‘Chekov’s Gun’ is an old principle in writing. ‘If you describe a gun in detail in the first act, it should be fired in third.’ What it means is that if you put emphasis on a detail, that detail should matter to the story. Then there is the reverse of this principle, the ‘Reverse Gun’: if you want to use something in the climax, it should be introduced beforehand, so the audience is aware that it exists.
Not everything you give focus to in the course of a story needs to be a big part of the climax. There may be things which get resolved earlier and don’t play a role then. There may be things which play a bigger role in the second book of the series, too, though try to keep those to a minimum. Yet, if you pay great attention to the details of something, it should be important for the story and not just a throwaway description because you were a couple of hundred words short of your goal. Otherwise, use those couple of hundred words to deepen the characters in the chapter or add to descriptions which will really matter in the long run.
The opposite to this, to put too much emphasis on something which doesn’t play an important role in your story, is the ‘Reverse Gun’ or ‘Deus Ex Machina’ (the god out of the machine). In the climax, some kind of skill or object simply ‘appears’ in the story and helps the protagonist win. This can be as high-profile as an actual god descending into the fight and protecting the protagonist or destroying the antagonist or as low-profile as the hero suddenly being able to use a weapon they’ve never touched before or being able to defeat the antagonist in another way which was never hinted at.
It’s easy to say which is worse: the Reverse Gun is. It defies all promises an author makes to the audience - to make the story logical in itself, to make sure that the end will be worth the time taken with the story so far. The whole story builds towards the third act, the climax, where the main plot is resolved and the protagonist wins (or, more rarely, loses) for good. A lot of smaller plots are, directly or indirectly, geared towards it as well, resolving earlier to give the protagonist support or new tools or weapons for the big climax later. So if there’s no logical way within the story for the protagonist to win during the climax (which would suggest this is one of the few stories where the protagonist loses) and then the way to win suddenly appears without warning, the promise to the audience is broken.
That doesn’t mean getting people invested in a detail which doesn’t play a role in the resolve of any of your plots isn’t bad, it’s just not quite as bad. It’s still a broken promise, but on a smaller scale. It’s something the readers invested interest in which didn’t pay off (yet, which is why you should use book one to set up for book two sparsely if at all), but it will not hurt the logic of your story by suddenly coming out of the blue and saving the day.
Even the best of writers (or at least the most revered) can find themselves in a situation where they’re taking the ‘Reverse Gun’ way out, but there are ways to avoid using it. The very best way is, of course, good plotting. If you take the time to plot out your story well, you will realize early that you need to include some way the protagonist can win the day in the climax and you can work that in with a few bits of foreshadowing or by showing it off before the climax without having to resort to the Deus Ex Machina. Another way, if a very work-heavy one, is to go back in your story and find scenes were you can hint at the skill/friend/weapon before you use it in the great climax. You can also self-consciously use the Deus Ex Machina and have characters comment on it, but that’s by far the worst solution.
Both Chekov’s Gun and the Reverse Gun happen because writers don’t think ahead and consider what they will need to resolve their plots. Everything which is relevant to one plot or other needs attention beforehand. Everything which is just window-dressing needs none. Of course, you can write about the drapes in your protagonist’s room (and thus spark discussions about whether or not the colour is relevant to the protagonist’s mood), but you shouldn’t spend too much time on them, unless they’re going to be relevant to at least one plot. Sometimes, people just become too enamoured with a detail and put it in over and over again, even though it doesn’t have a practical use in the story.
If you look through a story and find that there’s something prominent in it which doesn’t have a use for the climax or any of the minor plots, the only right thing to do - as much as it hurts - is to take it out or at least tone it down a lot. If you look through a story and find that there’s something happening out of the blue in the climax, you should do all you can to go back and at least foreshadow it before it happens. It often doesn’t need much foreshadowing, either, but the basic principle must be there. A character must at least suggest that they have a certain skill or a friend who might step in and help must at least be mentioned before.
One reason why Han Solo coming back in “A New Hope” and helping Luke is not a Deus Ex Machina is that there are suggestions that Han’s ‘I only look out for myself’ stance is fake, that he does care a lot, but doesn’t dare to show it. Him coming back after he seemed to leave is not a Deus Ex Machina, it’s a logical conclusion of his character arc in this story, admitting that he does care for more than money, that he’s not just a mercenary. The same goes for Luke trusting the Force with a one-in-a-million shot instead of his target computer. We have seen him train with the Force for a bit before and we’ve seen that the target computer is no guarantee for the hit, either. Using the Force instead is no worse than using the computer - and the computer failed at this task already.
On the other hand, the cop-out in the version of Faust written by revered German author Johann Wolfgang Goethe is a Deus Ex Machina in the truest sense of the expression. At the end of the second part, Faust should be going to Hell, as his deal with Mephistopheles has come due. Instead of accepting this defeat, God sends the soul of none other than Faust’s victim Gretchen (whom he left pregnant and alone and who was executed for killing her newborn child at the end of the first part) to take Faust to Heaven instead of Hell. That is cheating of the highest order and shouldn’t be happening. Of course, Faust had to stop striving (which was when the contract would be due in this version) at some point - the play couldn’t go on infinitely. Goethe should have found a different way, though - he worked on the plays for about 60 years, that’s a long time to figure out how your life’s work should end.
Do your best to avoid both Chekov’s Gun and the Reverse Gun. Make sure you don’t put too much emphasis on something which is not important to the plot, yet also make sure that everything which goes into the resolution of a plot is introduced in time and doesn’t come out of nowhere.
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