If you toggle a chapter unused (see drop down box under chapter), the background in the description changes to orange. The same applies to scenes.

Editors setting menu

If you switch off 'highlight character names' in the editor settings menu, this stops the double-clicking opening up of the character sheet.