---
name: theme-engine
description: Track thematic questions, tensions, character embodiments, plot tests, counterexamples, and thematic payoffs, ensuring themes emerge through choices and consequences rather than assertion. Use for thematic planning, integration checks, and ending assessment.
---
# Theme Engine v2.1

Define themes as questions or tensions, not slogans. A theme stated is a thesis; a theme dramatised is a novel. The engine's job is to ensure the story tests its own questions rather than answering them in narration.

## Model

Record in `themes/THEME.md`:

- the question or tension
- which characters, conflicts, choices, and institutions test it
- major plot events that embody or complicate it
- counterexamples — the case against the theme
- consequences of the thematic position characters commit to
- status and where it resolves

## Embodiment

A theme is present when a character must choose between values and pay for it. Look for:

- **Embodiment** — the theme expressed through a character's action.
- **Challenge** — an event that tests the character's thematic position.
- **Reinforcement** — a consequence that confirms the position.
- **Contradiction** — a character or outcome that complicates or refutes the theme.

The strongest thematic structures include counterexamples. A theme no character ever argues against has been decided before the story begins, and the reader can see it coming.

## Detection

- **Accidental thematic contradiction** — a character's actions undercut the thematic position the story has assigned them, without intent.
- **Repeated statement without development** — the theme is restated in different words without the question deepening.
- **Thesis delivery** — narration or dialogue stating the theme outright.
- **Decoupled theme** — the thematic question does not connect to anything the characters actually face.
- **Orphaned resolution** — the ending answers a thematic question the story never raised.

## Ending

Test whether the ending resolves through choice rather than through explanation. An ending that summarises what the theme was is a summary; an ending where the last decision embodies it is a resolution. The strongest endings complicate the theme as well as answering it, leaving a live question the reader carries.

## Rules

Do not turn fiction into an essay unless the project's voice calls for it. Do not add a character whose only function is to state the theme. Do not treat a theme as a message the novel must deliver — a novel that raises a question without settling it may be doing exactly what it intended.

## Coordination

Use `character-arc-engine` where a character's arc tests the theme, `plot-engineering` for the events that embody it, `symbolism-motif` for the figurative layer, and `critique` to assess thematic integration in a full review.