My original idea for this project was to only create a series of book covers, but it turned into something more expansive. Instead of only working on book covers, I also wrote a set of short stories so that they felt like real novels. The purpose behind this project was to create a series of books, complete with a front and back cover, and a set of stories to go along with them. I wanted to display my skills when it came to the fields of design and creative writing.
The first thing I did for the project was research how to write a short story. I learned that the average short fictional story can be anywhere between 1,000 to 7,500 words, and within the category of short stories there is flash fiction, micro fiction, novelettes, novellas, and novels. After that, I researched information about books that fell within the suspense genre. I planned out that I wanted the stories to be interesting enough that the reader wouldn't put them down, but I was not sure how to execute those feelings without the stories sounding strange or being coherent. I solved the problem by writing down what I thought sounded good, read it aloud to other people, then changed words and sentences based on feedback.
I used Adobe InDesign in order to create the book. I planned on using an 8 x 5.5 inch book size, and making each page 4 x 5.5 inches. Once I finished making the first 2 books, I realized I made the mistake of not setting the document up as a booklet. I realized it when I tried printing the first book and the pages were printing side by side, but not as a booklet. I solved the problem by creating a new document, insured facing pages was checked, and changing the page size. After I set the new document up, I copy and pasted all of the text from the original document and pasted them into the new one.
