by Paul Snyder
Francis Ford Coppola, George Lucas, and John Milius all went to USC film school together and later worked closely with Steven Spielberg. John Milius was the most prolific and helped with all their films, and although he didn’t get screen credits, he helped his friends with writing classic scenes like from Jaws when Robert Shaw, Richard Dreyfuss, and Roy Scheider talked in the boat about shark attacks.
These grandiose speeches bordering on absurd drives my love for writing. In Dramatica, it’s the variation level that drives the topic of conversation. And so when Meghan picked up her gun from the sand where Philip buried it in the playground, I looked at the variation level in Dramatica, and the quad said I had to choose from enlightenment, wisdom, skill, and experience for my topic in the dialog between Philip and Meghan.
And so, as you remember, Philip said to Meghan. “Enlightenment without wisdom is like skill without experience. There is no substitute for age. There are more experienced killers than you. They will kill you without a second thought.” This brilliance in dialogue is straight from Dramatica theory. You can’t make this stuff up, and I did it all the way through the writing of The Blue Wall Of Silence and loved it. John Milius, who wrote Clint Eastwood’s dialog in Dirty Harry, is probably jealous of me right now.
John Milius claimed his greatness was in retelling the Greek Myth of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey about the Trojan War. This was recently done by Wolfgang Peterson and David Benioff in the 2004 Troy movie with Brad Pitt as Achilles. Milius used Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to write his academy award-nominated film Apocalypse Now.
For The Blue Wall Of Silence, I used the Greek Myth, The Abduction of Persephone. Crimson poppies are symbols of resurrection for the Greek myths. But in my story, I used Christianity right where the Greek myths left off.
Rick was always kissing his cross like the faithful Christian, and in the end, Rick was symbolic of Jesus, who was radical to some, and as Meghan says, “He died because of his cross, then gave me his cross.” And later, Meghan wonders if Rick died because he had to and wanted to die. Rick was resurrected, but still ghost-like, like the “Holy Ghost” Jesus.
In the Greek myths, hell is a place of great wealth, and so Meghan, who is Persephone, finds sixty million dollars in hell, Andrew’s house he gave to her. Andrew is Hades and tricks Meghan into eating the food of hell, a pomegranate in the Greek Myth.
Meghan’s father, Zeus, who doesn’t trust Simon, who is Hermes, any further than he can throw a mountain, makes Meghan stay down in hell forever for eating the food of hell on Thanksgiving. But Meghan’s mom Denise, who is Demeter, and an extremely serious helicopter parent, came to Meghan’s house with her brother Simon.
She made a deal for Meghan to spend part of the year in Seal Beach, which is hell, and part of the year in Big Bear, which is Mount Olympus. Demeter is in charge of agriculture, and when her daughter is in hell, she is Persephone, and the earth freezes over, and nothing grows, but when Demeter’s daughter comes home to Mount Olympus, she is Kore, and the planet warms, spring begins, and things start to grow.
When Denise’s daughter is in Big Bear, she’s Meghan, working in the apple ranch in Oak Glen in the spring and summer, and when she returns to Seal Beach, which is hell, and everything freezes over, she is Margaret.
Hermes stole Apollo’s cattle and sacrificed some to the twelve gods of Mt. Olympus. Zeus complained there were only eleven gods. Hermes said he was the twelfth. Zeus made Hermes the twelfth god.
In The Blue Wall Of Silence, Simon gave Meghan’s father twelve Christmas gifts. Meghan’s father said there were only eleven in the family. Simon said he was the twelfth. Meghan’s father made Simon her brother, but all the gifts were stolen from a souvenir shop in Arrowhead Springs.
Meghan’s father forgave Simon because he was a child prodigy and a brilliant musician.
Hermes stole Apollo’s cattle hours after his birth. Hermes literally went straight from the womb and right for Apollo’s cattle, then while still a baby, Hermes made the cattle walk backward so no one would find out he took them. Hermes made friends with Apollo through music, and Hermes learned the prophecy gift through Apollo's friends.
One plus one equals two. This is science. You can do it every time. It has the same result. It’s irrefutable science. Sometimes, though, one plus one equals thirty. You can hit a stick on the ground, and the same thing happens every time you do it.
This is irrefutable science. But when you hit a stick on the ground and water comes out of the ground as Moses did, this is a miracle. It’s religion when you do the same thing and get a different result. It’s religion when one plus one equals thirty.
Moses did the same thing, and something different happened. A miracle occurred, and we need faith to believe it. We need religion to believe it.
There are only two different ways to explain life: science and religion. You don’t need religion to know that one plus one equals two. No one says, please, God, let me have two things when I put one and one together. You don’t need faith to get two out of adding one plus one. That’s science, and science is not faith-based. Religion and miracles are faith-based.
Religion is good, and evil erases good. Evil erases religion. Only evil would want us to believe religion is a science because that is the erasing of faith like the Dr. Reverand Martin Luther King Jr. was erased, evil erased good.
You can not fight local police corruption with federal FBI corruption. You can not fight evil with evil. It is light that drives out evil. Just like you can not drive out hate with hate. It is love that drives out hatred.
Science belongs in hospitals, with scientists curing and treating the human body. Who wants a doctor to diagnose you for heart surgery, then operate on your ear. No one wants a doctor who doesn’t follow the science.
Who wants a scientist who tells you not to wear a mask, then tells you to wear a mask like Dr. Fauci? Wearing a mask is not following the science that was laid out to us by the scientist Dr. Fauci when he told us not to wear a mask.
