Successful stories are built on two key foundations: 1. Delivering on your story's premise, 2. How much your audience cares about your characters' fate. Expectations are difficult to meet, but some core values transcend genre and format, such as a logical progression of events which help people to understand your story. That begins with an understanding how stories work, but more importantly, what your audience expects. What people want is an experience. Experience is delivered through the interaction of Character and Structure. Character and Structure are often considered polar opposites, yet in truth they're star-crossed lovers - inseparable. This book shows you how those two parts, generally treated in isolation, fit together to create emotional engagement by breaking them down and illustrating them with examples. Success means understanding what your audience expects, knowing how to give it to them, and ensuring you can do it again. If you ask yourself the right questions before you begin, most of what's hard about preparation, rewriting and troubleshooting gets simplified. The more you know the less you've got to figure out as you go (and fix later). Preparation and troubleshooting can be the hardest parts of storytelling, yet they're the key to developing insight into your story, your characters, and how they entertain your audience. Combining character (why your story matters) and structure (audience expectations) engages your audience on an emotional level - their care factor. The more your audience cares, the more successful you're likely to be. If you want to create successful stories, you'll need to know how to successfully combine Character with Structure in what many would consider An Unholy Alliance.