sw-premise-theme

Premise · Theme · Controlling Idea · Dramatic Core (Premise & Theme)

Output language = question language; terms are always anchored back to the original words, see sw-workflow/terms.md, do not invent translated names.

This skill answers four questions:What to write(subject selection),Why write it(premise/controlling idea/third rail),Where to cut in(perspective/dramatic core),How to say it in one sentence(logline/one-sentence story). Sources: Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing, Robert McKee's Story, Hicks's The Core Skills of Screenwriting, Cron's How to Write a Story, Hochstetler's The Twelve Rules of Screenwriting, Snyder's Save the Cat, Lu Jun's Screenwriting Theory and Technique, Chapters 1–6. Complementary relationship: Egri gives the dialectic and tyrannical nature of "premise"; McKee gives "controlling idea = value + cause" and reverse-engineering from the climax; Cron gives the concrete construction steps for the protagonist's inner conflict (desire vs. false belief); Lu Jun gives tools for subject selection, excavation of controlling idea, perspective and dramatic core in Chinese drama; Hicks/Hochstetler/Snyder give the commercial test of one sentence.

For the example library and worksheets, see reference.md。

I. The premise is a tyrant (Egri)

Every second has a premise. An inventor who does not know the device's purpose, a runner who does not know where he is going = madness; a script full of excited action yet no one knows the motive.
Three parts of a premise: "Frugality leads to waste" — frugality = character, leads to = conflict, waste = ending. "A good premise is the most concise synopsis of the script." Premises of famous plays: Romeo and Juliet = great love can overcome everything, even death; King Lear = blind trust leads to destruction; Macbeth = cold ambition leads to self-destruction; Othello = jealousy destroys itself and the loved one; Ghosts = the sins of the fathers are visited upon the children; A Doll's House = inequality between the sexes in marriage breeds unhappiness.
What the premise checklist lacks isthe author's belief: "Which side are you on?" "Anyone with strong beliefs is a treasury of premises"; an imported premise does not belong to you; "you should not depict anything you do not believe." The premise is not written into the dialogue, but the whole play proves it.
A play can have only one premise; two premises = walking in two directions (in The Shadow and the Substance, the first 3¾ acts are "wisdom defeats superstition" and the ending suddenly changes). A sub-premise supplements the main premise.
The premise need not be a universal truth; in your work it is the truth. Rodin cut off the hands of the Balzac statue: "No part can be more important than the whole."
You can start from character/incident/idea, but before writing you must find the premise; if you change your mind, change to a new premise and start over. Deduction from idea to premise: write about love → great love → "love can overcome everything" is unclear in meaning → "Can love transcend death? Yes" → from this derive the character traits the characters must have (the girl cannot be stupid and cold, the boy cannot be shallow) and the ladder of struggle.
The premise drives a single choice(A Doll's House workspace): a married couple is needed → Helmer cares about respectability → Nora's action must threaten his social status and arise from Helmer's reasons → it is related to money → theft will not do (it would change the premise to a condemnation of theft) → emergency funds → Helmer would rather die than borrow → only the father can guarantee →"Nora's father must die"→Forged signature. "The premise is a tyrant who allows you to walk only one road."
The proof of the premise is the "obligatory scene": only when proving the premise can the highest expectation be aroused; the obligatory scenes of many plays are dull because the premise is vague.
Dialectics creates character: thesis (external demand)/antithesis (character's desire)/synthesis (ending); the Irene case—one must prove "why it must be she who falls into prostitution," ruling out all other possibilities.
The ending must be caused by the character's actions; it cannot be an accident or a natural death (the Aunt Clara case).

