The Female Mental Sex Premise

An understanding of narrative structure from the other side.

A complete story is a model of the mind at work. Narrative structure depends on the nature of that mind's base operating system: does it lean towards problem-solving or justification? While the Male Mental Sexed approach to Premise building is clear-cut and forward, the Female Mental Sexed approach is more complex.

A Female Mental Sex Understanding of Premise

Free your Storymind

One of the standout features of Subtxt is the Premise. Based on a previous article entitled How to Build a Narrative Argument, the breakdown of a premise allows an Author to determine the critical structural Storybeats of their narrative. Reducing the complexity of a Dramatica storyform down to a single sentence opens up greater understanding and draws the writer closer to their intuition.

If, in fact, that intuition is appropriately honored.

Unfortunately, early versions of Subtxt skewed the Premise towards a specific segment of the population, i.e., the Male Mental Sexed thinker. Enraptured in goals and problem-solving, these cause-and-effect thinkers speak of Premise in a way that is simple to understand—and even easier to code.

Do this, and you get that. You might fail if you let go of this, but you’ll feel better for it.

Clear-cut and concise.

Not all-encompassing.

A Premise for All

The latest version of Premise within Subtxt addresses a somewhat under-served portion of the world, the kind who prefers balancing issues, rather than solving goals. While much of the conflict we experience can be zeroed out by the Male Mental Sex thinker, there is another that recognizes an inequity is never indeed solved: the Female Mental Sex thinker.

The Female Mental Sexed mind operates from a position of receptiveness—understanding that while we may know the answer, an even better one may show itself if we are willing to receive it.

Sometimes to resolve inequities, we need to align ourselves first before the solution presents itself. We literally can’t see the answer because we’re too unbalanced and confused in our own minds. And even when we achieve that balance, the inequity is never entirely eliminated—the leveraging between various inequities continues from now until the end of days. The Female Mental Sexed aligns the self to hear with better eyes.

Male problem-solvers deal with on or off, Problem and Solution. Solve the problem and conflict disappears—like turning off a light switch.

Female problem-solvers—if there were such a thing—deal in waves of tendency and the balance of concerns holistically. Balance the inequity and the potential for conflict wanes—like singing a nostalgic and patriotic song to brighten a room full of national adversaries.

The Female Mental Sexed mind solves problems by justifying--by balancing self with the environment with the justification that emphasis over here will somehow help address conflict over there.

Changed Resolve Story

A Changed Resolve narrative deals with a Dilemma—with the imbalance between Problem and Solution. Male Mental Sexed minds attack these kinds of stories by problem-solving. They find the Element creating conflict, label it a Problem, and then fix it with a Solution.

Female Mental Sexed minds resolve inequity by justifying—by coming into alignment with themselves and balancing the relationship between self and environment. They recognize the inequity for what it is and seek equity elsewhere.

They recognize the inequity for what it is, and seek equity by balancing out the source of inequity (the Condition) with its other half (the Balance).

One problem-solves, the other justifies.

Problem-solving is easy. It’s even easier to program as most of coding is a linear approach to solving a problem (if x = 5 then goto 20).

Justifying requires a different skill set of mental gymnastics. Applying that to a premise requires capturing the essence of the self being in alignment, or balance, with forces external. Finding the right balance of narrative concerns then leads one to seek leverage points that open the path to the desired outcome.

See—even explaining it involves a more sophisticated appreciation than only if this, then that.

Success/Good — Composure

To a Male Mental Sex mind, a Successful Outcome and a Good Judgment is a Triumph. To the Female Mental Sex mind, the same set of narrative dynamics feels less like achieving a Goal and more like bringing oneself into a sense of Composure.

The Matrix is structured with this sense of Composure--and that’s why it feels so much different than Star Wars or Star Trek. As Main Character, Neo (Mr. Anderson) seeks balance in all things, trying to find the balance between his self-doubts and what everyone else thinks he can do.

If he were Male Mental Sexed, and the film structured appropriately, the Premise would be:

::premise Abandon your being aware of everyone around you and you can reveal what has happened to everyone. ::

To a Male Mental Sexed mind, that statement reads true. And for the first year and a half of Subtxt, that’s how the Premise read.

But it isn’t The Matrix.

To a Female Mental Sexed mind that inequity of being aware of everyone around you never goes away completely—it’s always there, needing to be addressed and dealt with day after day.

A Female Mental Sexed version of the same Premise, and one that captures the essence and feel of the message of The Matrix, would be:

::premise Address resistance towards being predestined to be someone by balancing your overwhelming awareness of everyone else with your seeing the world from one's own perspective. ::

To the Female Mental Sex mind, that statement makes far more "sense" than the previous one. To the Male Mental Sexed, it might appear as if one is not facing their problems or making excuses for not merely doing what needs to be done, but the Female Mental Sexed knows otherwise.

