Is it possible to write a character with a higher IQ than you?

[Anonymous No.12604379]

I'm a brainlet and the antagonist in my story is an evil mastermind type.
How can I make him believably smart if I'm a fucking idiot?

[Anonymous No.12604399]

Don’t know much about that but what I do know is, I’m your dad

[Anonymous No.12604442]

just leave it vague.

[Anonymous No.12604459]

>>12604379
no, it turns out like crap. Eg: The Big Bang Theory

[Anonymous No.12604520]

Orson Scott Card tried the genius protagonist thing.
Didn't really work without actually making everyone around him a massive retard.

[Anonymous No.12604553]

>>12604379
there's a point at which increasing intelligence brings diminishing returns. an analogy that comes to mind is the /3/ image that demonstrates subdivisions of a head model until there's barely any improvement. another way of putting this is to say, there's a big gap between 90 and 120 IQ, but less of one between 120 and 150. the latter, if you consider those two people with 120 and 150 IQs, respectively, won't behave much differently at all. the differences are invisible and subtler.

[Anonymous No.12604564]

>>12604379
Find the reasons why he is 'evil'. Also, get a good grasp of what 'evil' means

[Anonymous No.12604602]

stop mistaking iq for intelligence

[Anonymous No.12604610]

>>12604602
t. brianlet

[Anonymous No.12604615]

>>12604610
t. dyslexic

[Anonymous No.12604624]

>>12604379
A large part of being a genius is really just thinking and processing things way more efficiently than other people, but you have all the time in the world to compose a novel, so the things that your antagonist does that seem so smart and quick-witted, they could spring up after careful planning and redrafting of your story.

[Anonymous No.12604635]

>>12604610

i wrote up an overly long post in response to OP, then i scrapped it because i figured the thread would get deleted and i'd get banned. anyway, stop mistaking iq for intelligence

https://medium.com/incerto/iq-is-largely-a-pseudoscientific-swindle-f131c101ba39

[Anonymous No.12604646]

>>12604635
this was written by a delusional brainlet though

t. brain chad

[Anonymous No.12604653]

>>12604553
Nigga you clearly don't know anything about IQ.

[Anonymous No.12604672]

It's probably harder to write a character with a lower I.Q. Dumb people say some funny shit.

[Anonymous No.12604770]

Try to keep it as a realistic kind of intelligent. Think Anton Chigurh. He’s a very intelligent character, but he’s not an over the top or extravagant villain. A villain who is “smart” and too over the top would be someone along the lines of Bane or Thanos.

[Anonymous No.12606024]

>>12604379
You literally can't. If you could predict what a person would do in every situation you would already be as smart or smarter than that person.

[Anonymous No.12606033]

John Kennedy Toole would beg to differ.

[TSJ !ujoY1xUXb. No.12606055]

>>12604770
I want Anton to flip my coin.

[Anonymous No.12606056]

>>12604379
There's an image that sometimes gets posted on /tv/ of someone describing the difference between a smart character written by a smart writer (I think it was the bad guy from No Country For Old Men) versus one written by an idiot (the TV show Sherlock). The conclusion was essentially that to dump people smart people are indistinguishable from wizards. If you can find the image its actually kind of worthwhile to think about while writing a "genius" character, whether he's accomplishing his goals by actual intelligence or smart people magic.

[Anonymous No.12606057]

>>12606056
>dump people
Meant dumb people, which I apparently am

[Anonymous No.12606060]

>>12604379
Unlike your characters you aren't actually in the situation. You can think about schemes and plans for a pretty long time before letting your characters "come up with them" and act them out.

So yes, you can make them smarter than yourself. But only to a degree. A 80 IQ knuckle-dragger will never solve a complex mathematical equation, even if he has infinite time. Similarly a 100 IQ average joe can't pretend to think like a 160 IQ genius.

[Anonymous No.12606072]

>>12604379
Yes, because IQ is about quick thinking. If given enough time you can easily come up with something more intelligent than what you would say or think on the spot. An example of this is thinking back and realizing you could've said something better than what you did.

[TSJ !ujoY1xUXb. No.12606075]

>>12606060
What's the scale for that? How high can I go? What do I do? Those are some interesting digits as well.

[Anonymous No.12606080]

Does anybody have that screencap of someone comparing Anton Chigurh to Cumberbatch's Sherlock? That hit the point really well I think, an intelligent character written by an intelligent person vs an intelligent character written by somebody who thinks intelligence is just near-magical omniscience.

