I spent a significant amount of time yesterday plotting out the climactic finale of the third book. I find myself in an interesting position of knowing how all the major players fare, but debating among several different ways of getting them there.
Part of it is because I don't yet have a clear picture of what those people are going to find in that place at that time. The answer to that question is going to drive the action. Perhaps I should work backwards. Once I know what action I want to happen, I can figure out what would cause that action to develop naturally, and choose that.
I think writing is a lot like calculus. You can take the derivative of any function. That's the analog to introducing an element and then pursuing the consequences of it. If you have a starting place, you can write about what comes next based on your knowledge of your characters and of human nature in general.
The opposite is much harder. That's like integration in Calculus, the inverse operation of derivation. Integration is not possible for every function, and even where it is, it can be fiendishly difficult to accomplish. That's like starting with a consequence and trying to find a setup that would cause that consequence to happen naturally. Some consequences just don't have any possible antecedents, and even when they do, they can be very hard to find.
In general, I prefer derivation to integration. But sometimes you just have to work backwards in order to achieve a certain goal.
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