SMART CHARACTERS - Terrible Writing Advice

foreign [Music] students Professor JP here to teach you all about riding smart characters from mad scientist absent-minded professors super Geniuses to even all-knowing robots TWA is going to teach you everything you need to know to make sure your characters are the sharpest tools in the shed actually I'm not really a professor I only have a Bachelor of Arts but that won't stop me from helping all aspiring riders in the ways of writing intelligent characters smart characters cover a wide range of archetypes so I will be touching on a few of them but this chapter is more focused on how to convey the intelligence of a character and since I'm the smartest person on the planet and the most humble I can think of no one better to help Riders make a character sound smart I'm smart I'm smart that's what I'm saying see because I'm so smart obviously that means I can help other people write smart characters too man I'm glad I explained it to everyone otherwise how would they know now some writers May worry that they lack the smart to write smart characters but storytelling isn't about raw intellect rather the whole thing is basically a magic show what you are selling doesn't exist except in the minds of the audience a magician doesn't actually conjure a rabbit out of a hat from nothing rather they make the audience believe that the rabbit came from Magic so it is with the character's intelligence a writer does not need the character to really be a Super Genius no more than a writer need to convince the audience that the wizard is casting magic that one could find in reality or convince the audience that the cyborg is using real life cybernetics what the writer must do instead is draw the audience into the story so that their eyes are immersed in the story rather than the sleight of hand the writer uses behind the scenes in summary the character doesn't have to actually be smart but rather the writer must sell the idea that the character is smart to the audience got all that good throw it all away because we're going to cheat and take shortcuts the shortest of the cuts is to just have all the other characters insist that the character is smart having everyone Yammer on and on about how smart a character is will work even when the story never does a single thing to show how the character is smart if that's not enough then have the smart character themselves go on and on about how brilliant they are I mean I've never personally met a single person who brags endlessly about their intelligence and it turned out that they actually are intelligent especially since nine times out of ten the only impressive thing they have in terms of size is their own ego ditto for anyone who brags about their IQ or their GPA especially when using it to disparage other people what's the word for people who brag about their intelligence to put other people down losers no that can't be right Geniuses that's it even if genius has as many quotation marks as possible crammed around it all of this endless telling about how smart a character is won't backfire in the long run when the audience turns against the character for being a smug jerk with a bloated ego rather than the Charming eccentric Professor I was going for another way to make sure the character at least sounds smart is for them to use big words this opticates the author's proclivity towards prevaricating the audience in regards to the true intellectual Acumen of the character using this many 10 words in a sentence will put me in debt but the Merit of such an action shall be in excess of my investment if it can flummox the audience's normal cognition in regards to my character's analytical ability this will allow me to self-actualize the character's potential while creating lateral gains in elementary Fields irregardless of how ostentatious such an act may appear I'm sure such an excessive use of vocabulary shall make me look jejune I don't know what jejun means but I'm sure it will make me look smart too why this even exempts me from looking up what any of these words mean surely it can't be that the people who usually talk like this are pretentious weirdos who are obsessed with the trappings of intelligence rather than actually being intelligent besides intelligent people talk above everyone else rather than communicate intelligently it's not like people get frustrated that no one understands them in fact why not just have them rely on technobabble technobabble for those who have never set through an episode of Star Trek the Next Generation is when the characters speak in nonsensical technical jargon in order to give the appearance of technical competence even if the words don't actually mean anything for example the chief engineer yelling that they need to reverse the polarity on the flux capacitor in order to save the Starship from exploding technobabble is at its best when a smart character uses it to resolve the plot rather than actually coming up with something clever while Under Pressure yes even the most immersed audience will see right through this and it may indeed jar them out of the story but it's not like the audience can call the writers on it just be ready for when one of those super fans Corners the rider at a convention and starts asking what those words actually mean so I've made sure the audience has been told that the character is smart and I've made them sound smart with big words and technobabble now Ryder can stop there if they want but what if they want to expand the role of the smart character well the writer can turn the character into the story's main source of exposition why stop at the character who comes across as a smug pseudo-intellectual when I can also make them boring as well the character