oooo.......that list names a number of my evil difficulties as well. <insert gremlin that is scared stiff here>.
for coming up with a basic story idea, that's pretty easy for me. all of my hobbies and habits (drawing, embroidery, etc), one way or another, feed my one major addiction---writing. the embroidery is something for my fingers to do that doesn't require much assistance from the brain, so my brain can go off and play with its mental blocks.
Plots, though..... I've always found plots to be very difficult. They are that magical thing that happens to OTHER writers, never me. usually it's a situation where one scene comes to me crystal clear, and I'm forced to construct a story around them (in and around cast members stealing scripts and monkeying with them. I won't name names *cough*clarkandbruce*cough*).
villains......oi. impossible. can't give you any help there. i SUK at villains. what I usually end up doing is a situation becomes the villain, for the most part. To give an example, a volcano going off and word gets to the daily planet. there's no person who's the bad guy----it's plate techtonics at action, there. to give another off-genre example, I'm working on a monster long fic where bruce wayne is forced to pull off the mask, and several months later, someone manages to pick him off. who did this? a kid who was part of a gang that had been taken apart. who took it apart? batman, helping a cop who was undercover in the gang. so the kid (ok, he's more like 22, 23, or 24 yrs old) is furious that Batman took away his "family". the drug money was his sole income, so of course he's angry. then he finds out who the man behind the mask is (along with the rest of the world), and it happens to be someone exceedingly wealthy. heaps upon heaps of fury there. solution? kill him. I echo pam's thoughts---hard though it is, you gotta get inside the baddie's head. take away your compassionate, understanding, wise heart and put yourself in your baddie's situation. what would you do, if you wanted something and didn't care about stepping on people to do it? better yet, switch your good guy to the position of your bad guy, and say, "hm... what would Superman do if he were on the baddie's side? he'd freeze them (the good guys) to the ground with his breath! um... my baddie can't do that. hmmmm.... I know! Liquid nitrogen! got a tank right here!"
A versus B plot..... ok, i'll use the story I mentioned above. you get glimpses of this kid through the story, and although he ends up being a major player in that he's the one who kills BW (pretty much shoots him in broad daylight, reagan-style), you actually don't spend a lot of time with him. so is this really the A plot? or is the A plot following BW around in the weeks following his revelation and watching his personality slowly rot from BW over to Batman, snarling at people at his business, punching a wall, not giving a rip if good people walk off the job because they can't deal with this monster anymore, and making overly paranoid plans to fend off takeovers that, realistically speaking, probably won't happen? tough to tell. my advice----don't be too worried about precisely constructing A and B plots. if they happen, fine. they might even intertwine, and merge at the end! or maybe the plot started out merged and then split partway through into an A and B. (and then, just for fun, come together in a big party at the end!).
me and my long posts.... if this board collapses one day, it will be from the weight of my fingers.....
