Indy Ploy

The favorite plan (or rather, lack thereof) of almost every Action Hero and Idiot Hero in existence: make it up as you go. The Indy Ploy is when someone improvises a plan in the middle of the action or comes up with one immediately before the action starts. Either way, the initial plan has failed, and now the character is forced to come up with a new plan on the fly with no time to prepare or think about the consequences. Maybe The Team has lost The Smart Guy. Maybe The Leader has the attention span of a distracted goldfish on caffeine. Maybe The Plan our heroes were relying on was trashed beyond all hope of being salvaged. Maybe The Strategist was off planning something else. No matter the reason, they are now executing an Indy Ploy. Not all characters involved are necessarily aware of the leader's lack of forethought. When he finally utters those dreaded words, "I'm making it up as I go", hilarity is sure to ensue. If things don't go smoothly, expect exclamations of "What Were You Thinking?!" An Indy Ploy is also a surefire way to invoke an Unspoken Plan Guarantee. Since the hero's course of action is unknown even to the hero himself, and therefore unknown to the audience, the hero is more likely to succeed than if he had spent time planning on-screen. Named after Indiana Jones, who has had to make more unplanned heroics than most of us have had hot dinners. A Sub-Trope of Improvisational Ingenuity. Contrast Strategy, Schmategy (where the character just acts at random without even improvising a plan on the fly), Xanatos Gambit (a plan where all reasonable outcomes are beneficial) and Batman Gambit (where the gambitter uses his knowledge of what all involved will do in order to use them as pieces on the board). Between them and this trope lies Xanatos Speed Chess, where the plan, generally more complicated than "survive and don't get caught", is continually adapted to circumstances. This can lead to a Spanner in the Works where they cannot be predicted because they don't know what they are going to do next. The Indy Ploy can (and often has to) try to fill in the blanks of the Missing Steps Plan. See also How Did You Know? I Didn't and I Have No Idea What I'm Doing. May involve Holding the Floor. Unrelated, despite the name, to the Indy Escape, which does involve a plan: RUN. Those who weaponize this may employ Confusion Fu. Writing by the Seat of Your Pants is when the author does this.