Getting Started: The Story Manager
Every story in StorySpark begins in one place: the Story Manager. This is the "Your Stories" page you land on when you log in — and it's the hub you'll come back to any time you want to manage, revisit, or start a new story.
You'll need to create a story here first before you can use any of StorySpark's other tools, like Outline, Write, or Export — those all live inside a story.
Your Stories: The Home Screen
When you open StorySpark, you'll see Your Stories — a grid of cards, one per story your child has started. Each card shows:
- A cover image for the story
- The story title
- A short description
- How many chapters it has and its current word count
- The date it was last worked on
If it's your child's first time, this page will be empty except for the + New Story button in the top right — that's where you'll start.
There's also a Search Story Titles bar at the top, handy once your child has a few stories going and wants to jump back into one quickly.
Creating a New Story
Click + New Story and a simple form pops up:
- Story Title — a working title is fine; it can always be changed later (placeholder example: "My Amazing Story").
- Description — a one- or two-sentence summary of what the story's about. This isn't required to be polished; it's mostly there to help your child (and you) remember what the story is at a glance.
Click Create Story and StorySpark creates the story shell and takes you into it — from here your child can move on to outlining or writing.
Managing an Existing Story
Hover over any story card and four icons appear next to the title:
- 👁 Preview — see the story as a reader would, without opening the editor.
- ✏️ Edit — opens the Edit Story window, where your child can update the story's title, description, or cover image at any time. Changes save with Save Changes.
- ⬇ Export — download the story (see the Export tool for full formatting options).
- 🗑 Delete — permanently removes the story. Use with care — there's no undo shown in this flow, so make sure it's really the one you want to remove before confirming.
This is also where you'll notice stories can have very different amounts of content — from a single 449-word chapter to a multi-chapter story with over 1,500 words — the Story Manager tracks progress on all of them side by side, so it's easy to see at a glance which stories are just getting started and which ones your child has been building for a while.
Why This Matters
The Story Manager isn't just a filing cabinet — it's designed so a young writer never feels overwhelmed by "one big project." Kids can keep several stories going at once, jump between them, and always have a clear, visual sense of what they've made so far. For parents, it's the easiest place to see your child's writing activity over time without digging through documents or files.
Next step: once a story is created, head into the Outline tool to help your child map out what happens before they start writing — or straight into Write if they're ready to dive in.