character knows a lot so they are an easy excuse to dump info onto the audience's lap it's not like one way to sell a character is smart is for them to be really good at explaining complex things to everyone else the ability to accurately and successfully convey information and teach others is in fact a sign of intelligence but I'm not willing to cut down my precious Exposition into something palatable and in character because I suffer through writing all those World building notes so by Cthulhu they are going into the story somewhere and by somewhere I mean into the math of the resident smart character could Professor Exposition be unwilling to dispense his knowledge without compensation forcing the characters to trick him into spilling the info what if the normally cool-headed Professor freaks out while explaining the problem the drive home the sudden shift in narrative Stakes could he be really impatient and explain it all in the most insulting way possible to comedic effect as well as highlight his eccentricities well don't worry all those character traits vanish the moment he starts explaining and explaining and explaining in fact now he never shuts up now if a writer wishes to dig deeper into riding a smart character then they could also give the smart character a scientific discipline modern scientific knowledge is so vast now that it's nearly impossible to know everything about everything because even if a character is smart enough to know everything there's still only a finite amount of time to learn everything barring aliens with Advanced cognition or Advanced artificial intelligence us non-cyborg humans will have to settle for focusing on a specialization now if writing a character with a focus on say theoretical physics then it is totally possible to look up a huge amount of knowledge on the subject thanks to humanity having pooled its Collective knowledge on the internet even if most of it is kind of garbage it still shouldn't be too difficult to find a Layman's guide somewhere in fact it's possible to gain a pretty solid if a bit General understanding of most subjects with less than a year of research depending on the subject however anything beyond that often requires a much larger investment in time to know the ins and outs of a subject enough to appear authentic to those who actually work in the field in that case the best resources to contact someone who actually works in that field experts are useful riding resources especially people in Academia because they very often don't mind sharing their knowledge provided an acquiring Rider isn't rude about asking and doesn't take up too much of their time if you get rejected don't worry you'll find someone who won't shut up about it eventually some may even be willing to read excerpts of your writing and give feedback all of this will add a level of authenticity that will sell the idea of this being a smart character that knows their stuff much better but something tells me a quick Breeze through on a Wiki article will put me at a much higher level than these trained professionals besides this requires that I actually talk to another human being and I'm not breaking my five year long hermit streak for that now what about evil smart people like mad scientists let's see fake German accent check Mad cackling check probably a Nazi yeah almost for sure a Nazi probably even an old school one and not one of those wannabe Nazi cover bands that plagued the internet and occasional protest mad scientists are great because they produce so many cool monsters for the main characters to fight in fact unlike real life mad scientists they are stuck stunningly effective at building things I mean yes we did have a few real life people who made amazing things while being nuttier than a Peanut Farm but a good chunk of real life mad scientists kind of sucked at the science part usually they just made a mess however they were really good at the veneer of Science and that they kept a lot of paperwork data points and documentation that was often used in their War crime trials mostly they just mutilated people for no real reason other than curiosity and being on a power trip the vast majority of real mad science has largely been useless and the value of the stuff that isn't completely useless is hotly debated but the important thing isn't that Madness seldom creates accurate science but rather that only the truly mad would pursue science this is because often all the smart people in the story are evil after all the central moral to most science fiction is that all the technological advancement we've had up until now is fine but don't go any further could this be balanced somewhat by having good scientists in the story only if they are worthless and the stupid characters are the only ones that save the day besides we all know that Super Genius is a worthless especially in comic books they will invent world-changing Wonders that will then just never be seen again in fact they use their vast intellect and Arsenal of technological Marvels to fight crime and it's not like the Evil Geniuses are much better since they use their Supreme Brilliance to rob banks rather than just patting their inventions and buy the bank but see it has to be like this because otherwise I'll have to do a bunch of World building and not the fun kind of World building where I just plop down entire super powered Nations into the middle of things and then just ignore how that would upend everything about geopolitics no I would have to actually think critically about how this would change the lives of Everyday People I'll just ignore that along with all the story possibilities that it would present besides not sharing or caring about their own inventions is something that a super smart person