II. Controlling idea = value + cause (McKee)

Premiseis "what will happen if..." (Jaws, Kramer), and need not be retained in the work;Controlling ideaone sentence: "Justice is done because the protagonist is more violent than the criminal (Dirty Harry)/smarter (Columbo)"; "Dictatorship is supported by a corrupt CIA" (Missing); "Learn to love unconditionally" (Groundhog Day). It is a creative commandment: ski-cap reasoning does not suit Harry, and a .44 does not suit Columbo.
Storytelling is the creative argumentation of truth, the conversion of thought into action,never using explanatory dialogue; "crime does not pay" must be acted out.
Write the climax first and then look back: What value does the climax bring? What is the main cause? "The story tells you its meaning"; "If the plot unfolds exactly according to the original plan, your writing method is too rigid."
Idea vs. counter-idea: sequences alternately express the positive and negative dimensions, giving both sides in the battle equal firepower; if the antagonist is a fool, victory is worthless; preaching = treating art as a scalpel; Kubrick's three anti-war films all acknowledge that humans are warlike. Classics do not give answers; they give "a good medicine for staying awake."
Three kinds of controlling idea:Idealismupbeat;Pessimismdownbeat (Chinatown: "Evil runs rampant because it is part of human nature");Ironism—positive irony = redemption plot: "The excessive pursuit of success, wealth, and fame will destroy you, but if you see clearly in time and abandon your obsession, you will be redeemed" (Kramer, Out of Africa, North Dallas Forty opening its arms and letting the ball drop); negative irony = punishment plot: "Obsessed with relentless pursuit to satisfy desire and then destroy yourself" (Wall Street, Nixon). Irony is the hardest to write: a single action is simultaneously positive and negative; it must be clearly not ambiguous and must have motivation; the positive and negative cannot cancel each other out.
The more you build around one clear idea, the more meaning the audience discovers; the more you cram in, the more it collapses. Persistence: great writers have a single theme that can ignite passion (Hemingway's death, Dickens's search for a father, Moliere's evil of human nature).
Ask yourself, "Do I believe in the meaning of the story"; the artist's only responsibility = tell the truth.
For the thematic sentence, first find a folk colloquialism, then rewrite it into the character's words(Wei Minglun p0076/p0074): When collecting material for The Scholar of Bashan, he brought back a folk rhyme: "In the old society, disaster was merciless and officials were even crueler; in the new society, floods are merciless but the Party has feeling." In the end it became the protagonist's final written words: "One day, disaster will be merciless but the country will have feeling!"—the thematic sentence first exists in the form of a colloquialism, and is then rewritten into the character's words.Failure: when the colloquialism and the character's language level are too far apart (a literati character speaking marketplace proverbs), it must be rewritten and cannot be copied directly.Self-check: Read the rewritten sentence back in the character's mouth. If there is only the author's voice and no character's voice, go back.

III. The Third Track: Desire vs. Misbelief (Cron)

Story ≠ Plot. Story is "how what happens affects someone in pursuit of a difficult goal, and how it changes him inside"; writing many events without a story is the root cause of 96% of rejected manuscripts.
The third track= the protagonist's inner struggle: what he has long desired vs. what blocks him—themisbelief. All action, plot, and sensory detail must land on this track.
Five fallacies: prose is supreme; free writing; "first drafts are all shit"; outlining external events first; applying external structural templates ("a good story comes first, structure comes after").
From flash to hypothetical problemFour steps: ① capture the moment that stabs you ② why you care ③ theme (clichés are fine, "almost every story begins as a cliché") ④ the hypothetical problem: includes context, surprise, conflict, subtext, can be several lines.
The three Why steps: ① what the protagonist wants before the novel begins (from vague to so specific you can see it with eyes closed) ② why he wants it (what it means to him) ③misbelief—not called a fatal flaw or trauma: the protagonist firmly believes it is correct because at an important moment in life it was once "right" ("sincere connection will hurt you").
The origin scene: the moment the misbelief takes root, written in first person, chronologically and in detail. Four questions: the old belief before entering / why / this scene's goal / how he expects to achieve it—even if the wish is fulfilled, it can collapse because the reason is the opposite. Addthree turning-point scenes: each time one step closer to the desire yet retreating because of the belief; desire and belief strengthen at the same time.
Theme arises from inner contradiction; the external hypothetical problem triggers the inner contradiction to form the theme (Romeo: parents are sworn enemies → desire to be together vs. family loyalty).
The ending ≠ the external event of the last scene, butthe moment the misbelief is defeated and the world is seen with new eyes; write the moment of epiphany first; the beginning can already hint at the direction.
Two tests for the primary external problem: the external three columns (can escalate to the last page, has concrete immediate consequences, has a ticking clock) + the internal two questions (forces rebellion against the misbelief, emotional damage is concrete); surface events (stealing a dog, fixing a pipe) are only means to force her to face her inner self.

