Plot goes something like this: a young girl (I am SO going to call her Elvira, see right) is driven to join the circus as a tightrope walker and To Be A Master, particularly by performing in the Black Circus, which she knows nothing about. So she joins a troupe known to provide performers to said ominously enigmatic show, and through a mixture of good luck, talent, and hard work, she undergoes a melodramatic training course, all while being submitted to an onslaught of foreshadowing, and finally lands herself a role in the Black Circus.
But, this is me, I abuse my characters, and even my most simple-looking, straightforward ideas have a catch. And the catch to The Black Circus is, well, the nature of the Black Circus itself. The one enduring detail of this idea is that the Black Circus is basically just a regular circus without safety features. And, naturally, this means that the performers die sometimes. Or are horribly maimed. This constitutes a large portion of the foreshadowing mentioned above.
In the past, the nature of the Black Circus ran on Rule of Cool: a challenge that would freak the heroine out but which she could overcome. The dark, creepy element ('cause now I know what's actually dark an' creepy) was introduced when I considered why the Black Circus exists. First off, the performers feel more legitimate if, one time out of ten, they aren't trying to pretend that doing tricks for kids is Serious Business and they are actually risking their lives, instead of just pretending to. Also, people will pay a lot to watch this.
