Too smart?

Discussion in 'Character Development' started by maskedhero, Jul 3, 2013.

  1. TerraIncognita

    TerraIncognita Aggressively Nice Person Contributor

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    Thank you. :)

    Ah, I am the same way. I'm a very abstract thinker and excel in artistic pursuits but put anything math related in front of me and I'm completely stumped. High intelligence in any area is typically a double edged sword. :p

    I agree that this is something good for the op to consider. Just like other aspects of a character balancing negative and positive creates a more well rounded character. :)
     
  2. maskedhero

    maskedhero Active Member

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    I work with many different kinds of intelligent people, and intelligence in one aspect can be independent of intelligence in other aspects of living. Uncertainty over intellectual capability does seem to be common to many intelligent people though. Glad this thread has stayed so intellectual.
     
  3. Steve Day

    Steve Day Member

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    I always make sure that my 'smart' characters occasionally do something dumb. Because that is what makes them human,makes them real.
     
  4. Shinji26

    Shinji26 New Member

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    That film's amazing :)

    The smarter your MC is, the harder his challenges should be imo
     
  5. ArnaudB

    ArnaudB Member

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    Another thing used for very smart character: make them so smart that they can end up acting dumb, or being blindsided. This apply when dealing with other not as smart people, as Genius may not understand why something they see as oblivious is so difficult for other people. One example which struck my mind is that one:
    The Hero (as in The Chosen One) promoted as a General don't understand why his soldiers are unhappy when he sends some of them forward to look for traps that the enemy has placed (after suffering casualties from it). And there the Hero general for whom finding traps and avoiding them is an everyday thing, not even worth mentioning, don't get why his soldiers are scarred of traps.
    (Note: this worked here because no part of the army has been trained to deal with traps, so don't use that example for people living in trees.)

    This can be linked to arrogance by the way. In many cases the very smart people don't understand why other don't understand. Sometime it isn't arrogance, it can be incomprehension, but it can be felt as arrogance by less smart people. (In which case the smart person is screwed, since he'll either sound paternalist if he tries to reassure others, haughty if he doesn't say anything and a jerk if he brushes 'those ignorant commoners' difficulties.)

    Above point work with ignorance (as opposed to erudition). Example is children teaching their Grand-parents how to use computers, or TRYING to as their elders may be slow to understand. This here is a problem of erudition (lack of logic pattern of using computers) rather than smartness.
     
  6. Makeshift

    Makeshift Active Member

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    A few risks with writing super-smart characters:

    1) No challenge, like Superman. There's no tension and no suspense if nothing can provide sufficient challenge to the MC. Unless that would be the point of the story. There was an episode on the Simpsons where Homer had a crayon removed from his brain and became slightly smarter than the average person and ultimately ignorance was bliss.
    2) Asshole, like Patrick Jane on Mentalist. Super-intelligent, arrogant pricks with no weaknesses. In general, when characters are intelligent in something, they need to also lack skills in something else, like Sherlock Holmes, House, Adrian Monk, Sheldon Cooper. When I watched Mentalist, not a minute went by without me being annoyed by the perfect main character.
    3) Too smart for the writer and the audience. One example is Monk, where on some episodes it was clear that the writers didn't come up with sufficiently difficult cases for him. In reality any cop could have solved them. That's the irony here: if the reader/viewer can solve the puzzle, it's too easy. Still lot of the excitement is due to the audience attempting to figure it out. With criminal masterminds it's even harder: if their super-intelligence is their only superpower, their schemes would have to be revealed in extraordinary ways by extraordinary people. It's hard to write that convincingly, if their plots were so well hidden, that in reality the writer wouldn't have thought of that.
     
  7. Pludovick

    Pludovick Member

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    I'm often wary of making my characters seem too smart, but I don't think it's too much of an issue... unless you're writing in first-person. Third-person is normally fine, but first-person literature can become insufferable when the author insists on putting himself in the shoes of someone who's clearly far more intelligent than all the brain-dead schmucks around them. Might just be a personal bug-bear but unless you're doing that then I don't think having overly-smart characters should be too much of a problem.
     
  8. Dream of the Endless

    Dream of the Endless New Member

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    I've seen this discussed before, and it's an accompanying problem with writing super-smart characters. If a character is supposed to be exceptionally intelligent, it may be the case that the character is smarter than the author writing him or her. And in that case it can be difficult to write a character who is supposed to be smarter than you are when you're the author. How do you even go about doing so? How do you go about demonstrating the character's intelligence? How do you write scenarios that are sufficiently challenging?
     
  9. iolair

    iolair Active Member

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    Easy. Time. You're going to spend hundreds of hours planning and writing your story, which gives you lots of time to work out something complicated that your character can then appear to work out in seconds or minutes or a few hours. Plus, you can work backwards from the resolution, introducing subtle clues for your character to notice but that the reader will probably not if you write them in a suitable manner. The reader is not going to spend as long trying to work stuff out.

