Very intelligent character

[Xitra_Blud]

I have a very intelligent character who would speak in proper English and very fancy, big words. Problem is, I'm not good with putting big words properly in a sentence and I know a few fancy words but not enough words or their meanings to match his way of speaking. I go to the thesaurus but often times I wind using the words wrong. Anyone have any ideas on how I can make my character sound highly intelligence without having to worry to much about fancy words?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Using big, elaborate words is not necessarily a hallmark of intelligence. Rather, I'd suggest tailoring the character's observations and insights to depict them as the astute type.

Another facet of intelligence is to make the character an expert at some task or occupation. A soldier can be a master tactician. A diplomat can be an accomplished negotiator, or even manipulator. There are many ways to showcase intelligence in this light.

The character's internal thoughts on situations, or the actions of other characters, can illustrate intelligence as well. Further, wittiness portrayed in thought and dialogue can help to convey a sense of intelligence.

Don't rely on dialogue alone to do the work for you. It should be only a fraction of overall characterization.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

I second TAS on this. We have a very intelligent character in our WIP who uses some very common, and sometimes coarse, language. Her intellect is displayed in her problem solving skills, how she puts together pieces of information like a puzzle. She plays politics like a game, and thinks in terms of cards and game pieces.

I would also add that a very intelligent character is not an omnipotent one, though it is tempting to think they are and to write them that way. Highly intelligent people can put the information together in the wrong order (or too soon with incomplete information, as they often try to extrapolate from incomplete data) and come up with the wrong answer - it's an answer that makes perfect sense, given what they're working with, but still wrong. Highly intelligent people are also just as, of not more, prone to getting ideas in their heads that something is a certain way, and it can be very hard to shake them out of this way of thinking.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I have a very intelligent character who would speak in proper English and very fancy, big words. Problem is, I'm not good with putting big words properly in a sentence and I know a few fancy words but not enough words or their meanings to match his way of speaking. I go to the thesaurus but often times I wind using the words wrong. Anyone have any ideas on how I can make my character sound highly intelligence without having to worry to much about fancy words?

Even if the character knows a great many words, there will be certain words and phrases he favors. Model his speech on the speech of someone specific who sounds fancy, and if you can, run it by someone fancy and see what they think. Once you've got enough confirmed patterns, you can start mixing and matching to create new statements in the style of his previous statements, with maybe the occasional trip to the dictionary when he encounters a new situation. (And unless he's incredibly snooty, don't worry TOO much about how big his words are--he may know what a quercus robur is, but he'll probably refer to it as an oak tree just the same.)

 

[CupofJoe]

Some extremely intelligent people that I know are very shy and retiring. This can lead them to be seen as being rude and aggressive as a matter of pre-emptive self defence when [forced] to interact with people.
They may also have a tendency to seemingly be non-linear in their thought as they have had the conversation/discussion [with or without you] and come to their conclusion. You get the end result and not the intermediate steps. This can make even the simplest tasks and conversations hard to follow on occasions...
Another thing I've noticed is that they may make friends with [seemingly] the strangest people. I know of a person with 2 PhDs and an international reputation in their academic field that can often be seen sitting and chatting with the drunks and homeless in town. Just chatting and sharing a cigarette.
And as others have said, they may also be very good at something specific like playing a musical instrument and use that as their social lubricant.

 

[Feo Takahari]

They may also have a tendency to seemingly be non-linear in their thought as they have had the conversation/discussion [with or without you] and come to their conclusion. You get the end result and not the intermediate steps. This can make even the simplest tasks and conversations hard to follow on occasions...

Speaking personally, this is a big one for me. If someone mentions a topic to me that they've read a little about, and I've read multiple authors who debated it, I may start referencing the ideas of those authors, then back up and start explaining more once it's clear the other person has no clue what I'm talking about.

 

[KC Trae Becker]

If you set up your plot so that your intelligent person sometimes figures out the solutions to puzzles and answers to questions, before the reader, that would give the impression of intelligence.

 

[Mythopoet]

I think as far as language goes, intelligence shows more in the precision of the words used rather than their length or obscurity.

 

[CupofJoe]

I think as far as language goes, intelligence shows more in the precision of the words used rather than their length or obscurity.

Ten items or fewer
With whom do you wish to talk?

[and here's hoping I got them right...]