Sometimes, what needs to be done is to compose oneself through a gentle balance—and then the solution, or outcome, presents itself naturally.

This is why a Female Mental Sexed mind might sometimes refer to the “universe” as providing them answers. Explaining this behavior to Male-minded folk requires using a primarily linear language to justify a process that sits outside of linearity. The only way to kind-of-sort-of discuss the kind of knowledge that doesn’t emanate from consciousness is to equate it with the universe working in tandem with the self.

To the Male Mental Sexed, this line of thinking sounds like kooky-nonsense, to the Female Mental Sexed it perfectly describes how answers come to them.

The Elements of a Female Mental Sex Premise

Breaking down the Male Premise into its principal components reveals two key Elements:

::premise Abandon AWARE and you can PAST. ::

Aware is the tie to the subjective point-of-view from within and defines the Character aspect of the Premise for The Matrix.

Past defines the Story Goal of The Matrix and solidifies the objective point-of-view of conflict in that film.

Problem and Solution. Goal and Consequence. If you do this, then that will happen. Strict linearity in narrative form.

Breaking down the Female Mental Sex Premise reveals a slightly skewed version of similar thematics:

::premise Address resistance towards DESTINY by balancing your overwhelming AWARE with your SELF-AWARE. ::

Instead of the Goal, we now focus on the Objective Story Issue for objective footing—in this case, Destiny, or the future path an individual will take.

Aware finds its way in their again, but instead of seeing it as a Problem, we view it subjectively as a point of imbalance—with Self-aware on the other side of the scale.

The Female Mental Sexed Premise acknowledges this alternate way of thinking by shifting the emphasis of the Objective Premise Element away from the Story Goal, as it is found in a Male Mental Sex approach, and down to the Objective Story Issue. In this way, the Premise continues to focus on the differential between self and external—but does so by referring to the more ephemeral and balance-laden appreciation of an Issue familiar to the Female Mental Sex mind.

With this approach, we capture the essence of both the Male and Holistic approach and provide Authors from all across the spectrum a means to better appreciate the narrative dynamics within their stories.

New Appreciations

As indicated, this latest development calls for the addition of two new Appreciations of narrative: the Subjective Premise Element and the Objective Premise Method. The combination of the two within a single context determines a wide range of narrative dynamics responsible for the structure of a story.

True to form, the Female Mental Sex mind requires more explanation and a third Appreciation: the Subjective Premise Balance. Appearing as Self-aware in the example of The Matrix above, this balancing Element identifies the leverage point needed to counteract and bring into alignment the Subjective Element.

While the specifics of the Overall Premise Element shift dependent upon the Mental Sex of the narrative, the Subjective Premise Element is always the Main Character’s Pivotal Element within the argument of the story.

In Dramatica theory, the Pivotal Elements were referred to as "Crucial Elements" as they were always deemed crucial to the narrative, signifying the connection between the objective and subjective views. This concept of the Subjective Premise Element defines specifically why it is so essential to the understanding of a story.

Receiving a Premise

All this to describe one possible narrative—the one where the self is brought into alignment resulting in a state of composure. But what about those moments when we balance the inequities within yet find ourselves in a low state of emotion or disconnected entirely?

If this new appreciation of Premise—a Female Mental Sexed appreciation—recognizes the understanding that no problem is ever indeed solved, then this first step will act as a temporary balance of concerns. By bringing ourselves into alignment with the Female Mental Sex experience, we open ourselves up to receiving the answers we seek and the outcome we desire for ourselves.

For now, the potential for greater understanding is balanced—until the next one comes along.

Heading Towards Being Present or Eventual Stagnation

A realignment of purpose that sends the mind in a new direction

In the previous article on A Female Mental Sex Understanding of Premise, the concept of applying an emotional state to a narrative argument found balance in aligning the self with the outside world. As many can attest, maintaining this state is an act of impossible defiance that far too often finds one off the intended path. Appreciate the differential between imbalance and outcome, and one begins to open themselves up to an entirely different story—that of being out-of-alignment.

With the Dramatica theory of story, we see two critical dynamics of narrative that help us appreciate the narrative’s state of emotion: Story Outcome and Story Judgment. Remember that a complete narrative functions as an analogy to a single human mind trying to resolve an inequity—that single mind carries a state of emotion, and the juxtaposition of these two dynamics crystallizes that emotion for the Audience.

