I hate to admit it…but I almost forgot to put the ‘how’ on this poster. (I did remember the ‘w’s though!) You see, even writers need reminders sometimes…ok, some writers need reminders a lot more than just sometimes. Every once in a while you get in that word groove and bop along, banging out thousands of words in an afternoon and letting your conscious check out as you become a conduit for the story within…and then you read it later and wonder how in the world the dead guy from three chapters back and six counties over wound up serving coffee to the star witness a week later…(Flashback? I don’t think so! Twin…possibly).
Whether or not that happens to you often, there is still going to come a time when things pile up and answers are needed. To avoid that, or to clear it up neatly, remember to ask the 5 W’s, and that one H that just kinda hangs out in the back. š
So here it is…the reminder to us all on how to thicken up a good plot soup. (And the short answer to my long windedness today…three parentheses!!)
Who – Who did it?
Where – Where does the action take place?
What – What happened?
When – When did it happen…when is it now?
Why – Why did it happen??
How – How did it happen?
EX – Colonel Mustard clocked P. Dandy over the head with a bowling ball in the conservatory of the old planetarium three hours ago because P. Dandy kissed Ms. Plum’s twisted thumb. Seeing Dandy’s head bent over Ms. Plum’s hand, Mustard snatched up the ball that had so recently stuck to that very same thumb…and conked his competition.
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Here there Be Dragons! 
Good advice. I make notes about injuries and who is where as I go along. Though I still mess up from time to time. In my first book, beta readers wanted more of a character who died about 3/4 way through. I went through the book to add the character to scenes that they would work out in. One of them happened to be a scene after they died, which I didn’t notice until I read it again a year later. Oops.
That is too perfect.. Now I’m super glad that I put that line in the post š
I forget characters…lose them and find them again a book later, you name it. I actually wrote an entirely new scene and rearranged the last part of a book because I had to figure out how to get a character in with the group that he was supposed to have traveled with…and I’m too lazy to rework what I had already written.
The bigger the group, the harder it is to remember everybody. I’ve had to go back and insert one character that is soft-spoken. They’re there, but if I don’t mention them in the opening exposition then I forget where they are. Or I get lazy and have another character mention where they are.
Glad to hear that other authors do that too!