Well, a topic like that could include dozens of things, but a couple come to mind right away. When I was writing Living Next Door to Heaven 1, I had to come up with a sequence of television shows in which Brian has a different recipe for demonstration with one of his girlfriends for each show. That continued into LNDtH2, but was further complicated by needing comedy monologues that would be given by a 22-23-year-old woman (Elaine) and actually sound funny. What an oddball task.
Of course in Full Frame, I've had to sink into more than I ever thought I wanted to know about photography, but that's the main theme of the story, really. In book three of the "Photo Finish Trilogy," Exposure, I had to return to developing a standup comedy routine for one of the female characters. If it's any indication of whether or not I succeeded, my ex-wife read them and asked why I wasn't writing for comedians because they were great. Whoopee!
Writing book four of the trilogy--which might actually turn out to be books four and five at the rate I'm churning out words--I've had a whole new challenge. I've had to storyboard an entire Hollywood movie plot! And, I think it hasn't turned out too badly for a 1971 murder mystery movie. I can well imagine that we'd be watching it as a classic today if it had been made then. It hurts my head to think of that as fifty years ago!
The movie is germane to the plot of the story and had to have certain elements that would be brought up as evidence of Nate's culpability in a political campaign started by his nemesis, who keeps rearing his ugly head throughout the series. Maybe I didn't actually need the entire storyboard, but it drove me crazy that I needed these particular plot elements but didn't actually know how the story all held together. Now I know it. In fact, I might develop the movie script into another complete story once I have the "Photo Finish Trilogy" complete.
By the way, three books of the trilogy are complete and through the last round of edits, but waiting for me to finish a final review before I'm ready to release book two, Shutter Speed, the first of February. I've written nearly two-thirds of book four, F/Stop, which might be divided into two books because I just can't seem to stop writing. And I know there is another book that follows this one, so perhaps I'll have...
Do we call a series of six a "sexology?"
That seems appropriate.