/lit/ - Literature

>>19152081
>Is there a way to write a character who's cleverer than you?

Consider the character of Sherlock Holmes.

How does Conan Doyle make the reader understand that Holmes is some kind of genius?

He shows us, through Holmes' external behavior.

Holmes' genius is famously established in the opening scene of The Hound of the Baskervilles, where he and Watson examine a walking stick inadvertently left by a visitor, who came while Holmes was out.

It is a marvelous scene, in which Holmes examines the seemingly random and meaningless scuff marks and bits of dirt on the stick, and draws astonishing inferences from them as to the identity of the visitor.

External behavior. Moreover, behavior that was based on the real life behavior of a brilliant man Conan Doyle encountered in his youth -- one of his professors at medical school. That professor routinely astonished his students by his ability to make to make accurate deductive inferences from seemingly meaningless pieces of evidence. He was the prototype of Sherlock Holmes.

Note that Conan Doyle didn't have to be as smart as his former teacher, or Holmes, to write the walking stick scene -- but he did have to bring to it the skills of a good writer, which are no small thing. It takes considerable intelligence, and a real gift for storytelling to create a scene as memorable as the one that opens The Hound of the Baskervilles. But there is a bag of tricks less gifted writers use, which is on display in all the books and stories you read, and movies and TV shows you watch. How does The Sopranos show us that Tony Soprano is smart, without saying it? How does The Wire show that McNulty is not merely a drunken cop, but a very savvy investigator? How does Breaking Bad show that Walter White is not merely your average high school science teacher, but actually has a lot more going on in the grey matter? How do they show that 'Crazy 8' is actually quite intelligent, and not just a dumb gangbanger, as he initially appears to be? How does Silence of the Lambs show us that Starling is very smart? How does it demonstrate the intelligence of Lecter? External behavior, seen in the push and pull of two or more characters trying to get things out of each other.