I think I’ve said this before, but I’ll say it again just for emphasis: This book is OFFICIALLY my bread and butter! I’ll stop here and backtrack, before I get ahead of myself…My Origin StoryThe fact of me being an aspiring storyteller didn’t click until college, funny enough. I’m an illustrator first and foremost; I’ve been drawing since I was a kid. Secondly, character development and stories in general have always fascinated me for this reason. No matter how hard I tried, though, I just couldn’t connect some crucial dots.The big-whammy was story structure. The dots of this structure have an order, but everytime I’d read an explanation or asked someone what this structure meant, all I often got was an outline complete with the matter-of-fact expresion “Isn’t it obvious?” (i.e. exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution). Great! …Now what? Other situations left me just plain confused, all the while, the listener would just AGAIN give me a matter-of-fact look. This structure wasn’t odvious to me. What’s the climax? Oh! It’s the major conflict of the story? Okay!....what even every other SCENE appears to be a major conflict though! One could’ve related my plight to tackling a sculpture for the first time: the teacher told me to start with a base or wireframe; they didn’t tell me build one. They didn’t tell me whether I could buy the wireframes premade or just make them myself. What do I use? I haven’t even tackled clay yet! No one told me what the purpose of each stage of storytelling is; they just said “This goes here. Because that’s how it works.” Okay…but why does it work this way?Nobody told me that storytelling was a language too – that each piece needed to flow together to make sense; that I would even dialog with readers in this sense. I didn’t need the answer to the universe. I DID learn about the mechanics and syntax of English grammar. I could’ve taken a basic English sentence and plug in verbs and nouns when necessary. If I borrow random elements of other languages and plug them in my English sentence, however, my sentence isn’t my language anymore. No one told me about consistency. I used to think filler was okay—required even, like extras in a movie. I assumed adding random characters would just automatically fill out my story; make it seem more “real” or relatable. I was wrong. All wrong. I took a dang fiction workshop class in high-school and NO ONE CORRECTED ME! Students read each other’s short-story assignments, gave each other suggestions, but most of the critique I got was about that reader’s preference. (e.g., “This character’s name should be more American”.) …Seriously?! (-_-) Nothing at all was said about my story’s STRUCTURE. One story I wrote got a lot more positive feedback than my previous story. But I was lucky! It was a first-person narrative about a female office worker and I wrote it with a casual tone; it was relatable. My teacher liked it and recommended I do an alternative ending-add an extra 100 words. It went more flat than fast-food soda. I didn’t know what the heck I DID for the first round. Why? Because I got lucky and didn’t know structure. I don’t think we all knew what to look for. No one taught us.So naturally, Invisible Ink saved my muse’s life. Words cannot express how grateful I am to Mr. McDonald for taking the time to craft this together. I truly believe that the more knowledge someone has (regarding people or otherwise) leaves less room for fear. This author really takes the time to break down not just the elements of storytelling but gives many reasons why the storyteller doesn’t have to fear the craft. I will definitely be rereading this book REPEATEDLY! Each page is water: your thirst will be quenched, but then you’ll crave something to write with.