a template for using starred notes in Lilypond
to put a star glyph after a note or rest, use the symbol for a dot, but wrap it
with \star{ }
\star{c2.}
I suggest you create a Plugins folder, put this file in it, then include it into Lilypond projects where it's needed.
\include "Plugins/stardots.ly"
If you keep your lilypond projects in a git repository (a great idea, btw), then there's an even better way. Create that Plugins folder, then navigate to it and execute this command:
git submodule add https://github.com/ianring/stars-for-lilypond stardots
That will create a "stardots" folder with this project in it, with the plugin that you can include:
\include "Plugins/stardots/stordots.ly"
Then when there are updates to this project, you can get them with the command git submodule update --recursive --remote. Seek out some of the excellent tutorials for using submodules effectively.
Based on a snippet by Dominic Irving, enhanced by Simon Albrecht