How do you create a smart character when you yourself are not smart

Okay, Akuma, I have a really really difficult time believing you're not smart. You're eighteen years old. You're immensely talented. So...shut up, basically.

I'd say it's all in the dialogue. If you have a character that can speak well and sound sophisticated (hmmm, kind of like you did up there....) then I think you'll have a character that's believably smart. The only problem, I think, is the fine line between a character who comes across as intelligent and one who comes across as condescending.

I think this is an area where people often get some help from experts in whatever area their character is supposed to have a talent for. That may help more with the specifics of what they're talking about/doing than with the mannerisms, but then, everyone has different mannerisms regardless of how smart they are in whatever field, so I think that kind of thing you can probably use your imagination with.

John Wayne was once asked what made him a good actor and he replied that he didn't act, he reacted to what was going on around him. Same with smart, dumb, or anywhere in between charactors.

R-E-S-E-A-R-C-H
Frequently what defines a smart character is how quickly they can figure things out, and/or their vast knowledge of things relevant to the story. Luckily for us writers, we can take all the time we need to figure things out without having anyone ever know, and we can stop and research individual situations that arise in the book. Then, once we've gotten our own facts straight, we can make the character look really smart (since she didn't just spend five hours looking up the information).

The hardest research I've ever done for writing was for my completed MS, which features a sailing ship captain as the MC. I had never even been on a modern boat, much less a tall ship, and literally didn't know what a 'crows nest' was when I started writing. I ended up having to drive to Baltimore and pay to sail on a real tall ship before I could finally put all the book diagrams and terms into a working context. After hundreds of hours (and hundreds of dollars), I finally know enough to write the details realistically.

My new MS stars a cop and a computer hacker. I'll need to do some research on guns and computers, but at least those are both things I have some familiarity with, and have used in real life. Compared to those $#@% ships, it'll be a piece of cake.

Basically what I'm saying is that your character can't know anything you don't know, so you have to learn what they will need to know. Your character can be smarter than you, but not more knowledgeable.

I've actually never seen a real trend in mannerisms or speech or even ways of thinking with intelligent people. There are so many different ways to be smart, you really can't generalize.

Shady Lane said:

I'd say it's all in the dialogue. If you have a character that can speak well and sound sophisticated (hmmm, kind of like you did up there....) then I think you'll have a character that's believably smart. The only problem, I think, is the fine line between a character who comes across as intelligent and one who comes across as condescending.

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Not all intelligent people are well-spoken. You may have a brilliant mathematician with relatively poor verbal skills. Also, some smart people purposefully misuse words to make themselves sound dumber than they are.

How someone talks frequently reflects their education and economic level more than their problem-solving skills and raw intelligence.

Character X is so cool because she got into Harvard with not challenge.

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I was thinking intellectual/educational.

Yeah, I'd say it's more the ability to speak well. My Dad is very smart (and very well educated) but he talks like an idiot when he's being casual. But he can completely, uh, "smart it up" when necessary.

Akuma, go interview people who are like the character you want to create. Make up some reason, a career guide for teens or something.

Then use your writer talents (which I know you have) to catch the way they speak(the jargon can be looked up later on the internet) the way they move, they way they live, the way their office/workspace/lab looks.

Take notes, they'll expect that, they just won't know what you're noting.

I've done this with police and political figures. They all are suckers for an interview. Get up close and personal, meet them. Study them.

Best of luck.

You ever watch Gilmore Girls? The transcripts are available on http://www.twiztv.com/scripts/gilmoregirls/ Worth a read if you like smart dialogue.

LORELAI: Oh, hi. You really like my table, don't you?

JOEY: I was just, uh. . .

LORELAI: Getting to know my daughter.

JOEY: Your. . .

RORY: Are you my new daddy?

JOEY: Wow. You do not look old enough to have a daughter. No, I mean it. And you do not look like a daughter.

LORELAI: That's possibly very sweet of you. Thanks.

JOEY: So. . .daughter. You know, I am traveling with a friend.

LORELAI: She's sixteen.

JOEY: Bye.

LORELAI: Drive safe.

-Derek

It all comes down to reseach. If your character is a cop, there are books on cop code works and slang, to help flesh out your character (for example, the things they say over the radio in a car, like 10-4) there are even books on "pirate" langauge, I saw one on the writers.digest website and am considering purchasing it. If your caracter is a detective, there are books on crime scene investigations, posions, and all sorts of things to make the character realistic. If your character is a hacker or computer technician, I am sure there would be some websites on the internet that would explain some of the details of what is involved. Also, have you considered interviewing people? When Janet Evanovich began researching her Stephanie Plum character, she interviewed cops and bounty hunters and even went for rides around in cop cars.