would totally do because smart people are weird to be fair this particular stereotype comes from somewhere as almost every engineer I've personally worked with seemed to live in some alternate reality that means that a rider is free to make the smart character eccentric why is the character so odd and absent-minded because the writer said so normally this is because they are so wrapped up in their work that they tend to ignore everything else which is fine even if a bit of a stock motivation for a character trait that also makes it fine to be their only character trait what about a smart character who's very knowledgeable but lacks practical experience this could be a source of conflict but might make my pet character look bad so that's a no-go instead the smart character will pull solutions to problems from nowhere with no legwork from the character or the writer does their solution have a real scientific basis was the solution foreshadowed earlier in the story is the solution something both elegant and simple while not being completely obvious nope instead my character will techno Babble away all the story's narrative tension the grand climax shall end in a boring info dump after all the character is smart have I mentioned that they are smart because they know a lot of random information since it has the trappings of smartness no need to explore different kinds of intelligence like interpersonal intelligence or interpersonal intelligence why bother with that when they can scroll random numbers on a whiteboard I'm sure the audience will buy that this character is very smart even as the villain is three steps ahead of them the entire story and they spent all of their time reacting rather than anticipating the villain's moves you know even when the villain keeps doing the same thing over and over again but hey basic pattern recognition is hard and why would a smart person have that ability yet the most important thing about writing smart characters is that they be a smart character and not a smart character smart characters are most useful for their utility in moving the plot forward not for actually having their own motives and traits I should know because of how smart I am you can tell because I use lots of big words even though I don't pronounce them right half the time and only have the fuzziest inkling as to what they mean now if you will excuse me I have to go back to everyone how jejun I am ah it's good to be back Shame about the company though I'm here to make sure you don't screw up and then everything goes all according to plan you know I'm starting to think that you're just saying that to make yourself feel better when things go wrong I would never do something um I mean that's what I want you to think well it doesn't matter once we shift the Federation to war footing it's basically over oh sweet babies daddy's gonna take you out for a spin real soon foreign good news the Senate has reviewed the situation and for once we all agree really first time for everything well I don't care as long as we get conscription rolling conscription during an election year you're right no actually we're calling to let you know that we are surrendering to Greed what the Senate sold out well there's a shocker yes it turns out Greek can do the whole defense thing at a fraction of the cost so you might want to spiff you up that resume a bit because well you're kind of out of a job now all right now I know you might be worried about us but fear not the Senate is going to fix the spinning deficit by selling the federation's weapon stockpiles to greed that way we can keep the hot tub wing of the Senate open oh and greed told us to play you this hello General you're firing and this video is sponsored by audible here we go again did you enjoy your long track back home General why you could have listened to an audiobook to pass the time on the trip here I mean the Federation will still have fallen right into my hands regardless but at least you would listened to a great book on the way if you were an audible member you could download a stream one title a month from a massive catalog of amazing works from every genre including audible originals and podcasts I've actually been going through a bit of a hard sci-fi binge recently with works like Hyperion the expanse kind of sold me on the genre hard sci-fi you're just like one of those draft dodging College physics professors I mean really who needs Harry doesn't need physics and chemistry it needs rockets and explosives give me some good military science fiction like Caiaphas Kane hero of the Imperium kind of weird that Caiaphas books are filled with his imposter syndrome clearly someone is trying to slander him oh my dear General how you missed the contrast of Kane's Grand exploits with this insecure internal monologue but I suppose the ridiculous caricature like yourself wouldn't be privy to the details of his characterization caricature don't worry about that instead why not become a new audible member for 30 days visit audible.com terrible riding advice or text terrible writing advice to 500 500. link is in the description below well either that or you could waste your time trying to salvage the unsalvageable Federation whichever you prefer ah typical bleeding heart sell out there's only one thing to do now and I'm going to run for Federation president foreign

Channel: Terrible Writing Advice

Views: 248,972

Keywords: Terrible Writing Advice, writing, Bad advice, Novel, Novel writing, Writing a book, book, J.P. Beaubien, J.P.Beaubien, Terrible, JPBeaubien, JP Beaubien, writing smart characters, smart characters, writer super geniuses, writing scientists

Id: gczK6zDLueA

Length: 15min 29sec (929 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 31 2022