Where do ideas come from?
Certainly they can be built inside the human mind, but at least in my experience, they often come from elsewhere. The ether, if you will. Often when thinking of a character name, or a detail I just make a space in my head and let the idea pop in. I have total faith in these moments, even though I couldn’t explain the rationale if I had a gun to my head.
Admittedly, this may just be a justification for an unwillingness to slog. An idea presents itself, complete and shiny — why go through all the work of outlines and planning and research, just tune in the radio station and let it blare.
But, I am intrigued with the physical precense of ideas — that they could have an origin…and a purpose. With the past few stories I’ve been working on, I’m rolling around the concept of an Evil Idea. A malevolent entity that travels in the heads of mortals, infecting them like a virus. As weird as that piece was, I guess ‘The Option’ is a good enough name for my Big Bad as any.
This is a bit of a re-tread of Inception’s philosophical themes, the power of an idea — the immortality of an idea. Same goes for the V for Vendetta memes flooding the internet yesterday, you can’t kill an idea. People live and die for ideas, the course of entire civilizations turn on one or two great ideas.
That sounds like a great villain to me.
Is this too esoteric to support some fiction? Just too weird? Thoughts? Can’t you see that this question is in bold?!?!?
spell-sword.com 
You know, some folks like to stop, sit, and chat with ya, and, well, most folk don’t. 🙂
I think, all epic stories embody “big bad” villains and ideas. It is nice to hang the ideas onto a person in a story, just because most readers like to read about people (or creatures that sound and act human) and how they deal with whatever the writer throws at them. I know for myself, ideas are great and I can get into them fairly easily, but I bore quickly unless there’s someone in the story for me to care about.
So, yes, I think the idea of evil can be made interesting, but there’s got to be a person in the story that we can embody as they soar and fall.
I think you’re right. About both topics.
The only book I can think of that got away with the non-physical villain was LOTR, with Sauron. I’d definitely need some sort of corporeal manifestation of The Option, or at least a prominent acolyte or henchman.
But it’s not the idea OF evil, it’s an idea that IS evil. Totally different. 😛
Oh, like the idea of killing babies is evil? I’m not sure what you mean. Like freedom is evil?
I told you it was a weird concept. Think more like if an idea was a discrete identity, if an idea had a will and identity of it’s own. Its appearance in human minds is just the way it interfaces with our reality.
Ooooohh, that is interesting. Sort of like an alien from a different dimension. Cool. Yeah I think you could to something really awesome with that. Not sure how it would play out, but I am curious to see where you take it.