Instant Dramatica
Musings from Armando Saldaņa
Mora
Mental Sexplanation....
Mental Sex -just as approach- is your character preference, his
"first reaction", but when circumstances force him, he just has to change his
usual ways and act in the opposite to find a solution.
My wife (Latin America's Female Mental Sex Champion for the last 10 years) induces
everything with her atmospherical, holistic way of thinking; but when things overwhelm
her, she always does the same thing, she sits down and says out loud "wait, order of
factors!..." Then she began to break everything into steps.
Myself, when I found I can't communicate with a TV exec brick-head I begin to
gesticulate mysteriously and say things like: "I... feel there's something lacking in
this project... It doesn't feels...round..."
Bottomline: Your character can change Mental sex or approach anywhere in your story,
but it has to be pretty clear why the circumstances forced him to, and how tense he's
feeling in this fashion.
Note: If your character has to change mental sex or approach, it doesn't means that it
has to be a change character. Resolve refers solely to a single Issue (most frequently,
the central Issue of the story) and you can change mental sex in order to remain steadfast
to that issue.
Now, here's the tricky part: Notice how your choice of female or male in story forming
changes the order of your signposts and journeys and alters your characters Unique ability
and Critical Flaw?
Those are traits -and points of view- that are in the nature of your character and
can't be forced by circumstances.
Bottomline: If you have a story of a character forced to use his/her unnatural
approaches through the whole story, or if you have trouble deciding the authentic mental
sex of your character, look at what you have chosen in storyforming. That is the natural
mental sex.
More tricky still... Have you read Melanie Anne Philips' diaries?
(Well, they're on the INTERNET, don't give me that look as if I were sneaking into her
room!)
There's a part where she changes her natural mental sex (and invents the whole
Dramatica theory at the same time, by the way) where she begins to look at objects for
it's color instead of it's shape and so on...
What if you have a character like that? One that changes her natural mental sex in the
middle of the story? Which one do I choose in storyforming?
For storyforming choose the later. A story -a complete story, with an objective view-
can only be told with the perspective of time. In Storytelling you'll have to encode each
sex in their respective scenes.
There! Look what you made me do! Now I've spilled the beans on Melanie! The high
priests will have to burn me at the stake (according to Dramatica's cult Necronomicon
story guide book)
