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

1. Draft the working premise. Read story.md for genre and themes. Consult references/controlling-idea.md and write a one-sentence premise (value + cause) and counter-premise. Store them in story.md frontmatter:

   premise: "{Value} triumphs because {cause}."
   counter-premise: "{Opposing value} triumphs because {opposing cause}."
   

   If the user prefers discovering theme in the draft, record premise: tbd-discovery and skip to step 3.

2. Build the lie/truth machinery. For the protagonist and antagonist (and any significant supporting character whose arc touches the theme), consult references/lie-truth.md and add to their character files:

   arc-type is one of change-positive, change-negative, or flat. Do not put that list in an inline comment: a command that rewrites the field drops the comment.

   arc-type: change-positive
   lie: "{The false belief}"
   truth: "{The belief that resolves it}"
   ghost-wound: "{The specific backstory event that planted the lie}"
   

   Check the character's turning points against the arc-type guidance: flat arcs need escalating tests of steadfastness, not growth beats; negative arcs need the truth visibly refused.

3. Design the antagonist as the counter-argument. Consult references/antagonist-design.md: give the antagonist an edge, a defensible belief in the counter-premise, a want/wound/plan, and scenes they win. When the opposition is institutional, personify it.

4. Plant motifs. Consult references/motif-symbolism.md; choose two or three concrete motifs, plant them literally, and track plantings, variations, and ending resonance in the motif ledger.

5. Use the premise while drafting. When a scene decision is unclear, ask which choice engages the value continuum and costs the protagonist something. Feed the lie into scene sequels (see the scene-craft skill): the sequel is where the lie gets examined.

6. Run the theme audit in revision. After a complete draft, consult references/theme-audit.md: trace the value through the draft, check the ending against the opening's value-question, verify theme is dramatized through consequence not commentary, and confirm motifs are paid off. Record findings in continuity/theme-audit.md with a theme-holds / theme-broken verdict. Hand structural findings to the revision-continuity skill as a developmental revision plan.

Conventions

• premise: / counter-premise: live in story.md frontmatter and are the single source of truth for the story's theme; plot/_index.md theme tracking maps themes to arcs and chapters as before.
• Character arc-type values are kebab-case from the fixed set (change-positive, change-negative, flat); lie, truth, and ghost-wound are one-line strings.
• Motif ids are kebab-case and tracked in the motif ledger with planned / planted / paid-off status.
• Theme is dramatized through choices and consequences. Never add a character speech, narration summary, or mentor lecture explaining the theme to satisfy an audit finding — rework the choices instead.

CLI Maintenance

Use the Story CLI when it is available. If story is not installed, use the bundled fallback node ../story-maintenance/scripts/story.js with the same arguments. Use node <checkout>/bin/story.js instead only when the user names a Story Skills repository checkout or you are working in one. Write the script as an absolute path (resolve the fallback relative to this skill folder) and run it from the folder you would run story from, so . and other relative paths keep their meaning. Use Node, not Bun or a package script: Bun would load that folder's bunfig.toml (which can run code) and .env, and a package script runs from the checkout's root. If no CLI is available, perform the registry, backlink, and word-count checks manually.

After adding or changing premise fields, character arc fields, or the theme audit:

story reindex .
story wordcount . --write
story check .

The motif ledger (continuity/motifs.md) and continuity/theme-audit.md are prose revision notes. No check reads a motif's status or the theme verdict, and the CLI does not validate, link-check, or reindex them. story rename and story move still rewrite links in them. Keep motif rows only in the ledger. An arc file's ## Foreshadowing table is read for its chapter ids, but a motif row there gets no status or payoff check. Audit motif payoff and the theme verdict manually per references/theme-audit.md.

Reference Files

• references/controlling-idea.md - The controlling idea as value + cause (McKee), counter-premise, working-premise workflow
• references/lie-truth.md - Lie, truth, ghost wound, and the three arc types (change-positive, change-negative, flat)
• references/antagonist-design.md - Worthy opponent, antagonist as counter-argument, plan-the-antagonist-as-protagonist, personified institutions
• references/motif-symbolism.md - Plant-and-vary, object-symbol resonance with the ending, motif ledger
• references/theme-audit.md - Revision audit: ending vs. opening value-question, consequence vs. commentary, motif payoff

Shared Conventions

Every story skill follows the shared conventions in ../story-maintenance/references/conventions.md, resolved relative to this skill folder. Read it before creating, renaming, or linking story files. If that file is missing because this skill was installed without story-maintenance, the essentials are: kebab-case ids and filenames, YAML frontmatter on every story-project file, _index.md registry tables that story reindex rebuilds (never edit them by hand), bidirectional links between entities, characters for who is on the page and mentions for who is only referred to, status: deceased plus died-in: chapter-{NN} for deaths, and no project-local generator or build scripts (run only the installed or bundled Story CLI).