IV. The Five Premise Questions and Ten Elements (Hicks)

Premise= a brief statement of the main conflict. Five questions: Who is the protagonist? Who is the opponent? Why do they fight? What change does the outcome of the conflict bring? Why must the protagonist take action? Only after answering all is it a gestalt. Write it in three sentences: one protagonist opposes another; why they must oppose each other to achieve their respective goals; what change will occur in the protagonist's life.
Drama = conflict that bringsobvious changeto the protagonist's life, while also changing the surrounding environment; select events with direct causation around "obvious transformation X."
Inner need: the trait the protagonist should possess but precisely lacks, thinks he possesses, or considers unimportant (compassion, forgiveness, courage)—the main reason the audience keeps watching is that the protagonist must achieve it to resolve the conflict.External goalTwo tests: the audience needs to know where the goal is (they don't have to agree with it); the audience needs to feel that the protagonist is under threat. Maslow's hierarchy checks whether the goal is reasonable (fighting for glory when food and shelter are in question is unreasonable).
Theme is not a textbook: "The greatest torture is making a movie feel like a textbook"; the audience expects to share experience so the world becomes more understandable.

V. The theme stays the same, the attitude changes (Hokst)

Almost all movies are guided by theme; three questions: What does the protagonist want? What is he struggling against? Is the theme love/betrayal/loyalty/growth/friendship/revenge/survival? A movie about dating does not necessarily have love as its theme.
Sweet spot: once the theme is determined it never changes; what changes is the attitude toward it; what is the protagonist's attitude toward the theme at the beginning and at the end; a naive vs. cynical friend plus each one's lover = four-person interaction "contains the value of the entire script." A theme that is too general or passive is useless; ask "how does this theme drive things forward".
Theme test bench: take the same material (a widowed father is "taken away" by a space captain) and push it through growth/love/sacrifice/persistence/family/friendship/revenge/justice one by one, and see which theme makes the characters most alive.
Conflict: both the protagonist and the opponent should have goals related to the theme (in How to Train Your Dragon, father and son both want to hunt dragons but in different ways);obstacle ≠ opponent(the dragon mother is an obstacle; the father is the opponent, because only the latter expresses the theme).
Three climax questions: Does the villain's failure express the theme? Has the protagonist done something he could not do in Act One? Does it simultaneously complete the plot line and account for the entire story?
Characters: the protagonist has a distinct opinion about six things (from something as big as atheism to something as small as how to cook linguine) → four relationship characters each take a position → this leads to theme-driven conflict and plot.

VI. One-sentence story (Snyder) and logline (Hokst)

Snyder's four elements: an ironic hook ("a cop comes to Los Angeles to visit his estranged wife, only to find that the building where she works has been taken over by terrorists"); a wonderful mental image (including a time range); target audience and cost; a killer title (Legally Blonde is good, For Love or Money is the worst). Enhanced version + adjective for the protagonist + adjective for the villain + original goal. If you cannot write a qualified one-sentence story, the story itself has a problem; pitch it to a stranger in line at Starbucks and see whether their eyes drift away.
Ten story types(monster in the house/golden fleece/wish fulfillment/out of the bottle/man in a hole/buddy love/whydunit/fool triumphant/institutionalized/superhero): classify by "what it is about"; first learn the rules of that type, then break them; when pitching, do not say "X plus Y".
Primitive enough: survival, hunger, sex, protecting loved ones, fear of death; use husband, wife, father, daughter, mother, son, ex for character relationships.
Hokst logline: one or two sentences that let people understand the concept; checklist — protagonist, villain, genre, conflict, challenge, stakes, theme, turning point,hook, inciting event; formula: "The partner is killed by an evil alien (inciting event), and the tenacious Brooklyn patrol officer Lauren Brown (protagonist) must find the alien's home planet (challenge) to avenge her partner (theme)."Synopsis ≠ promotional slogan(a tagline is post-release marketing); "X meets Y" is not a synopsis. Plot vs. story: plot = the events on screen, story = the subtext, the why, the emotional journey; a synopsis leans toward plot.
McKee: A title = a name, referring to character/background/theme/genre (Jaws has all four); a literary untitled title is not advisable.
Style is determined by the mismatch of "the nature of the character × the nature of the event," not by choosing a style first(Wei Minglun p0081): Meng Dengke in The Scholar of Ba Mountain is a comically pedantic and ridiculous character, yet he gets caught up in a great tragedy—"This determines the basic style of our play: a comedy with tears, a tragedy with smiles". Mismatch is also the source of the irony hook.Fails: when the nature of the character matches the nature of the event (a tragic character meets a tragic event), there is no mismatch to use, and style must find another basis.Self-check: write down the protagonist's attribute and the event's attribute, each in one word; if the two words are the same, don't force the label "blending tragedy and comedy."

