Linear, Circular and Obsessive Writing

I heard an interesting conversation over the weekend. An academic was talking about literature and "orgasmic structure". If I understood correctly, she was advancing the theory that traditional literature has a male orgasmic structure - the whole idea of "rising action" then "climax" then "denouement". And that women's literature used a more female, circular orgasmic structure.

I haven't decided what I think about the orgasmic structure of literature, but I do know that the script I'm currently working on is unfolding itself with a shift from how I've written in the past. I have a story in mind, then I write linearly, from beginning to end. That hasn't been happening with the three women script, as I've taken to calling it.

With this one, different scenes push forward and insist that I write them "right now" without regard to what's happened before that scene in the script. I find myself dreaming about the script and various scenes. This is a script that I started thinking about years ago. It came from a single image I had one day. At the time I couldn't decide whether it should be a stageplay or a film script. Eventually I shelved it because it was having story problems. More recently I started thinking about it. Then I began to obsess about it. I had to actually put aside another piece of writing I was working on to answer the demands of this script. And I can't even think about loglines.

It's disconcerting on one level and yet, it somehow feels right. Is it a more circular structure since I'm a woman and it's "the three women script"? Perhaps in the writing of it, but I have to say that at the end of the day, my script does have exposition, an inciting incident, conflict, rising action, climax and denouement - certainly the classic structure, male orgasmic or not.