Do you think they'd let me off for my next speeding ticket, if I ride around with them and ask them lots of questions about guns?

JK

Akuma, I agree w/ Shady that you sound smart enough to pull off a smart character.

And I agree w/ the postings that say it's all in the research.

If you want intellectual (or pseudo-intellectual) speech, hang out in college lecture halls, if there's a college near you. Just pretend to be a student and slip in the door, and maybe ask someone if the class is full, because you might put a paying student out of a seat.

As for smart, have the character know things about the other characters that they think they're hiding. I don't mean make her omniscient, but make her see things that other people miss, like Sherlock Holmes.

Okay, this my not seem it but it actually is a serious answer. It was triggered by the last word of the previous post.

Go get yourself a few Fantastic Four comic books and read them. Reed Richards (Mr. Fantastic) is probably one of the smartest two or three people on Earth. You can be pretty certain the writers writing him over the decades, while talented were not super brilliant scientists. They pulled it off with a bit of techno babble, one or two facts, hand waving and other characters going, "gee whiz you are so smart..." Star Trek also used the same technique.

Even Gilmore Girls would do it from time to time with Rory, she'd blurt on some fact or piece of trivia that most young teens (except for posters on this board of course) wouldn't be aware of, such as "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." Other characters were always reinforcing how smart (and pretty) she was. (Other favorite Rory oneliners: "Well I hear Squeaky Fromme is up for parole soon. You should keep a good thought." "Wow. Biblical insults. This is an advanced school. "

How do I write about prostitutes if I'm not one? How do I write about autistic kids if I'm not one? How do I...

Research, observation, interviews...

You may be a writer, and you may have a vivid imagination, but it doesn't mean you have to make everything up from thin air.

Atlantis said:

there are even books on "pirate" langauge,

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Shiver me timbers! I will order one smartly. Arrrr!

Have the other characters react to him as if he were smart.

maestrowork said:

How do I write about prostitutes if I'm not one?

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So...what exactly were you charging those ladies for....???



Atlantis: I think I saw the Pirate book you were talking about. Was it: The Pirate Primer: Mastering the Language of Swashbucklers & Rogues?

As for officer ride-alongs...just go to your local police department and explain what you're writing and ask if they allow ride-alongs. I used to work for a police department and on occasion they would allow them. Not all the lingo is simply 10-code.

Good luck with your research.

You got two separate considerations here.

--- One is making a character knowledgeable.
You do your research on nuclear physics or fly fishing or Greek drama or whatever it is he's good at and your character now knows about it.

This is not terribly hard.
But I think this is not what you're striving to do.


--- The other is making him smart.
Deep intelligence is going to be expressed by word, thoughts and actions.

Words -- Your intelligent man will speak carefully. He will have a large vocabulary and use words with precision. Read Nero Wolfe for this one.

Actions -- As other folks said above, you see his brilliance in the way other folks react to him.
This character is the one other folks follow. When a question comes up, everybody turns to him. When he gives his opinion, nobody else has more to say. Look at the character 'Giles' in Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Thoughts -- The intelligent man is the one who sees aspects to a situation that no one else sees.

You will have some central problem in the story. Does it have a philosophical aspect? A political aspect? Historical? Social?

The intelligent man is going to look at the buried treasure map and go beyond the question of 'how do we find it?" or 'how did it get buried there?' He asks larger questions -- 'Why do we need this much money?' 'Is the money bloody with the history of death that surrounds it?' "Is there somebody else who has an ethical right to this money?"

It's not just that the intelligent man knows more than everyone else, he sees connections and aspects other folks don't.

The way to find these connections and discursions and enrichments (so you can put them into his mouth,) is to consider the basic aspects of your story thinkthinkthinkthink and then decide what would be wise and discerning to say about them.

You have lots of time, fortunately.

It depends on the kind of "smart" character you're creating. There are several "kinds" of intelligence, and they are all expressed in various ways.

A large vocabulary will always indicate a well-read character, but there are other kinds of intelligence. Remembering facts that occurred on the periphery and most people wouldn't. The mythos surrounding Tesla and his inventions. The atomic weight of Selenium. The wind-velocity of a laden African Swallow.

An easy way to achieve the illusion of book smarts is an allusion to literature. It doesn't matter if your reader gets it, the more your character makes witty jokes about literature, or idle connections, the smarter your character will seem.

This is a little flat, but you might try answering this test as if your character were answering it. Not very useful on it's own, but once you figure out what kind of intelligence you'd like her to have, a few quick internet searches should help you get a stronger feel for how to portray that to the reader.

http://www.quizilla.com/users/shrimpysteph/quizzes/7 Types of Intelligence - Which is yours?/

Stupid people write about smart characters all the time. Especially in the cinema.

