Lots to think about here. You can have collections as in people collecting things, like stamps, or china ornaments, or a certain type of glassware, or little plastic heads of famous footballers (Joe Mercer’s England Squad 1971, anybody?). So from that you can widen it out to What does this character collect? What kind of person are they? Why do they collect? Is it an unusual / gruesome / sickly / valuable collection? What does their collection mean to them? How did they start? What will they do to complete their collection?

This is a great prompt for a piece of fiction, because you can have your characters collecting literally anything.

You can have collections in the sense of raising money for something, such as a church collection or a charity collection.  What’s the collection for? Why? What’s the story behind it? What happens? I remember there was an episode of Dennis of Grunty Fen when there was a schism in the parish because some people wanted the church collection to be done using a bag, and some wanted it to be done on a plate…

You can also have people going to collect things, so this gives rise to questions such as: What is this person collecting? Where are they collecting it from? Is it you collecting it or is someone collecting something from you? (in which case you can use first person narrative).  If someone’s collecting from you, why do you want to get rid of it? What is it? Is it dangerous / stolen / valuable / worthless / precious to someone else? Is it ludicrously large or ludicrously small? Is the person handing it over it being forced to do so? Is the person collecting it being forced to do so? What happens when they collect it? How do they act? Are they alone? Is someone else watching them? What does each party feel about this transaction?

Or perhaps someone is collecting a person from somewhere. Where? Why? Who? When? What’s the situation? Are they strangers, or known to each other? How does those involved feel? Happy / sad / scared / excited / bored / worried? What happens? Do they turn up? Do they not? Are they on time? Does something happen to prevent their meeting? If so, what? Is it a dangerous situation? Does it involve law enforcement or criminals?

If there’s a character that you wrote about in your ‘breakfast’ piece, why not use them and have them involved in some sort of collection episode.