How To Write A Genuius Animal Character

How to Write a Genius Character

"Elementary, beloved author."

Who is the brains behind the mastermind? Me? (Uh oh!)
It tin be intimidating trying to write a character who is smarter than you are. After all, it's easy to write about a character being fast or strong. You can show that hands enough by feats of physical prowess described in your prose. How do yous go about portraying someone with a brilliant mind, even of of the greatest minds, without being their intellectual equal? After all, anything they think upward has to come from you, doesn't it? How tin you think of things that someone of your own intellect should be amazed at, without really possessing the mental faculties of your genius characters?

Like shooting fish in a barrel. You cheat!

Do you call back Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was equally adept a detective as Sherlock Holmes, his iconic sleuth? Of course non, and Doyle fabricated no claims that he was. He even hints in his works that he sees himself in the character of Watson, Holmes's tag-along doctor friend and biographer. How then does he, or y'all, convince the reader of the graphic symbol'southward superior intellect?

Time

Writing down a litany of clues, cantankerous-referencing them, and painstakingly working out the proper conclusion is admirable. Having a grapheme spout off the answer almost instantly is impressive. The puzzle isn't something insurmountable my a normal intellect, but genius characters put all the pieces together before anyone else has had a adventure to get started. You go bonus points for bewildered or disbelieving onlookers who do their own verification. "By Jove, he'south right!"

Research

Most people are quite knowledgeable on a few subjects, often related to their field of work or a hobby they accept a passion for. Information technology takes a genius grapheme to accept encyclopedic knowledge on a broad range of topics, peculiarly obscure ones. You, equally the writer, can research those obscure topics at leisure and supply them to a character. Having the precise data needed on a topic at hand gives the impression of an all-encompassing breadth of knowledge. The more obscure, the greater the impression information technology leaves. An in-depth knowledge of Shakespeare marks y'all every bit well-educated. Being able to quote from the works of Jippensha Ikku shows that a character has both a broad field of study and an excellent memory (of course, in a Japanese setting, reversing the names might better evidence your instance).

To show how this works: I googled Japanese literature to find a well-known writer from over a hundred years ago. If I didn't tell you, would you have been able to tell I wasn't just exceptionally well-read?

Observation

How can whatever one grapheme be expected to glance at a scene and option out all the pertinent information from the dross? It would accept inhuman powers of both vision and judgment. Lucky us, we wrote all those details and know which are the vital clues. Better yet, yous can have another grapheme encounter the same things and draw dissimilar, more obvious, but entirely erroneous conclusions. The amend the reader's opinion of the character in error, the more impressive your genius character will seem.

Precision

This isn't every bit effective a tool every bit some, merely it combines well with the "Fourth dimension" advantage. Whatever layman can brand a ballpark estimate that is useful enough to become past. The genius's offhand estimates and quick calculations come out with neat precision (and accuracy, which isn't the same thing). Star Trek makes good employ of this characteristic; how many times practise Spock (TOS) or Information (TNG) "right" someone by adding some decimal places to clarify a calculation that was just fabricated. This is washed to develop the genius trait in the eyes of the viewer.

Anachromism

This works if your character lives in the past (or a fictional setting with technology from an earlier historical era). You can feed them information from our modernistic scientific knowledge to make your genius characters appear to be a visionary, overcoming one of the more difficult-to-crook characteristics of a genius: inventiveness. Yous tin accept your genius rifle the barrel of his musket, recollect of using bread mold to treat an infection, or have a working steam engine sitting on his table in 1600 as a curiosity he puttered around with.

Imaginary Technology

This one is a bit trickier to pull off, but like anachronism, is relies on a difference in time period – in this case, the future. Prepare far plenty alee, no i tin say for certain what technologies exist. Y'all can research plausible technologies and allow your character to be the one to finally develop or discover them. Warp drive, sentient AI, room-temperature superconductors. Just be careful not to go into the realm of debunked theories and mis-technology. If you have aspirations of writing "hard" science fiction, your readers will be watching out for this sort of thing. If you lot're planning on lighter sci-fi, past all ways, allow your genius invent FLT travel.

Conclusions From Thin Air

Well, if in that location was 1 thing that Sherlock Holmes was known for, information technology was taking a seemingly unrelated set of clues and piecing them all together like a savant to assembles a jigsaw puzzle by examining each piece and laying it in place even before the residue of the puzzle takes shape around it. You lot already know the answers, so yous tin can make the grapheme appear equally smart as yous like by revealing merely how little they needed to continue, or what esoteric noesis they drew on, to come to their conclusion. The more your reader thinks "wow, at that place's no fashion I could accept seen all that," the amend you accept separated your genius characters from them, intellectually.

Anticipation

Nothing says "he's always one pace alee of us" more than actually existence one step ahead. This works well for villains and peculiarly well in spy and thriller stories. Being the one who has thought through the problem to the nth degree fails when the genius grapheme has idea of n+1. An elaborate trap turns out to exist an ambush, which was just a cover for a smokescreen that disguised a triple-amanuensis's expose. The ane who has that whole mess untangled ahead of time wins.

There has also been a rash of "villain lets himself be captured" ploys, in which the villain uses his capture to his advantage (which proves he'southward smarter than his adversaries). Khan, Loki, Joker … I'm looking at y'all guys.