The Demon Wore Stilettos, my work-in-progress, begins with a courtroom scene–Lilith, the protagonist, is on trial for murdering her ex-husband and the love of her life, Samael. I knew where I wanted the scene to go, but I didn’t feel knowledgeable enough about courtroom behavior to really nail the scene.
So I went scouting for information about courtroom procedures and found this:
(You may not want to spend a half an hour watching this very nice lady deconstruct all the ways TV and movies misrepresent what happens in courtrooms, but by the time I finished it, I knew exactly what to do with my scene.)
The inner part of the story, the story of how Lilith came to push Samael into the Lake of Fire in the first place, revolves around a trade summit that takes place between Heaven and Hell. After thinking about neutral ground where Heaven and Hell might meet to hammer out an agreement, the United Nations seemed like an obvious choice. Unfortunately, despite numerous trips to the Big Apple, I’ve never visited the United Nations.
YouTube to the rescue: There a several tours of the buildings available. This is the one I found most useful:
Again, you may not want to spend a lot of time on this, but it was helpful in allowing me to get a sense of what my characters will see.
And yes, I know this if the fourth location I’ve chosen for this story. Writing is a process, people! Which reminds me: I’m going to reward myself for finishing my blog post by going back to YouTube and watching our professor, Jenny Crusie’s inteview at the Australian RRA.
Eight Ladies Writing 
YouTube has so much amazing stuff on it; things you think you’d never need to watch until . . . you need to watch it! So many amazing people willing to share their lives and what they know.
It’s great for walking you through things you don’t know how to do. When I bought my Subaru, the salesman set up my cell phone and when I got a new phone a couple of years later I couldn’t remember how he did it. YouTube to the rescue!
Written instructions are good, but the video of people actually performing the tasks are invaluable.
I watched the entire 28 minutes of the former prosecutor talking about the TV/film courtroom scenes. Many years ago I was friends with a federal criminal defense attorney, and I learned a lot about courtroom procedure in that time. I’m writing courtroom scenes in my WIP, and I rely heavily on what I learned from her. And of course there’s a lot I don’t know. But I like to verify what I do know, so this was a fun run-through of various scenarios. Thanks for that! Very helpful for my WIP. And good luck with yours. Google: it’s a wonderful thing, right?
It is! I particularly enjoyed/appreciated that post, so I’m glad it was useful for someone else!
So cool the videos helped you figure out exactly what you needed to write. Woot, woot!