You need faith, not science, to believe in Dr. Fauci. Wearing a mask is following Dr. Fauci's theology, his religion, the cult of Fauci. It is not following the science. It is following the faith. You need faith to believe in someone who says one plus one equals two on one day, then on the following day, one plus one equals thirty. You need faith to believe in the cult of Fauci.
Meghan said in The Blue Wall Of Silence. “The FBI will explain the fire-bombing by the police department,” Meghan still felt as though her life had been irreversibly ripped in half. “Then they’ll go right back to their playbook and do more evil later. We hear about it over and over, in history classes in school, Tammany Hall with the police, and on television about the FISA courts and the FBI.” Meghan spoke to everyone now. “We’re not politicians and media personalities and actors. We do not have to appease the public with some cock and bull story about one percent of the cops being corrupt and ninety-nine percent good, or vice-versa. They’re all so blatantly biased that there isn’t a kernel of truth as their bank accounts get fatter with every word that comes out of their mouths. This is why we work in the private sector. Why do you want us to make Faustian bargains with the police and FBI?”
Why do you want to make a Faustian bargain with Dr. Fauci? A leopard can not change its spots. Fauci claims to be a legitimate scientist, but he follows politicians who deceive the public for personal gain.
Dr. Fauci follows politicians who imprison those who violate lockdown orders, then go into hair salons and fancy restaurants and break their own laws, without masks, and go unpunished while we suffer. What in the world is going on in their corrupt minds?
Sigmund Freud described the mental life of a person in three ways. First, there is the id, instinctual desires. Second, the super-ego, which is critical and moralizing. Lastly, the third, the ego, which plays the referee between the instinctual and critical, moralizing.
In The Blue Wall Of Silence, you saw three different Dramatica viewpoints, each vie
wpoint having four different throughlines: First, the main character throughline, the audience viewpoint, Meghan; next, the influence characters throughline, Denise and Philip, who force Meghan to face the issues bringing about her change; then, the subjective story throughline, the beginning relationship between Meghan and Denise and Philip and ending each story issue until the next story issue and lastly the story is solved; and the overall story throughline, the unbiased map of checkpoints, signposts, journeys of overall story characters from departure to end of the story.
Each of the viewpoints was written in the third person limited point of view, each with its unique dilemma.
The first viewpoint, the protagonist, who moved the story forward by passing the conservatorship and guardianship of Andrew, who had Huntington’s disease, to Meghan, was Rick. Rick was the protagonist who was symbolic of the Freudian ego, the referee between the id and the super-ego when Meghan cried foul in Forest Falls. Meghan said. “That’s a foul,” after Rick took her Smith and Wesson handgun. As the referee, Rick overruled the objection by saying, “There are no rules in self-defense.” Rick’s dilemma was if Rick helped Meghan, he was in danger. If he didn’t help Meghan, he was still in trouble. Rick needed to help those in danger without endangering himself. He was damned if he did, damned if he didn’t. There was no clear choice.
Meghan was the main character in the story. Her viewpoint had the audience viewpoint and was symbolic of the Freudian id, instinctual desire. Described as a cougar, she went through all the seven stages of grief: shock and disbelief, denial, guilt, anger and bargaining, depression and loneliness and reflection, reconstruction, and lastly, acceptance at the story’s end. Her dilemma was the restoration of her happy home without going to prison.
Jim Temple’s viewpoint was from the archetypal character of reason, a companion to Andrew, Meghan’s sidekick. And diametrically opposed to Julie, who was archetypal of emotion. Jim was dependent on Dan, who was the archetypal skeptic in the story. Jim’s Freudian viewpoint was the super-ego, critical, and moralizing of Rick and Philip while participating hypocritically in killing women and children for oil in Iraq. His storyline failed when he didn’t catch Rick. Meghan and Rick’s storyline succeeded.
According to Dramatica, Philip, and Denise, Meghan’s mom, were archetypal guardians. Steve Davis was the antagonist who opposed Rick’s overall story goal of passing his conservatorship and guardianship of Andrew to Meghan. Like the Gran Moff Tarkin in George Lucas’ Star Wars who opposed Luke, Steve Davis opposed Rick.
Jennifer was the archetypal contagionist, the trickster and troublemaker, who hindered and tempted Meghan like Darth Vader in Star Wars hindered and tempted Luke. In Star Wars, The Gran Moff Tarkin was the antagonist and wanted to kill Luke.
Darth Vader was a contagonist and didn’t want to kill Luke because Luke was his son. Darth Vader wanted Luke to come over to the dark side. Steve Davis was like the Gran Moff Tarkin and wished to kill Meghan, while Jennifer was like Darth Vader and didn’t want to destroy Meghan’s life but wanted her to come over her way of thinking. And so, like Darth Vader, Jennifer Davis lives to fight another day.
I still surf and live in the Pacific Northwest, and I am planning my next book, and I hope you would like to read that one when I am done.
My editor and cover designer is Carol Waltz at Bella Media Management.
I will e-mail you when my next book comes out. I don’t have a website or social media. You may email me at [email protected] or write a letter to me at 1413 Ismailov St, Kodiak, AK, 99615.
Thanks, and please, I don’t mean to sound rude, but leave a short review. This is my debut novel, and I have no past as a writer, and I need to build a fast and quick platform. I need reviews now to get advertising and started. Thanks again, Paul