The article describes the methodology and summarizes briefly the author's experience of studying and describing the process of development of Russian phraseology in the second half of the XX and the beginning of the XXI century, which are based on the method of continuous sampling of contexts in which the Key words of phraseological innovations are used. The author also describes the very method of selecting phraseology in the process of compiling a dictionary of phraseological innovations, published under the title "Dictionary of modern Russian detective stories idioms and idiomatic expressions" (St. Petersburg, 2015-2016).