[Anonymous No.12606090]

>>12606080
Nevermind, I found it myself

[Anonymous No.12606098]

>>12606072

this. so obvious

[Anonymous No.12606111]

>>12606075
Depends. I think the smarter you get, the better you get at pretending to be smarter than you actually are.

Let's say you have an IQ of 120. You probably won't come up with Werner Heisenberg's equations yourself. But with some studying you can understand them, switch them up a bit and pretend you came up with them yourself without having to be as smart as Heisenberg.

Compared to that someone with an IQ of 80 can barely follow written commands. You would definitely see through it if someone like that pretended to have even an average IQ of 95 - 105.

[Anonymous No.12606117]

Sort of. If i was given infinite time to think about every word i said i could make myself appear smarter than i am now.

[Anonymous No.12606118]

>>12604379
yes, you can create that illusion, for the retards, the 99% who read any book, you create situations that make it seem like your character is smart, for the 1% of readers they prefer any hint of philosophical additions that come from the background static characters

[Anonymous No.12606124]

IQ is bullshit anyway

[Anonymous No.12606132]

>>12606124
t. low IQ

[Anonymous No.12606168]

>>12604379
Have them speak as little as possible and people will assume they're intelligent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA6V9qSAqdU

[Anonymous No.12606172]

>>12604770
Bane is also ridiculous in that he seems to have no ideology/actual beliefs and yet attracts people who are suicidally devoted to him. The fact that these people are all highly capable and intelligent is also unbelievable, considering actual examples like Heaven's Gate or the Branch Davidians.

[Anonymous No.12606174]

>>12604379
You could also make the character extremely witty and quick, but this might seem cheesy or over-the-top with an antagonist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5YcsoQ4JgBQ

[Anonymous No.12606251]

>>12604379
No, it is impossible for anyone, even a fictional character, to have a higher IQ than I.

[Anonymous No.12606275]

>>12606251
Wow, do you have a really big head?

[Anonymous No.12606284]

whats the IQ of a computer

[Anonymous No.12606286]

Did the writers of Good Will Hunting need to be geniuses to write about a math genius? Just do some research on geniuses in history and you can easily build a character out of that.

[Anonymous No.12606295]

Anybody here with an IQ higher than 150? How is the world like for you?

[Anonymous No.12606306]

>>12606286
He didn't really do much that would require genius level intelligence. He just wrote a nonsensical fake formula that the audience can't understand. Then the story became about his emotional life, rather than his analytical intelligence. And in terms of emotional intelligence he was rather stupid. Generally all of his behavior did not show much intelligence.

If you want characters that are genuinely intelligent and do intelligent things, then Good Will Hunting isn't the place to look. It's a story about a damaged idiot who happens to be a genius.

[Anonymous No.12606331]

>>12604379
I think Murakami does this well. Quirky and intelligent characters with the "big picture" in mind and in their motivations, far surpassing the simple-minded protagonists in intelligence and wit.

[Anonymous No.12606365]

>>12604379
Just make him misterious and avoid showcasing him much like Giovanni in the first generation of Pokémon. You never see him but he is the shady bad guy who is behind everything and the infrequency of his use only increases the mistery that the imagination of the observer attributes to him. Let the reader imagine him however he wants.

[Anonymous No.12606524]

>>12606295
Just imagine you have to talk to monkeys every day.

[Anonymous No.12606528]

>>12606090
>"But Sherlock!" Moriarty cries "That police officer blew his own head off, look at it, there's skull fragments on the wall, how is he fine now? How did you fake that?", Sherlock just winks at the screen, the end.
I can never read this line and not lose my shit.

[Anonymous No.12606563]

>>12606072
>>12606072
This only applies to a character with "street" smarts. If a character is supposed to be knowledgeable in various fields, you can't bullshit that, no matter how much time you're given to think about it.
Sure, you can go google it, but the character will never reference a scientific principle in relation to what's happening in the story, if you've never heard about it. So no, I don't think it's possible to write about a smart biologist/chemist character, if you haven't studied the field yourself.

[Anonymous No.12606579]

>>12606563
Knowledge is not the same as intelligence. And there are ways around your lack of knowledge in a field. Just get someone knowledgeable in the field to help you out. It's a pretty common thing for writers to do.

[Anonymous No.12606841]

>>12604379
just make him asexual

[Anonymous No.12606847]

>>12606055
IIII LOOOOVE YOUUU JESUUUS CHRIIIIIST