The theory behind my response to Chuck Wendig’s terribleminds blog challenge posted 5 October 2012

This week’s terribleminds flash fiction challenge was enticing. We were given five titles, and the option of mixing the words from those titles to make a sixth title to write to using only the words existing in the titles on offer. I decided I liked the randomised method of selection found in previous flash fiction challenges and rolled a d6. The result was a ‘4’ and the title I was given was ‘Bright Stars Gone to Black’.

For the last four days, I haven’t really been able to latch onto an idea, so I’ve worked on some administration and let my subconscious work on it. Today, while waiting for an appointment, I worked through some ideas and decided the following:

• I didn’t want to go with the literal meaning of real stars turning black. I figured it would be too big a story to deal with in 1,000 words and was also too obvious a path to take. Scratch the obvious sci-fi or horror angle.
• The next thing I decided was not to go with famous people (literal ‘stars’) going from being ‘good’ to being ‘evil’. Again I just felt it was too obvious an angle to take.

Basically, I knew what I didn’t want for the main elements of the title, ‘stars’ and ‘black’:

• I didn’t want ‘black’ to have a racial meaning.
• I didn’t want ‘black’ to equate to death.
• I didn’t want ‘black’ to mean ‘bad’.
• I didn’t want ‘stars’ to be balls of gas shining down on us… ’cos those are really suns.
• I didn’t want ‘stars’ to be famous people.

So, what did I want?

Well, I wanted black to mean something else, like maybe dark, and I wanted an alternative meaning, so how about the phrase ‘gone dark’. It was a little more subtle, although probably not by much, and it lent itself well to the story.

Next thing that popped into my head was the opening sentence: “They came for Corcoran in the night.”

And the story grew from there.

It’s amazing what you can achieve in a waiting room, where people leave you alone and don’t keep clawing their way into your head space.

Again, my thanks to Mr. Wendig, for providing so much fun.