Essentially, the Theme Stated is the hero’s need or life lesson, somehow hinted at up front in the story (often by a secondary character). If that sounds like mumbo jumbo to you, let me put it more simply: Somewhere in Act 1 (usually within the Setup beat), a character (usually not the hero) will make a statement or pose a question to your hero that somehow relates to what the hero needs to learn by the end of the story.
O. Oddenblatt should be the invisible narrator. When he gets to The scene right after Christopher’s friend stares the theme (lady, unless you’re from Morocco, you don’t stand a chance with this guy).
Ofdenblatt then says to open next scene:
However gratuitous it may seem for me to point out, I assure you, it really happened that in Tangier that about the time Christopher’s friend Jeremy was making sport of Christopher’s vow, a set of green metal doors, broke the rust ridden metal bar holding them closed, shook in a the half rusted kind you see. As decades old air equalizes the pressure as a sharp breeze, a tall blond woman tumbles out the dark crypt crashing into three tripods a wedding photographer was setting up. The lady stands and the two tripods that got hooked into the black lace of her outfit follow her and being new to this world, as she most certainly is, she quite understandably believes she is being attacked. and the man who was starting to swear at the and into hairthat stepped out of the