    For example, TV magicians regularly blow the mind of viewers. Why? Because they can spend, say, 50 or 100 hours working on making a trick baffling, but the average viewer will spend at most a minute or two trying to work it out. The magician appears like a miracle worker, whereas in fact they are just skilled and patient. Writing a genius is similar.
     
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  10. chicagoliz

    chicagoliz Contributor Contributor

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    This all really depends on what you want to convey about your characters. Most of my characters are smarter than I am, but then again, so are most of my friends. I'm just used to that milieu. Portraying your characters as smart shouldn't be something you set out to do. Readers should infer that they're smart based on the sorts of things they talk and ruminate about, the types of things that interest them, the types of words they use, and how they interact with other characters.

    Another type of example is that a character can come back with a good retort in an argument. You know how you're sometimes in an argument with someone and the next day you think of something ingenious that you should have said, but didn't occur to you at the time? Well, in a novel, your character can say that during the argument. You, as the author, can take days, or months, or even years to write a scene with an argument. You can be inspired with a perfect comeback at any time and go back and add it in. Fictional characters can synthesize information almost instantaneously -- a process that might take most of us a long time. So, in some respects, it can in some ways be easier to write a character smarter than you.

    This also depends a lot on the type of story you're writing. Some sort of detective or mystery novel is more dependent on the brains of the person solving a mystery than a romance might be (although smarts could be a big component of a romance, too.) As I said earlier in this thread, there's a difference between a character using his knowledge to further the story or to ponder ideas and him using it gratuitously just to show how much he knows or how smart he is. I'm not really sure what the point would be of the latter, unless you were using it to portray the character as a jackass instead of showing his intelligence. This plays a little into the idea of showing versus telling. Let us infer that the character is smart, rather than hitting us over the head with it. That goes for many traits, other than intelligence.
     
  11. CrimsonReaper

    CrimsonReaper Active Member

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    One of my favorite professors in college had a plaque above his desk that read:

    "The world is not so small that it will fit in one man's hands or head." Or something to that effect.

    It was there to remind him that no matter how intelligent one person is, there is always someone smarter or more skilled in a specific discipline. So if you are not humble, at least be smart enough not to be an arrogant prick that alienates everyone. In real life the truly smart people know they don't know everything and never will. That is why scientists and the police often work in teams. Watson actually came in handy in several stories, as he saw things differently thant Holmes.

    And Sherlocke Holmes was rarely a viewpoint character because he often solved the crime long before the big reveal at the end and needed to trap the culprit or verify his findings. Telling the stories from Watson's view actually let the reader not know the truth until Holmes explained it. They were not fair play mysteries (where the reader could figure out the truth on their own), but at least left you wondering and waiting for that reveal. Holmes was certainly an interesting figure and even relatable in some ways, but placing him as the viewpoint character would have meant lying to the reader unless Conan Doyle wanted to flat out say who committed the murder early in the story and then just go about proving it. That was not the story he wanted to tell.
     
  12. agentkirb

    agentkirb New Member

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    I'm not sure if I agree with a general statement of "don't make characters too smart". In the case of Sherlock Holmes... that was the entire reason the character and series was good. If you actually read Sherlock Holmes (which I gave it a go being an aspiring mystery writer), the author's style doesn't really remind you of Hemmingway or any other famous author's of that time. And they story doesn't bring to light a some kind of challenge to societies beliefs (To Kill a Mockingbird) or warning of a potential future (1984). It's specifically the character and the way the character interacts with the plot elements. The way he solves the mysteries. I'm sure at the time there was nothing like that. Nowaday's it's the norm of course.

    But there is something to be said about not having the story narrated through a "too smart" person. I don't think Sherlock would've worked if it was told 1st person via Sherlock. Because his character wouldn't have been believable if you were constantly in his mind. But again... move the point of view away from said character and it works perfectly.

    Like all stories though... the character choice has to make sense for the story. If the story calls for a really smart person, then you can make it work.
     
  13. Rimuel

    Rimuel New Member

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    I wonder....perhaps in the azure blue sky.
    Based on the majority of the responses, the answer is "no, but..."


    Basically, the characters should have some traits that we would expect in a real person. Flawlessness exists at the other end of our spectrum of expectations, which disrupts our suspension of disbelief. A character that is believeable can be related to; perhaps it would be easier to understand such a person's actions and motivations than a perfect being.

    Avid book readers derive enjoyment from meaning, so a rich comprehension of the characters in a story would bring about a delightful experience.



    Readers need to understand what is going on in order to appreciate the story.




    Right, for some people (many?), some degree of fantasy is required in order to make the story entertaining. However, flawlessness is probably too much fantasy for most people.

    Personally I am very fantasy-oriented, so I can stand reading about characters that are insanely unreal.



    Scio me nihil scire.
     

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