The Pitfalls and Tips on Writing Clever Characters

Part-rant, part-analysis of the temptations fellow writers may face when writing them

Photo by Magnet.me on Unsplash

Not so elementary, is it?

It’s easy to think of famous fictional masterminds — they appear both as protagonists, antagonists, and wise uncle/guardian characters destined to die at the end of the second arc. Their intelligence comes in many forms, but we usually are shown that these characters are clever because:

• They figure out the villain’s/hero’s plan before anyone else and figure out how to foil it
• They use outside-the-box thinking to get out of an unfavourable situation
• Someone tells the audience this character is clever (if the writer’s in a rush)

Most often, the uniting factor of clever characters, it’s that because of their intelligence, the plot progresses — or at the very least, they change the course of events in their world. Speaking of which…

Clever characters operate in the world the writer is creating

That’s is the key difference between a real-life clever person, and a fictional one. Clever people solve real, complex problems and do it better than others — this is easy to identify, but…