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Speaking personally, this is a big one for me. If someone mentions a topic to me that they've read a little about, and I've read multiple authors who debated it, I may start referencing the ideas of those authors, then back up and start explaining more once it's clear the other person has no clue what I'm talking about.

Yay! Someone else who cites sources in conversation. Now I'm happy.

 

[Malik]

back up and start explaining more once it's clear the other person has no clue what I'm talking about.

I work with people who are up to their eyeballs in the arcane 8-10 hours a day. And by arcane, I mean they are studying things that, for all practical purposes, no one else in the world is studying. There is a lot of what Feo said above, especially when you have to talk to one of them about their project because it crosses into yours. They start at the middle, because they understand something so well that they tend to forget that you don't have any idea about it. Then, when they see the look on your face, they back up. Then they back up some more.

A very common question in our line of work is, "Does that make sense?" It seems like we end every statement with it. Not because I think you're too dumb to understand what I'm saying, but because I'm unsure whether you have the fundamental base of knowledge to run alongside me on this.

One problem with writing smart characters is that it's nearly impossible to write a character who's smarter than you are. It's easy to write dumb characters, but the only way to write a convincing smart character is to educate yourself on the things that the character is a genius about. Read any book by Michael Crichton. His main characters are geniuses, but then, so is he. The research he puts into some of his books would qualify for a postgraduate degree. You may just have to buckle down and do some serious homework if you're married to the idea of a character who really knows what he/she is talking about.

There's a Calvin and Hobbes strip where Susie and Calvin are standing at the bus stop, and Susie tells Calvin that she did her homework last night, then had her mother double-check it, and then she did the problems that she got wrong all over again to make sure she understood the assignment. Calvin looks at her and says, "You do all that work?" She says, "Of course." And he says, "And here, all this time, I thought you were smart."

 

[Telcontar]

Language use is primarily a matter of education and culture, with intelligence a secondary factor. Is this character also a highly educated one? That's what the use of "fancy words" will show.

Showing intelligence is more about showing clarity of thought - deductions and inductions, going from evidence to the correct conclusion. Obviously, for a writer who ISN'T a genius we have to be able to fake the signs of a genius. I wrote about a brilliant general in one of my books and readers tell me he is effectively portrayed as smart by the way he "handles" people, and the way he plans, executes, and takes advantage of military maneuvers.

Because we control the information the reader gets, we can skew it in such a way as to present the silhouette of intelligence without necessarily needing to possess the kind of intelligence we're writing about. The above military leader liked to teach little lessons to the people around him, small things that only he has figured out. Some of them are pretty clever (if I do say so myself) but I had to hope they built up into a believable pattern. Furthermore, of course, this character often arrives at correct answers with very little evidence (leaps of intuition have also long been associated with high intelligence) and is very rarely wrong, or taken by surprise.

Now that I've thought about it, I think the real central "sign" of intelligence is in being right a lot more often than being wrong (and preferably, for the reasons you had taken into consideration). Or at least, readers will accept that as signaling intelligence.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

One problem with writing smart characters is that it's nearly impossible to write a character who's smarter than you are. It's easy to write dumb characters, but the only way to write a convincing smart character is to educate yourself on the things that the character is a genius about.

Yes, we may have to perform research, in a specific subject matter, to make a character speak more intelligently than we, ourselves, are capable of speaking on a topic. However, I do believe an author can write genius characters without being a genius themselves.

The gift of revision affords the writer an opportunity to rework dialogue or internal thought over and over again until it's exactly as intended. Whether that means the prose carries a certain message regarding an obscure or specified bit of knowledge, or a certain precision of language, the time allowed in revision can enable our characters to perform better than we may in our own spontaneous thoughts, reactions, or spoken words. This effect can be harnessed to create characters who appear highly intelligent, even genius level...really anywhere along the intellectual spectrum.

 

[The Dark One]

Whenever this topic comes up (as it regularly does) I always give the example of Prof Langdren (or whatever his name is) in the Da Vinci Code. We are expected to believe that this character (to whose thoughts we are constantly privy) is the number one world expert in religious iconography. And yet, I constantly guessed what was happening about five pages before he did! Even worse, being privy to his thoughts did not make me think 'these are the thoughts of a 55 yo religious iconography genius'. Instead, I was constantly thinking: 'these are the thoughts of a teenager with an attitude'.

