The Evil Plan
It is difficult to come up with a decent evil plan (by which I mean, a decent evil plan for the antagonist of a given story to carry out). The evil plan must be inherently horrific enough that the audience really fears its fruition, but not be ridiculous. This, essentially, is the Bond villain problem.
Two things I discovered while researching evil plans on Google:
1) The "So You've Decided to be Evil" evil plan generator is a good idea, but it would be a lot funnier with a better back end. Web toys like this can be entertaining when they transform your input in a clever way. This widget just repeats it back to you.
2) From the Put Down That Bag of Advanced Punctuation Before You Hurt Someone Department: The Ultimate James Bond Page's directory of Bond villains reveals that
Dr. No was [a] cold-calculating Doctor with a plan to dominate the world.You read it there first; Dr. No spends his time determining the temperatures of various chilly regions.
Comments
I love stuff like that.
There's a great book called "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" about just this topic with the wonderful title in reference to a panda's hungry, gun-totting tendencies.
Or something like that... :)
I haven't read the book yet but I've heard very good things about it.
Wow. The writing on that page is really... distinctive.
As I read further, I started to feel bad for mocking the guy. But this, regarding Max Zorin (A View to a Kill), slayed me:
"Zorin also is interested in house races and house steroids."
Perhaps the latter would stop my gutters from leaking.
Y'know, I really think you might be going at this whole "Evil Plan" thing from the wrong direction.
I mean, if you can google up your evil plan, how effective is that going to be, really? The hero could google up a solution just as easily.
No, I think originality and secrecy are the key. Oh, and loyal (yet disposable) henchmen, of course. And a lair in a dormant volcano. Or perhaps an undersea base.
Well, you get the idea.
One of the toughest things about evil is that evil people rarely believe they are evil. Most often, it is that they are trying to achieve what they perceive to be desirable ends and choose means that are not palatable to the rest of us. They have probably tried to achieve the same ends through other means and been thwarted and, thus, turn to these new, bizarre means. If they have success with them, they may fall into them like habit.
So one might, for example, be trying to cure his mother's cancer and, having seen chemo and radiation fail tries first alternative herbs therapies, then special diets, then the diets call for live animals. Soon he's carving up small children to feed to mummy and keep her alive. Next he tries a bit himself to see if it'll keep him healthy. Next thing you know, he's leading a blood cult and intent on immortality. It's a slippery slope.