Winging It

Recently, I had an amiable online discussion with someone over whether or not George Lucas had already planned out how the Force works by the time the first Star Wars movie was released. I’m still pretty sure he was winging it, given he couldn’t be certain whether or not he’d get to make more movies in the universe. That led me to thinking about winging it as a such when you’re a writer.

I tend to do it regularly myself while I’m writing. When I stumble across a one-off object or other detail, I make it up on the spot without really thinking about it. That then sometimes comes back to haunt me when the object, skill, or other detail later needs to be expanded on. Luckily, I’m quite good at winging that, too, and add more detail and depth even if I didn’t do so originally. That might be due to my past as a discovery writer, though.
Even though I do plot by now, my plotting is not set in stone. Therefore, I might suddenly find that I need to introduce something to finish a scene, just a little detail that is important for the moment, but won’t really play a role long-term, since my general plot usually is not affected by changes to a scene as plotted originally. I still know where I’m going, even if I might take a slightly altered route.
In my experience, those ‘spurt of the moment’ additions are fine. They exist simply to enrich a scene, not to make any important changes to the overall story. For that, I can wing it. Sometimes, though, I’m wrong and it turns out that the detail becomes much more important as the story progresses.

In such a situation, there is one big danger, which is to overthink things to make up for under-thinking them before. After just having thrown the thing in the first time, it gets to be developed far further and into something far more complicated than it needs to be and the end result is not working out as it should.
This has happened to me, too. When I first wrote the basic outline for “Stray” (the first novella featuring Gabrielle Munson), I didn’t think much about the necromancy in the story — there was no reason to, as she was mostly on the run and would only use her powers to find out who really had done the murders by asking a victim. When I expanded into other stories, when the first book took shape, I began to realise that I needed to go deeper. I began to overthink.
I tried to write down a whole essay on how necromancy worked, tried to make it all logical and invent rituals which I wasn’t going to need any time soon. Then I took a step back and realised it wasn’t necessary. I needed to write Gabrielle’s skills as a necromancer and an alchemist down to keep them in mind. I needed to make sure I wasn’t writing one thing in one story and the opposite in another. I didn’t need a full magic system for her skills — she uses them little enough. I had overthought and I had to stop doing that.

If you don’t keep notes of the details in your stories, you might also run into a situation where the audience will wonder why your main character doesn’t just use a skill or object shown in a prior story. It’s important to keep track of skills which your recurring characters have shown, in case you need to use them again when they would normally be used again instead of the new solution you want to implement in your plot.
This goes twice for any kind of skill or special object you have given a character in a pinch. As you’ve been winging it, there was no planning this out in advance and you’re probably not expecting to ever use it again. If you’re writing a series, though, you should write it down so you will remember it — parts of the audience definitely will.
Sooner or later, you might put the character into a similar situation and again wing it and write something else in to help that character. Fans of the series will remember that magical object or advanced technology or little-mentioned skill which the character used the last time and they’ll be surprised to see it doesn’t make an appearance. They might even get sarcastic about it, realising you’ve forgotten.

One thing you should never do is wing an important or recurring aspect of the story. When you want to implement something for good, it needs to be thought-out or you will sooner or later be in trouble. Skills and special objects need to be balanced, otherwise they will lower the tension and that is never a good thing. Relationships or backgrounds of recurring characters need to be able to survive the stories or change accordingly. It is always possible to add more details later, but the foundation must be sound.
This should go without saying, but you don’t always know which part of a recurring character is going to become the most important over time. Even if you plan out a full series, while writing it, you might find that there needs to be a certain shift. It has certainly happened to me, see the necromancy in “Theoretical Necromancy”.
Before you give a major character a skill or object, you especially need to think about how it can be used. Even if it’s normally limited, if there’s a way to misuse it, that way has to be eradicated. If one character’s skill or object completely cancels out another character’s skill or object, there might need to be changes. Balance is important for both the stakes and the tension and that means the protagonists must appear under-powered compared to the antagonists.

‘Winging it’ is a solution for small details that are not used for long in a story. Sometimes, you just need to make something up on the spot. Yet, if the detail is a skill or object that might return at some point or be useful again, it pays to keep a note on it, especially in a series. You never should try to wing something important for the story, either, because it will always come back to bite you later on. Always…