The Male Mental Sex Perspective

To the Male Mental Sexed mind, a Success/Bad story is one that tells of a Bleak ending. While the efforts to resolve the story’s problem workout for most everyone in the story, they come at considerable cost to the Main Character’s personal sense of well-being. The Dark Knight, Unforgiven, and the first season of Westworld all share this bittersweet ending tragic for the individual.

The other side of the bittersweet ending finds Failure in the Story Outcome and Good in terms of the Story Judgment. BlacKKKlansman, The Wife, and the pilot episode of the first season of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel tell stories of Virtue—where things don’t work out for everyone else, but end well for the primary character.

Notions of Bleak or Virtuous endings do little for the Female Mental Sex mind. Like the all-out Triumph discussed in the previous article, there is no judgment, and no meaningful end for the Female Mental Sexed mind, just an ending for now.

With that in mind, one turns to the Flow of Power throughout the Female Mental Sex Storymind. Is the mind shifted into a greater sense of the Present, or into a new sense of Stagnation? In contrast to the Steadfast Female Mental Sexed stories, these stories of the mind abandoning an old path for a new one introduce presence and inertia to the mind.

If the Changed/Success/Good story finds the Female Mental Sex mind in Composure, then the Changed/Success/Bad and Changed/Failure/Good stories find this same person out of sorts with their environment as the result of their new intentions—one direction finding presence, the other finding stagnation.

Venturing into the Doldrums

Changed/Female/Success/Bad stories differ from the Triumph/Composure story in that the self is left in a state of emotional unrest—the whole self. The Female Mental Sex mind deals with the totality of experience—one tiny imbalance is enough to warrant a condition of misalignment. The balance between the objective and the subjective is so out-of-alignment in these stories that a state of low emotional vibration consumes the individual--or what many commonly refer to as "a case of the doldrums."

Note that this new emotional state is not presented as a consequence of failed action. The Premise/Storyform represents the totality of the experience, not merely the end result. The process of running through that experience plays a permanent role in sharing what it feels like to face that conflict.

Yes, resolution in the outside world might be found—a “Goal” may be achieved—but to the Female Mental Sex mind, that sense of not vibing with the outside world continues to be a source of irritation.

Disconnection and the Female Mental Sex Mind

The first casuality of separation is an isolated self.

Connection is everything to the Female Mental Sexed mind. When you measure your experience in terms of balance and relationships, the separation felt from being cut off is one of life's greatest tragedies. It's almost impossible for a holistic to dwell in total isolation—which explains why there are so few stories about these horrible circumstances.

The current version of Subtxt offers well over 500 different unique story structures. Of those, only seven feature a Female Mental Sexed structure where the mind of the story changes while in a state of extreme disconnection. It rarely happens—because the Female Mental Sexed mind would never entirely change without the security of knowing it was in tandem with the Universe.

The Female Mental Sexed Approach to Working Through Conflict

Justifying as a means of solving problems.

Our minds take one of two paths when faced with an inequity: the way of problem-solving or the path of justification. Problem-solving seeks to resolve the inequity. Justification aims to hide the inequity from the mind. The trick with the Female Mental Sex mind's approach to inequity is that its version of problem-solving is actually just another form of justification.

The Steadfast Resolve Story

A complete and functioning narrative consists of several vital dynamics. One of those dynamics, the Main Character Resolve, sets the nature of the story itself. A Changed Main Character Resolve, one where the Main Character adopts an entirely new point-of-view, signifies a Dilemma story.

The Steadfast Main Character Resolve story, one where the Main Character retains their world perspective, differs from the Changed Resolve in that the focus lies in the Work to be done, not the Dilemma. In fact, in these stories, a Dilemma never truly exists—the emphasis instead lies in maintaining that justification to carry on despite difficulties.

A No-Win Universe for the Holistic

With the shift away from outcome incurred by a Dilemma, the Female Mental Sex narrative rests its meaning on the growth of self throughout the story. What is the process that draws one closer to an outcome?

Here we see the Female Mental Sexed mind's preference for justification as a method for conflict resolution. As conflict increases, the Steadfast Resolve must continually build up reasons, or justifications, for their approach.

The Male Mental Sexed mind problem-solves by problem-solving and justifies by justifying. The Female Mental Sex mind problem-solves by justifying and justifies by justifying.

The Female Mental Sexed mind) never wins in the eyes of a Male Mental Sexed thinker—they're always justifying, always making "excuses" for their behavior.

Moving Away from the Male Approach

The Male approach to Steadfastness advocates a point of focus or a direction to take. Steadfast stories with a Main Character Growth of Stop draw attention to that point of focus. Those with a Main Character Growth of Start highlight the direction the work takes within the story.