Clint,
Welcome to finishing with lacquer.
Usually, if you fuzz the paper, you didn't get enough clear on before the fillercoat (primer). I usually use 3 to 4 unthinned coats of clear on the paper, then sand it mostly flat and touch up any spots where I fuzz up the paper and sand those areas again. I get a decent matte finish from the clear. Then I shoot primer and sand off everything except what stays in the low spot. If I still have low spot (not a usual occurrence since I tend to go pretty heavy with the primer), I touch those up and sand. Then I shot a coat of very thin (like 80% thinned) clear on to lock the primer down. At this point it should be pretty smooth, but if you manage to still have some low spots, hit them with some more primer, sand and recoat with the thin clear. It can be a tedious process.
This is where I am with the classic plane I'm working on. It has 3 coats of unthinned clear on and I'm sanding because I didn't do the best papering job in the world (I let myself get in a bit of a hurry). So I'm having to sand a lot of paper overlaps. Once I get it sanding down and pretty flat, I'll hit it with another coat of clear and sand again.
Once you are happy with the surface, after the coat of thin clear (don't skip this step or you'll regret it when tape pulls up the substrate), you can use what is called a blocking coat. It's basically a thin coat of some color to give you an event colored surface to paint on the base color. When I've shot red, I've either used silver or gold as a blocking coat. I like it better than white because white is the heaviest color there is.
If you are concerned about weight, the only real answer is backmasking (can you spell tedious?). The idea being that there is only one layer of color on the plane. You tape and spray each color without going over any color. It saves weight but as I say, it's tedious and time consuming.