Processes associated with the initiation, development, and cessation of lightning discharges encompass a wide range of scales and physics, from the ion and molecular scale to hundreds of kilometers in scale, moving charge while generating reactive chemical species that drive atmospheric chemistry. This session invites abstracts, for oral, poster, or eLightning format on observational, modeling, simulation, and theoretical efforts to understand lightning at the scale of individual discharges, their development, and factors affecting their detectability within the electrostatic background of a thunderstorm.