Seven, Be Strict in Selecting Material (Lu Jun)

Lu Xun: "Be strict in selecting material, and dig deep; do not fill out a piece with some trivial, meaningless incident."
Four taboos: coveting the big and seeking the weighty (a big subject ≠ great significance, a protagonist with high consciousness ≠ a deep theme; most of the treasured short plays that have circulated draw on the ordinary); chasing fashion (for a subject everyone rushes to, "having one is the same value as having a thousand"); lacking theatricality (a mismatch between subject and genre); inappropriate capacity (compressing material for a full-length play into a one-act play leaves only a dried-up outline).
Four uses：Choose with the heart—be moved and then write; choose what makes your heart throb and stays in your mind for decades (in all of Li Zhun's works there are "those two baked cakes"; Ding Xilin's Oppression came from a friend who was oppressed over renting a house and died, yet he wrote a united struggle that won);Choose with the body—write what you know (Lao She's "box": only with many clothes is there anything to change into); ancient subject matter must connect with real-life experience; if you don't know it, go soak in a "chicken-feather inn"; "fresh on the outside, familiar on the inside";Choose with the eye—artistic discovery; Rodin: "mediocre artists always wear other people's glasses"; Flaubert faced the bonfire until he discovered how it differed from other fires;Choose with drama—choose only what can enter drama: the three elements of conflict, action, and emotion; small-scale xiqu adds "song" as well.
Six-character formula: small, simple, with a dramatic core. The event should be small (borrowing a pair of boots, delivering a basket of eggs, breaking up a quarrel; The Golden Branch writes of an emperor doing no more than breaking up a quarrel; the character "pointed" itself is truth); the plot should be simple (what cannot be explained clearly in five minutes is definitely not a good work; Li Yu: "reduce side threads, establish the main idea"; simple ≠ thin,one must complicate the simple matter: asking for a watermelon → the melon vine → counting the melons → the melon seeds); there must be a trump card/killer move.
Three sentences from a foreign writer: I have a good story; I have the passion to tell it to the end;only I can tell this story and no one else can—the third sentence is the most important.
Hometown layer vs original-hometown layer(Luo Huaizhen p0029–0030): what is established by dialect jokes, local customs, and "memories and associations of the hometown once perceived" is thehometownlayer, which fails once it leaves its popular region; what is established by one's native place and origins, by "a set of images or sounds of hometown life told from generation to generation," is theoriginal hometownlayer, which can move people who never had that experience (descendants of Mongol ancestry who migrated to Northern Europe hundreds of years ago are still drawn when they hear long songs).Self-check: If you delete all the dialect jokes and displays of customs from the whole play, what is left? If nothing is left, it is purely at the hometown level.Interface: For localized adaptation, see sw-format-adaptation。

