Something to Keep in Mind if You're Writing a Novel

While this piece uses a lot of examples from film, there's some discussion of literature sci-fi/fantasy/horror, too, and some cautions for would-be writers:

Why fiction’s freest genres need its most rigid rules

I suppose getting out of a difficult situation using the tools at hand would make you MacGyver or at the very least, the Professor from Gilligan's Island...

I've found a few features of my own manuscript that need to be revised for consistency in the magical system, not necessarily in response to the article I link to, but regardless of the motivation, making the changes will make it a better story.  (Sure, there are a few unexplained things at this point, but my manuscript is the first volume in a projected series; gotta leave some things for later.)

Some fantasy works with good approaches to getting out of difficult situations:

• Elric: The Stealer of Souls by Michael Moorcock -- Elric calls on his dark god, but the dark god doesn't always answer and sometimes Elric has to use his own abilities
• Morlock Ambrosius in This Crooked Way by James Enge -- Morlock has a lot of resources at his disposal; sometimes his solutions to problems really come out of nowhere but after you read them, you always think they fit perfectly with his character and the milieu

Some fantasy works with bad approaches to getting out of difficult situations:

• Anything by Terry Brooks; in The Measure of the Magic, there are TWO prison breaks where someone slipped something into the guard's drink

And a fantasy work where there is NO way out of a difficult situation for the protagonist:

• Farlander by Col Buchanan, where (spoiler alert), THE SPECIAL BOY DIES (this totally made this book awesome for me, I'm reading Stands a Shadow, the sequel, right now)