Thursday, September 30, 2021

Fonts - Worth It Or Not?

When I wrote Salvation Day, I knew the overall mood of the story would be important.  Conveying the fear and the despair, as well as a certain level of purity in certain parts, would be key to making the reader really feel the story.  Therefore, in addition to the text descriptions, I decided to use a few different fonts to try and set the scene.  I did this a little bit in Akeldama as well, but as I continue to write, I wonder if trying to do the different fonts is worth it.

Don’t get me wrong – I think it enhances the mood.  However, it’s also time-consuming.  Going back and making sure the fonts match and are in the right place takes a lot of attention to detail.  Additionally, it can be expensive since book formatters charge extra for using different fonts(ie, anything not standard).  There are also some fonts that the formatters simply don’t have, so checking in advance is necessary unless you want to spend a lot of effort only to find that you can’t get it into the book readers will see.  That means you need to know in advance, and I don’t always know.  In the last sentence, I didn’t even know I was going to use italics until I wrote the words, so planning out font usage in advance can be tricky.

Cost, time, and availability – these factor into writing, so is the effect created from using the fonts worth the things that come with it?  Or can description work as well?  I really don’t know.  What do you think?

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