The one given by Mari Hannah helped me.
She writes Police procedurals/crime fiction, and since that is the genre I have recently decided to attempt, I just had to attend. It would have been criminal not to! There was much good information and I saved her talk, and think this is worth taking about: she mentioned four things that she advises everyone to do:
Keep a timeline. It is so easy to lose track of things and exactly when they happened. I came home and starting reading my own work from the start. Glad I did, for I found several instances where I'd got things a) repeated or b) out of sequence. So now I follow Mari's advice and keep a timeline on a separate document.
I n my read through I also looked for what she calls "a raised action." Evidently police keep a log of every order/question and someone is in charge of that sheet. When I went through my story - you can guess I found orders I had directed someone to do and then forgotten about them.
A Setup/Payoff sheet. This sits next to the Raised Action sheet, possible on the same document. in my pc. Things discovered in the investigation go in here so they are not forgotten or worse - ignored!
The fourth list she recommended I already do, and I suppose most writers have a character list. How detailed you wish to make it is up to you. I like to note hair and eye-colour so I don't have to sit and try to remember what I said about the character the first time I mentioned them.
So thank you to Mari for an excellent talk. Much appreciated.
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