8. Excavation must be deep = conception (Lu Jun)

Goethe: "One of the best signs of originality is that after choosing a subject one can fully develop it." Excavation = conception, like playing chess where A thinks three moves ahead and B thinks five. Three ways to revise The Women's Representative: strengthen the hygiene campaign (first step) -> write about the old and new thinking of mother-in-law and daughter-in-law (second step, stale) -> connect reforming the family with reforming society, write about striving for political and economic rights, Zhang Guirong takes out the land deed (third step). Excavation in adaptation: Spring Grass Enters the Hall excavates from "a righteous man gets two wives" the idea that "the lowly can shake the feudal order"; After Reunion completely overturns the theme of Shi Tianwen, which promoted the filial wife.
Four methods：①Big environment, small story—Place a small story in the background of the times for examination (in The Green Parrot the actors go from killing in a play to real killing, all relying on the background of the Great Revolution; in Reassurance Pill Chang Gen goes from a "soft-shelled crab" to a real man because the new policy restored his dignity); counterexample: The Migrant Workers' Shed downgrades a social problem to personal grievance. ②Ponder the characters—When inspiration runs dry, ponder a distinctive real person (Liu Bao: poverty makes her tear off face, prosperity helps her regain dignity; Xiao Ding: a social comic strip); Fifteen Strings of Cash starts from pondering Kuang Zhong and adds The Suspicious Mouse. ③Study the ending—"The process of excavating the conception is the process of constantly studying the ending" (three endings for Visiting the Poor on a Rainy Night: political fairy tale -> do not explain who repaired the roof -> the brick-and-tile king says "a Communist township head cannot only understand visiting the poor and asking about their hardships"). ④The power of symbol—In The Zoo Story the bench = middle-class status.
Three not-equalsDo not elevate: looking for class struggle in a black stool, pairing the bird-fighting ending with Ode to the Yellow River; do not preach or diagram (Engels: "the tendency should emerge naturally from the scenes and action"; if after finishing it amounts to a billboard slogan, that is diagramming); do not pretend to be profound (if the play still stands after deleting the "good person, bad person" label scene, do not stick it on).
Surface truth vs. essential truth(Luo Huaizhen pp. 0156-0157): The excavation of historical subject matter does not lie in the surface restoration of official systems, architecture, clothing, or language—"The true reproduction of historical surface phenomena is futile and impossible"—but in "the truth of historical emotion, the truth of historical human nature, the truth of the overall spiritual state of historical people" (to write about the Tang dynasty, one must express the overall self-confidence of the people of that era).Criterion："An aura that can connect ancient and modern, making people feel that this period of history could happen at any time in our present day"。InvalidDocumentary works whose appeal is textual research and restoration itself are another matter.

9. The perspective must be new (Lu Jun)

Subject matter collisions are not frightening; the five hundred arhats each have different postures because their perspectives differ. The same ungrateful-man framework: Sicilian Oranges "squeezes" the ungrateful man out from the gaze of the abandoned person; The Return reflects the abandoned person from the ungrateful man's angle, using the contrast between the scene of relatives waiting full of enthusiasm and the cold Wang Biao. To write about elder abuse, one may only write about an old couple hiding chicken legs at a picnic.
The charm of perspective: to paint "a hidden ancient temple in deep mountains," paint only a monk carrying water; for "returning from treading flowers, the horse's hooves are fragrant," paint only butterflies chasing the horse's hooves—find that angle which does not depict the subject directly yet captures all its elegance.
Three techniques:Turn the ordinary into the marvelous("My Dad" parents claim the essay; "Little Darling and Little Ancestor" writes about only-child education with no adult taking the stage and not a single word of preaching);Condense time and space("Altruism" a group of people around one jump into a river each reveal their inner hearts);Coagulate emotion("The Man Who Rode the Horse into the Sea" does not write about going to sea but about the family's worry; "The Price of Coal" the son is only injured yet cannot laugh—"today's Ellen is tomorrow's Mary"; "Together Forever" that chair).
Three perspectives required for short plays:Peering through a tube(use "the girl looking at the qipao" rather than "the panorama of the trade fair");Focusing(the same event, through different temperaments, writes out different people: Cui Yingying vs. Zhu Yingtai, Liu Cuiping vs. Wang Baochuan);Transformation(a sage arrested, an obituary for a living person, a barber and a nurse jointly running a business—the main energy is placed on the level of social themes, while the level of情趣 is held back and not released, and one should avoid "digging wherever there is drama").

Ten, the play's core must be good (Lu Jun)

Tolstoy: "The most important thing in a work of art is that it has a focus... this focus absolutely cannot be completely expressed in words."
Play core: in plot it has the vitality to extend and derive, in conflict it has the explosive power to resist and intensify, in connotation it has profound and unique penetrating power—without it a play cannot be constituted, without it it cannot become "this one" play(In "Three Dollars in National Currency" the college student deliberately smashes another vase and, following the rich lady's logic, compensates her with three dollars).
The play core is the root,play gallis the branch (a prop or key plot point that plays a special role: the Peach Blossom Fan, Chuncao altering the letter),play eyeis the leaf (a key character or vivid scene: the prefect yielding his sedan chair). Test: if it is removed, does the play still exist—if it does, then it was only branch and leaf.
Four ways of presentation: peculiar actions (building an ancestral hall for a "dead son"; a husband and wife each setting up an affair plan; a love letter written by three elementary school students); carefully chosen props (the magic chair that tells the truth; the gong mallet; one cent); the circumstances of a character's fate (stealing money for a five-dollar children's bike); a song or one or two lines (the ballad in "When the Moon Rises"; "those typewriters").
Once the play core is set, the theme ("Infanticide" gives rise to the comparison: two children, one dying in care and one strangled by kin, for the same reason), structure (mistaken death → struggle over property → resurrection), and characters (the quack doctor who writes obituaries for living people) all take shape accordingly.
Three sources: everyday details (a husband fined; paying back money for a vendor); the mysteries of a character's psychology (a master stealing a servant's cigarettes); the world of imagination (taking a badger to court; a pound of flesh).

