Covers are very, very important when it comes to your story.

I know this isn't technically a way to improve your writing, but I thought it'd be important to talk about.

Covers—obviously—are a third of what draws your reader in. The other 2/3 are your title and your description, which I believe I've talked about already.

You can have many different covers, like aesthetic ones, manipulative ones where there's a lot going on,  just plain simple ones, etc. etc.

I usually get the question of how I make my covers so lemme tell you: half of my covers weren't made by me lol

You can find the credit in the description of my story but anyway the covers for "Sorry, Wrong Person", "Take a Chance", "Behind the Scenes", "Your Voice", "Want You Back" and "His Biggest Hater" were made by other people. Damn I have a lot of stories

I, on the other hand, made the covers for "Daydream", "A Change of Disposition", "It's Always So", and "Get Over It". You might realize that they resemble my other covers even if someone different made them, and it's because my covers are all of the manipulative type. That's when there's lots of shit going on and it's not simple at all.

The theme of my account is fuckin whack but I don't really care for themes as long as the book looks good by itself lol

So if you're interested in how I made these babs,

shit this last cover's a hot mess, why is the title two different blues wtfff and why is baekhyun glowing? idk.

read onnnn

*note that these are for manipulative covers only. a bitch can't be aesthetic and that bitch is me. there are some useful tips tho idk

So, first things first, find out what dimensions Wattpad covers are. I've got them in my memory now lol so here ya go, it's 256 by 400.

Now, you nEVER want to keep it just 256 by 400. That usually makes the quality shit. You want to double it or triple it, idk what fits yer fancy but I usually go for 512 by 800, which you could easily also make 768 by 1200 if you wanted.

Now I think about backgrounds.

If you look at my covers you can see that there are three different types of backgrounds: one that comes with the original picture (Get Over It), one that's plain colour with some texture (It's Always So), and one that's scenery of some sort (A Change of Disposition).

Always, always think about the genre and description of your story when picking a background. You're not gonna put blood for a romance humour, aight?? It could also be nice making your background ombre coloured, or somethin else idk.

Now moving on to characters.

Always try to make them look as if they're in the same lighting. I kind of suck at that but you can mess with exposure and saturation in VSCO or whatever.

It doesn't look like it, but Get Over It was the simplest one to make. That is because I didn't need to cut out any of the characters and instead just used the pictures they came from.

On the other hand, A Change of Disposition was literally a nightmare (and it still turned out shitty okay thanks) because I had to cut out three people. It's like using really bad technological scissors.

But have no fear, photoshop is here.

Yes, photoshop, my literal holy grail. The app that's free on Apple and maybe Samsung idk

All of the apps with black backgrounds are from Adobe and they have legit and amazing editing apps that will make your life SO much easier

Photoshop Mix is what I use to cut out them characters (free, as I said before). All you have to do is put your photo in, and click on the option "Cut Out"

Yes that's a floating piece of hair, don't mind it I'll get there later lol

You'll then be moved and will have different options to cut things out. You could just click on Auto, which literally does all the work for you and usually does it right, (thank the lords) or you can click on Smart, which is just as good as Auto except you control it more. There's also Basic which is just you with an eraser or pencil trying to cut on the line, tilting your phone awkwardly and using your finger to trace the outline, which isn't really the greatest, but you can fix that with Lasso :))

Now that you've got your characters cut out, place em on your cover.

This is a very important step, because it can make or break your cover fam. I use a program on my laptop called Photoscape for this step, and I do that by first sending my cut out boys to my laptop by email and then uploading first my background photo, adding my images on them. Now you basically have stickers of them. Where ya gonna place em? Idk, your choice.

Photoscape btw, free as usual. I'm cheap what can I say. I switched to photoscape because although Photoshop Mix is amazing, it does this thing where it messes with the quality of your little sticker boys. Idk if it will happen to you but it always happens to me, so I move to Photoscape for the rest of this cover making life. If you can't get Photoscape since it's on the laptop, that's okay!! You could do all of this using your phone by maybe trying to make the Photoshop work, or download Picsart which also allows you to add layers and images. For now we'll be going by laptop because I do it that way, but I'll add a note at the end for phone users.

Finally, with your characters, you could make one of them much bigger than the other, you could put them side by side, one on top of the other, put one of them in a picture idfk it's the time for your creativity to shine

Now that you've got your base, first, good job that shit's hard.

Now you've got your title to place on! That's probably the hardest part lol ngl. I'm still using Photoscape at this stage because it's very good with titles and words.

The parts of a title are: placement, size, colour, and font. Sometimes you might want to add a drop shadow or outline to your words, that make them pop and seem interesting (on Get Over It, I used both a white outline and a yellow Drop Shadow, and on A Change of Disposition, I used blue drop shadows which were somehow different colours?? Idk but I messed up).

Fonts are easy to find but they are so very important for your title. Please, don't use generic Arial or Calibri—or jesus, Times New Roman, unless they genuinely look good on your cover

Download your fonts (I'm not giving you a tutorial because you could easily find one and I'm getting lazy lol this is taking longer than I thought).

Now lemme say this like as loud as I can over writing: MAKE. SURE. THE. COLOUR. MATCHES. YOUR. COVER.

Ur not gonna put bright red words on an otherwise green cover, unless you're a colour goddess and can make that work. I know there are people out there who just know how colours work and can make everything perfect but generally, us simpletons can't. So try to stick with a colour that matches maybe your background, or the colour of shirt someone's wearing on your cover.

Pick a nice font. Try placing the words on many different areas on your cover, to see what it would look like. Maybe you want an extravagant font like with Get Over It and A Change of Disposition, or you wanna keep it kind of simple like with It's Always So. Your choice fam.

Now add outlines if needed, drop shadows if needed.

You're basically done now.

not. lol.

If you wanna make it more dynamic you can try to place characters over your words, which is why I have a piece of hair cut out up there lol. If you look at Get Over It, Baekhyun's head is on top of the word "Over". It's not actually, just his hair is lmaooo

Add a filter at the end. Or mess with exposure and lighting, so that everything comes together on your cover. We don't want Chanyeol looking like he came from another dimension, even if you shoulda delt with that in the second step of picking character pics.

Now you're done. Congratulations you just followed a tutorial from someone you really shouldn't be following.

*FOR PHONES Now as I already said, use Photoshop Mix or Picsart to place your characters on, and for the title section, use Phonto! I'm sure you know what that is if you've ever tried making a cover, because it's just amazing for that. You can follow the same steps of placing a title on Photoscape as on Phonto, so place your words away :))

Moral of the story: this is how I make covers, don't roast me ik I'm a beginner, and you do not have to follow these steps aha

ur -10 writer is oot.