One way is to show somebody beating the World's Greatest Genius in a chess game. Hijole, are they ever SMART.

Or somebody says something and they immediately know some obscure fact because they just looked it up.

But those smart characters keep saying and doing stupid things.

One thing that tends to irritate me a bit is the fact that usually people seem to confuse intelligence with education and good memory. Of course well educated people usually are above average in intelligence, but if you are talking about intelligence in the sense of having a high IQ that basically means a person who can see patterns better than most, even if he is somebody who never learned how to read.

So if you want to show somebody is intelligent, write scenes where she connects the dots while others are still straching their heads. It has a lot to do with speed, somebody who reaches the conclusion, even if it is a fairly obvious conclusion once it's been pointed out, way ahead of other people, does sound smart. If the person can also express his thoughs well even better. Even if that isn't necessarily true in real life, people in Mensa can sound every bit as dumb as your average man or woman of the street, even if they can finish a block test in a record time. And high IQ individuals don't necessarily have better than average memory, but for a fictionary smart character that would probably be a good trait.

anodyne said:

It depends on the kind of "smart" character you're creating. There are several "kinds" of intelligence, and they are all expressed in various ways.
...
This is a little flat, but you might try answering this test as if your character were answering it. Not very useful on it's own, but once you figure out what kind of intelligence you'd like her to have, a few quick internet searches should help you get a stronger feel for how to portray that to the reader.

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I believe it's more useful to think of an individual as having varying strengths in each of the seven types rather than identifying them as being only one. For example, I would describe myself as high on Linguistic and Logical-Mathematical, medium-high on Spatial and Intrapersonal, somewhat low on Interpersonal and Musical, and extremely low on Bodily-Kinesthetic.

However, I strongly agree with the advice to look at the types of intelligence and figure out what you mean by "smart" for this particular character. Here and here are some descriptions.

When I think 'smart,' I automatically think deduction skills. A sharp eye to things that most people skim over, noticing small changes, etc...

If they're supposed to be a genius in a particular area, well, research that area.

Another way to fake smart is to make them really dumb in everything else. This is the way that most people do it in movies, as in completely socially inept, unable to dress themselves, but of course they're brilliant at math. Of course, this makes the character seem like a Aspie, but if that's the risk you're willing to take, go ahead, be my guest.

One other thing is 'quirks.' Other people will think they're 'quirky,' while really they've just found something that works for them when everyone else hasn't tried it that way yet. XP If that makes any sense.

I'm totally sure you're a smart person, Akuma, but I would recommend making Character X intelligent in a way you are. As in, have her be a great writer, and not a xyz (whatever-- math genius, etc.) It'll just be more convincing. Write what you know and all that.

Well, when I wrote a superintelligent character, I basically cheated.

Actually, I cheated in several different ways. First, this character was not my viewpoint character, so I didn't have to show how she reached her conclusions. If there wasn't time to explain, she would just react based on clues that no-one else had picked up.

Second, I made her eccentric. If you work with gifted students, you start to notice that some of them are a little weird. Gifted ed is classified under special ed in my state, mostly because we can get money out of it, but partly because gifted kids do tend to run into trouble in the schools. Some are screaming perfectionists, some are absent-minded, dreamy types, and some are easily bored. Some, heaven help us, are all of the above. I reasoned that the sort of person I was writing about, a sort of prototype superhuman, would have Issues both from the buggy process she went through and from coping with a world that usually didn't connect the dots in the same order she did.

What that added up to, of course, was another reason to not explain her reasoning when I didn't feel like it.

(My recommendation for an expertly done eccentric genius, by the way? The Doctor, of Doctor Who. On the SciFi channel come Friday, if you get cable.)

Third, and most conventional, I gave her an impressive vocabulary. Other people have already pointed out that vocabulary is more about education than intelligence, and that's true---but the people who we see as true geniuses are often both educated and intelligent.

Other posters have already pointed this out, but the author has a lot more time than the characters do. A clever solution that takes you eight hours to mull over might occur to your character in seconds. And you can research something online that they might have to work out from scratch. And, last but not least, you can just make stuff up.

Izunya

Assuming you really aren't smart and that you admire and look up to smart people then look at your perceptions. Do you credit people with smarts because you can't follow what they say? Do you admire how the express themselves. Are you impressed with technical or arcane speach? People who claim to be smart are rarely trusted to make that judgement, it is a status imposed from below. So by not being smart you are uniquely qualified to describe the quality. Perhaps your preceptions don't measure up, i.e. what you think is smart really isn't. You can use this to help define the character who renders the judgement. Can you follow this? Yes? Then grasshopper is progressing.