(I used to work a ballet-school production of Nutcracker every winter. Through preshow and intermission pairs of mice -- that is, younger ballerinas of the company -- would walk the aisles crying out "Raffle tickets!")
So I was logging some chapter planning notes in the Scappple file -- that's the mind-mapper software I use to make outlines in.
(This set is less organized than the last. I didn't manage to come up with a color-and-border scheme to properly identify the various elements I am trying to track.)
I wanted to put down place-marks for a few things I thought I might be adding. A scene in one of the passages/galleria, for instance. And a scene at Parc des Buttes-Chaumont.
I'd just seen a short BBC piece on Paris -- a guided tour by an actual native Parisian, accent and all -- and she mentioned the park in passing. And something sounded familiar about it and I looked it up and, yes; that was the same place I'd run into while reading about the extensive quarrying around Paris (work that goes back to Roman times), out of which comes among other things the current-day Catacombs.
I opened a Wikipedia article to check the spelling (which I don't usually bother with in my notes) and noticed they have a guingette there. Which the character Amelia would really enjoy. Which might make an even more interesting scene if I could get Girard, one of the love triangle with Amelia, out there. But how? But of course; have the whole steampunk cabaret come out there for a photo shoot. Which would also be the excuse to get Penny her contractual cosplay episode for the book.
Will I do the scene this way? Maybe not. Maybe it doesn't advance the plot in the way I need it advanced. Maybe it clashes with the tone I'm after in the place in the book where it would have to fall. But it is a nice example of the snowball method in the way a few tiny bits will sort of grow and gather more into themselves like a snowball rolling down a hill.
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