Snippet from our holiday in Brittany:
Me: “So, I want this story to be about child refugees and their experience. It kind of needs something else to be SF, though…”
The H: “Space stations? Spaceships? AIs? Nanomachines?”
Me: “Ooh. I like nanomachines. Sold, now I have to think of a plot to go with those. Mmm…”

Yup, this is how my SF gets plotted, which kind of explains a lot of things…
(I usually get the setting from combining one societal thing with one science/SF thing; however, at this stage I’ll throw in a random element to provide the actual plot that goes with the setting. Lately, it’s been a fairytale motif, go figure)