As many of  you are aware. Sparkatale has been down for quite some time. There was some internal struggle within the company that caused us to halt all operations abruptly. We would like everyone to know that everything is now resolved and we are continuing regular operations. Rest assured that nothing of this nature will occur again and any required downtime will be brougt to the attention of the users prior to doing so.

Thank you to everyone who stuck around and for your continued support. Now let's get back to reading and writing new stories!

It  has been a while since the last blog post so why don't we get things going again with some writing tips!

• Read your work out loud. You’ll find mistakes your eyes won’t catch.
• Give the reader someone they can root for.
• Once the reader has a deep connection with a character, make something awful happen to said character.
• When writing dialogue, avoid using adverbs after he/she said.
• Use paragraphs to transition between concrete ideas or pieces of a story.
• If you don't know the meaning of a word, don't just guess and use it anyway.
• As per  Quentin Tarantino, the best way to get to know your characters is to have the two of them sit down at a table and talk.
• "Write. Just write. Keep writing. Then write some more. If you want to write something good you have to write a lot of bad in between."

What are some tips you can provide to other SparkaTale members?

The basic rule for when to use whom over who is the following:
…

There seems to be a bit of confusion for when to use ex., e.g. and i.e. so here's some info to help clear it up.

Writing engaging and meaningful fight scenes can be difficult. Use these ideas to keep your readers interested and your story flowing.

    Starting a novel is a daunting task. From one idea there can flow countless paths to your story. Sometimes it's hard to stay on track but we've got a few pointers to keep you going.

A new feature has been added to view chapter comments while reading. It can be accessed from the top toolbar of the view page, click on 'Comment' then 'View Chapter Comments'. Only the comments from the chapter currently being read will be shown. You can now also reply to comments right from the view page without having to exit.

We've also reduced the minimum comment length from 10 words to 3 words as sometimes a few words are all that's needed.

    So I came across this quote the other day and thought it was interesting.

Welcome to the SparkaTale blog. This will be the new home for all SparkaTale news and updates. We'll also be posting writing and literature related information here as well so stay tuned. If you do not wish to receive notifications from the blog just click the unsubscribe button or turn off notifications for the blog in your profile page.