Once you have a significant list of wisps, you need to work on turning them into story ideas.  This is still not a full plot.  It is, instead, perhaps a one-sentence description of what the story is about.

Basically, a story needs a captivating but flawed protagonist who is thrust into having an objective or driving force but who faces an obstacle series of barriers to that goal.  That is not where we are at the moment, though. 

First see if any wisps on your list connect in some way to others.  Move them around or label them to reflect this. 

Review the list and select the wisps that seem most promising.  There are several approaches for developing these.  You may well use a combination of them.

There are two “brainstorming” approaches here, and you may find one is better sometimes and the other is better at other times.  Select one of the promising wisps and start listing your thoughts, questions and doubts about it.  Do not self-censor or edit.  Put it all down.  It doesn’t matter if it’s silly, unrealistic, irrelevant or anything else.  You aren’t committing to anything, you are setting your mind free to work.  Some items may lead to their own questions or ideas and that’s fine.  Let yourself go.

One approach is to do this on a computer.  The other, which is often helpful, is to start with an unlined piece of blank paper, write the wisp at the center and start adding thoughts, questions and concerns around it.   The physical process of taking a pen to a sheet of paper often helps.  You can connect words and phrases by arrows, circle items, cross them out, add comments, question why the hell you are doing this (you can answer yourself, too), etc.  If playing music in the background helps, do it.  If taking a walk or shower to think helps, do it. 

Another approach is directed fantasies.  This tends to work better with individual scenes (that’s later in the process) but it can work with wisps as well.  Take the wisp, imagine a situation resulting from it – which can be anywhere on the timeline of the story – and fantasize about how it might unfold.  You can let your fantasies about this roll on their own at times and nudge them with specific ideas at others.  You won’t be writing while fantasizing, although you will take breaks from it and write down your ideas then.

A third approach is to put your wisp into an Internet search, perhaps add some tweaking to it, and see what comes up.  You may find stories that send you on the way to your plot.  (Separately, you can try AI, although I generally have not found it helpful; too much of your judgment appropriately goes into your selection of story ideas and AI is not so great a exercising judgment.)

This process can sometimes be done all at once, but it may also take multiple sessions.  Sometimes our unconscious needs time to process matters. 

Another approach that may help is, after you get into bed, think about the issues you have with the wisp and try to fall asleep thinking about them.  You may find you develop solutions within the next day or so.

As noted before, sometimes you need to combine wisps.  Watch for this.  It can work at any step of the process.

If you are having problems, write exactly what the problem is.  This can force you to clarify your doubts and point you to possible solutions.

A lot of authors are leery of discussing their work with others.  Still, if it works for you, talk to someone you trust about your ideas.  Talking often induces us to frame our thoughts better and highlight flaws.   Of course, you may not want to share your ideas, at least at this stage.  You can always talk out loud to yourself or write out a conversation you might have about your ideas. 

The goal here is to develop one or more wisps into story ideas.  This does not mean that you necessarily know the beginning or the end or the turning points.  What it means is that you feel you have a viable or potentially viable idea for a story.