 

[A. E. Lowan]

Whenever this topic comes up (as it regularly does) I always give the example of Prof Langdren (or whatever his name is) in the Da Vinci Code. We are expected to believe that this character (to whose thoughts we are constantly privy) is the number one world expert in religious iconography. And yet, I constantly guessed what was happening about five pages before he did! Even worse, being privy to his thoughts did not make me think 'these are the thoughts of a 55 yo religious iconography genius'. Instead, I was constantly thinking: 'these are the thoughts of a teenager with an attitude'.

I agree, this is a good example of swinging for genius and missing.

An example of swinging and hitting it out of the park? Douglas Preston and Lincoln Child's character FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.

 

[monyo]

This is from the sci-fi genre, but the characters of The Blight and Old One from Fire Upon the Deep are two examples of characters written with very high (read: beyond human) intelligence. Though I'm not sure how successful I really think the author was in portraying it - he (V. Vinge) himself said it was basically impossible to write characters that much smarter than he was, though of course that's debatable, and his characters weren't merely genius level humans but post-human intelligence.

From my memory their advanced intelligence was mainly shown through their ability to orchestrate events and find meaning in things that weren't directly explained to the reader. Instead, other characters would discuss the implausibility of anyone being able to do the thing that was currently happening to them, along with vague references to how it had been done. He also spent basically the entire prologue, plus another chapter early on, describing the immense intelligence of The Blight, which sort of sets up the premise for the entire story.

Just an idea, but the OP could consider modeling the intelligent character off a real-life intelligent person as well. Need an extraordinarily clever political coup? Look to Napoleon or Dick Cheney. A math genius? Consider Ramanujan or Grothendieck. Someone who got rich starting from nothing? Chris Gardner is an example. Admittedly this may not help with the dialogue, but even there intelligent people can be pretty weak. Niels Bohr was supposedly so bad at writing he would dictate his papers to his mother, while Einstein supposedly was somewhat the same with words (didn't speak until 3, supposedly wasn't fluent until 9, said all his life he thought in terms of images and later would carefully translate those ideas into words).

 

[Scribble]

My take on what makes genius...

Education and deep thought can help you develop a capacity for linear reasoning - employing procedural logic based on a foundation of knowledge. This is what we call an "expert". Above average intelligence required.

Lateral reasoning, perceiving links and patterns that others do not is required for genius - but does not define it alone. A mind tuned to make jumps beyond what would be obvious to a linear thinker required. Some might call it "intuition".

True genius is a heightened capacity for both - to make the leaps others cannot, and to follow those leaps down paths to ends that are beyond average people.

Someone of above human intelligence would be inscrutable to average people, though highly intelligent people would possibly suspect their intelligence. Mostly, they would be misunderstood, isolated. They would be unable to share their thoughts, as too much background would need to be stuffed into the conversation for the other party to comprehend. Possibly ending in frustration or resignation as they would be able to communicate only the basics, confounding the listener.

They may even appear as simple or crazy to the average person.

 

[buyjupiter]

Also, it may be worthwhile really examining how Sherlock Holmes has been written and rewritten over the years--even including the Robert Downey Jr version.

 

[Jabrosky]

Intelligence is notoriously tricky and controversial to define, but I prefer to think of it as a measure of cognitive flexibility and adaptability. If you look at all the creatures we regard as stupid, the preponderance of their activity falls in line with innately programmed instincts. Said instincts can sometimes code for very elaborate behaviors like those of ants or bees, but they can't do much beyond these. On the other hand we humans are born with a much more malleable intelligence that allows us to expand our behavioral repertoire beyond instinct and adapt to all manner of habitats. However, this same malleability means we are depend more on society and the environment to teach how us to behave and adapt.

To put it in a layperson's language, I see intelligence as the potential to learn. If your character learns quickly, that might demonstrate their greater intelligence.

 

[Telcontar]

I haven't read The Da Vinci Code, but if I want to convince a reader that a character is a genius I'm definitely not going to share that person's thoughts. It's one thing to show the convincing effects of intelligence. Showing the building blocks means you need to possess them yourself.

My smartest characters are generally going to be like black boxes. You have no idea what's going on inside (cuz I doubt I can show it effectively...).