In the 19th century, the French had a word for a person who wandered the city with no destination and no hurry: the flâneur. To be a flâneur was to be a “botanist of the sidewalk.” You weren’t walking for exercise, and you weren’t walking to get to a meeting. You were walking to observe. Today, we have “Step Trackers.” We have “Shortest Route” algorithms. We have transformed the simple act of walking into a data-driven efficiency trial. But an editor knows that if you only ever take the shortest path to a conclusion, you miss all the best subplots. 1. The “Peripheral” Discovery The best stories are rarely found…