British English has many phrases for a plan that is meant to be rough.
Back-of-the-envelope: Worked out quickly, with rough figures.
Broad brush: Covering the main points and leaving out the detail.
In broad strokes: In outline only.
Good enough to be going on with: Not final, but enough to start work.
We’ll fill in the details as we go: The details will follow once the work has begun.
British English has many phrases for changing a plan without drama.
Back to the drawing board: The plan has failed, so we start again.
To change tack: To try a different approach. The phrase comes from sailing.
To roll with the punches: To adjust to setbacks instead of fighting them.
To make the best of a bad job: To get the most out of a poor situation.
Needs must: The situation forces a change, so we accept it.
British English has many approving phrases for leaving people to do their work.
To give someone a free hand: To let someone decide how to do a job.
To give someone free rein: To give someone wide freedom to act.
To let someone get on with it: To stop checking and let the work proceed.
Why keep a dog and bark yourself?: There is no point in paying someone to do a job and then doing it yourself. The proverb is recorded from the late sixteenth century.
British English has many phrases for keeping something in reserve.
Belt and braces: Using two safeguards where one might do. Braces are straps that hold up trousers.
To save for a rainy day: To put money aside for hard times.
To hedge one’s bets: To keep more than one option open.
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket: Do not let everything depend on one plan.
Ne’er cast a clout till May be out: Do not put away warm clothes until the end of May. A clout is an old word for a piece of clothing.
British English has many quiet phrases for work that is going well.
Getting there: Good progress, though not finished.
Ticking over: Running steadily. The phrase comes from an engine running slowly.
Coming along: Progressing as it should.
On the right lines: The approach is working.
So far, so good: The work is on track, with no promise about what comes next.
In the foreword to The Lord of the Rings, J. R. R. Tolkien wrote: “This tale grew in the telling, until it became a history of the Great War of the Ring.” He had begun it soon after The Hobbit was published, as a sequel.
In a letter to W. H. Auden dated 7 June 1955, he described how one of its central characters appeared: “Strider sitting in the corner at the inn was a shock, and I had no more idea who he was than had Frodo.”
The film director Mike Leigh starts work without a script. In a 2008 interview with Minnesota Public Radio, he described himself as “the guy with no script, who won’t tell you what the film is about and won’t discuss casting.”
He develops the characters together with his actors. “A character doesn’t exist in a vacuum,” he said. “Obviously, a character develops by interaction with other characters.”
Oh, What a Lovely War! opened at the Theatre Royal Stratford East on 19 March 1963. Theatre Workshop, the company that created it, developed its productions through improvisation. For this show, each member of the company was given a topic of the First World War to learn about.
Charles Dickens published The Pickwick Papers in parts. In a later preface, he explained that “no ingenuity of plot was attempted, or even at that time considered very feasible by the author.” He linked this to “the desultory mode of publication adopted.”
The novel opens with the Pickwick Club, but the club did not last. Its “machinery,” Dickens wrote, “proving cumbrous in the management, was gradually abandoned as the work progressed.”
A saying attributed to Oliver Cromwell runs: “No one rises so high as he who knows not whither he is going.” It is widely quoted, including on a website devoted to Cromwell. No source from Cromwell’s own time has been confirmed, so the attribution remains uncertain.