Theme Craft

Overview

Plan and audit theme as a working mechanism, not decoration. Covers the controlling idea (value + cause, in McKee's sense), the lie/truth machinery and the three canonical arc types, antagonist design as the embodied counter-argument, motif tracking, and a revision-time theme audit. Use at story start (working premise), during character design (lie/truth/arc-type), and after a complete draft (theme audit).

Prerequisites

A story project must already exist (created via the story-init skill). Character files (character-management) and a plot structure (plot-structure) should exist or be in progress.

Workflow