Brainstorming is one of my favorite things to do.  It’s basically just talking about ‘what if’ and discovering what could occur within a theoretical situation.  I was chatting with friends the other night and got into a question of how generations might pass on knowledge if each generation was descrete, meaning complete separate.  There were a bunch of ideas that came from that.  A generation that grew up and instinctively knew some of the previous generation’s knowledge, but had to rediscover the more advanced forms.  Another was the young ate the parents, assimilated their knowledge and then extended their technology and got ready for the next generation.  A final version that occurred to me after all the brainstorming was done was, what if the generation didn’t die, but merely shed its previous existence, much like an insect shedding its exoskeleton, or more radically, a butterfly pupating and its whole body reorganizing.  As you can guess, lol, the butterfly idea fit best.  The thought that the generation had to reorganize its body to continue forward was intriguing and gave a lot of things to consider beyond simply how the generations reproduced.  That’s more world building and I’m not trying to chat about it here.

What I’m trying to say is brainstorming with other writers, friends, or simply chatting online can open a whole universe of ideas for stories.  It’s something I’ve missed doing for months, and I think getting the chance to has started to rekindle my writing itch.