Eleven, conflict must be true, plot must be strange (Lu Jun)

Conflict must be true in three layers: true (not false), meaningful (not pointless), dramatic (not argumentative). Eight faults for self-check: no social significance; false (a soldier who breaks off an engagement, a mother-in-law who refuses to acknowledge her daughter-in-law); inaccurate (a contribution bonus, a foreign businessman "testing" the factory director); no dramatic characteristics (a dispute over opinions rather than over character—"those who see the problem the same way will still conflict," Zhou Yu vs. Zhuge Liang); arbitrary misunderstanding; evading the important and dwelling on the trivial (a novel conflict halfway turning into a stale formula); a feint; lack of tension. Belinsky: only when both sides in an argument want to gain the upper hand, sting some aspect of the other's character, and as a result produce a new relationship is it drama.
The plot should be strange but first must be true:"Absurd things should be written in a one-act play" (Chekhov); Hu Ke, "What the audience likes to see is a hundred-year-old commanding troops, not a hundred-year-old in retirement; it is Wu Song beating the tiger, not beating a dog"; something bizarre yet without social significance (like stretching out a hand from a coffin to test the rain) should be discarded. When the plot is unrealistic, first prop up the characters (in The Honorable Wife, four revisions: make the reasons for marriage sufficient, give the characters a reasonable backstory and desires).
Producing the extraordinary from the ordinary is a basic skill: Borrowing Boots distills "borrow, praise, take, sacrifice, test" into a series of twists and turns; better to have the theatrical flavor of concealed code words in medicine names than a mediocrity that becomes more and more "in line with principles" with every revision—"meaning is like rice, writing is like cooking it into a meal, and poetry is like fermenting it into wine."
Learn Shakespeare's five methods for transforming material: raise the thoughts of secondary characters; reposition the antagonist; strengthen the protagonist's wisdom and delete their endurance and compliance; patch holes in plausibility and incidentally write character; reset the ending so that all characters stand on one line and bring things to a rapid close.

Twelve. From Idea to Premise: The Workflow

Capture the fleeting thoughtand write down "why I care" (Cron); confirm that it is a story "only I can tell" (Lu Jun).
Four uses and four taboos in choosing materialRun through them: Is it prompted by genuine feeling? Is it familiar or can it connect to your own experience? Have you discovered a characteristic others have not seen? Can it get into the drama? Is the event small enough and the plot simple enough?
Write the theme in one sentence(can be clichéd) → derive thehypothetical question(including context, surprise, conflict, and implication).
Establish the premise(Egri's three-part formula: character trait + leads to + outcome), confirm that you believe it; one play has only one.
Build the third track: What does the protagonist desire (specific and visible), why, and what false belief blocks them; write the original scene and three turning-point scenes.
Answer Hicks's five questionsand Hoxter's three questions (what do you want / what are you struggling against / theme word); what attitude do the protagonist and the opponent each hold toward the theme; list the attitudes of four related characters.
In excavation, think two moves ahead: For the same material, list three concepts and choose the highest level; use a small story in a big environment / study the characters / research the ending / symbolism.
Find the dramatic core: If you remove it, does the play still exist? Is it an action, a prop, a situation, or a line?
Determine the point of view: Write it head-on or "squeeze" it in from the side? Which one: peeking through a tube / focusing / deformation?
Write the climax / moment of epiphany, and from the climax infer backward the controlling idea (value + cause), marking it as ideal / pessimistic / ironic; design an alternating sequence of idea vs. counter-idea.
One-sentence story(Snyder's four elements + adjectives + original goal) and logline(protagonist + inciting event + challenge + stakes + theme, highlighting the hook); say it once to a stranger.
Self-check: the eight diseases of conflict; the three not-equal-tos of excavation; have the two premises gone in two directions; is the ending caused by the characters' actions rather than accident; does the theme word remain unchanged throughout while attitudes change?