A smart hero?

[BlooFk]

What techniques can show how smart the character is?(Even if the author isn't that smart)

 

[RepresentingWrath]

None.

 

[Corty]

Whatever you do, never describe the MC as smart. Show it with actions, make him/her come up with plans an solutions to problems.

The moment you start mentioning he is smart, people will go, "yeah, sure, pft" and you will never recover from that.

edit:

Don't even make other characters say he/she is smart in the story. Avoid that at all costs. Just make him/her into a problem solver. People have a weird fetish, feeling that if an MC is mentioned to be smart, they have to debunk it at all cost. It is some weird, psychological stuff that compels readers to try and prove the MC is dumb in fact.

 

[BlooFk]

Whatever you do, never describe the MC as smart. Show it with actions, make him/her come up with plans an solutions to problems.

The moment you start mentioning he is smart, people will go, "yeah, sure, pft" and you will never recover from that.

I meant exactly his actions, if you make it so that everything goes according to the plot and then the hero stands up and says, "Everything was designed just so". It doesn't show his intelligence, and the way it shows it.

None.

No chance?

 

[Corty]

I meant exactly his actions, if you make it so that everything goes according to the plot and then the hero stands up and says, "Everything was designed just so". It doesn't show his intelligence, and the way it shows it.

No, he should be making backup plans, take action to ensure he/she accounts for possibilities that could go wrong. You are the writer, you know what will happen. Your MC can show his/her intelligence, by conversing with the rest of the cast or with him/herself and coming up theoretical problems and make preparations for them.

My idea would be make her/him prepare for 4 contingencies. From that four, I already know that one of them would be a future problem in the story. Now he has something to fall back onto when faced with the problem. The other three can be used as duds or even counter attacks.

Things like this. Because it is your story, you know what difficulties you will set for your MC. Make him/her prepare for it but never tell it to the readers explicitly. Just make it like the hero is someone who makes plans and accounts for danger.

 

[RepresentingWrath]

No chance?

I mean, there isn't any techniques. You should show it through your writing. Saying that MC is smart won't work, dumbing down everyone around MC won't work either, unless it's some kind of absurd comedy. So the only thing you can do is to show MC's intelligence through MC's actions, inner thoughts, dialogues, and so on. And you should write it consistently.

 

[NonReal]

Make your mc ask questions. Curiosity and pursuit of knowledge is a sign of intelligence. I don't mean some pointless questions but logical ones. Don't take anything at face value but don't necessarily dig too deep.
Try to restrict the dialog as well. Make him/her appear to think before they speak.

 

[TASTYLEADPAINT]

What techniques can show how smart the character is?(Even if the author isn't that smart)

Give you character a smart profession. My character was detective in a past life. So they show there smartness by spotting clues and coming to conclusions themselves.

 

[RetGod]

The character is always as smart as the author so don't try to make your character too smart or it will bite you in the ass the whole time.

 

[Le_ther]

What techniques can show how smart the character is?(Even if the author isn't that smart)

I would say through background info dumping or complicated dialogues.

Maybe make it seem natural by giving details on where the mc got the knowledge or calculative, in which the smart hero builds up various hypothesis through dialogues and know the right answer.

 

[Rhaps]

Perception is an easy way to show how smart the character is without outright saying it.

 

[ThrillingHuman]

Lateral thinking is the easiest approach.

 

[EliseValkyria]

Whatever you do, never describe the MC as smart. Show it with actions, make him/her come up with plans an solutions to problems.

The moment you start mentioning he is smart, people will go, "yeah, sure, pft" and you will never recover from that.

edit:

Don't even make other characters say he/she is smart in the story. Avoid that at all costs. Just make him/her into a problem solver. People have a weird fetish, feeling that if an MC is mentioned to be smart, they have to debunk it at all cost. It is some weird, psychological stuff that compels readers to try and prove the MC is dumb in fact.

I agree with never saying the character is smart, but not that people have a fetish for tearing the character down when they say he is smart.

I think that instead people are repulsed when the author constantly says that the character is intelligent, because it is the only way he has to prove it, they see that the author is not able to do what he wants to create so the only thing he can do is a "trust me, he is intelligent" although he never shows how.


Now, there is not just one way to show that a character is intelligent; there are several types of intelligence.

You can demonstrate that a character is intelligent by showing how he remembers important things or knowledge of various disparate subjects much better than the rest. There are many people who like to gain new knowledge even if it is outside their areas of work, for example a blacksmith dwarf who knows a lot of literature or ancient history about elves.

You can also show that someone is intelligent by simply showing that they are curious, when they see something they don't understand they immediately get to work trying to figure out what happened. There are people who are motivated to discover new things every day, and it goes a bit hand in hand with the previous point.

My favorite way to show an intelligent person is to show that he is a resourceful person, the macgyver guy who's in a predicament and improvises his way out with whatever he has on hand. Knowing what to do and how to use limited resources, as well as being creative with them when working with them is another way to show that a character is intelligent, plus readers love to try to get them a solution with the resources that the protagonist has at hand and see if he does the same, and in case they did not like it also to know what the character (the author in the background) did with the same resources.

Also, as they said above, being persistent is another way to show that a person is intelligent. A simple way to show intelligence is to recognize that the character does not overlook information or assume things, people might overlook important things that someone curious might not. My favorite series Monk, it's about a very strange detective, he has a thousand different phobias, and he's not very intelligent, but at the same time the guy notices absolutely everything, which leads him to quickly understand what happened in a crime. And the best part is that they show the viewer the same scenario before he speaks to see if one is able to notice the same as the protagonist.

 

[Notadate]

Whatever you do, never describe the MC as smart. Show it with actions, make him/her come up with plans an solutions to problems.

The moment you start mentioning he is smart, people will go, "yeah, sure, pft" and you will never recover from that.

edit:

Don't even make other characters say he/she is smart in the story. Avoid that at all costs. Just make him/her into a problem solver. People have a weird fetish, feeling that if an MC is mentioned to be smart, they have to debunk it at all cost. It is some weird, psychological stuff that compels readers to try and prove the MC is dumb in fact.

This is good advice. Never go rambling on how smart he is, or his IQ, or what his degree is.

this will usually push off readers if he does anything “dumb”. You can show that he is intelligent or a aptitude towards something, but never say he is smart without showing.

Making a commander Mc and showing he is shit at commanding is a example.

While making a college student, and showing he is naturally inclined to trap making, and showing him spending time sketching out designs and showing his internal monologue on where the traps are most optimal would show him being “smart”

But also show trial and error, and him struggling to figure out how a trap can work or how he can design a way to make it work. You have to show he has flaws, but once he figures it out, the reader will get euphoria and pleasure at the fact the MC struggled and finally succeeded.

Don’t make him win on the first try.

 

[ACertainPassingUser]

Your story is always limited to how skilled you are. You character is pretty much your representation, or your writing team's representation. Therefore, making a character smarter than the author's while keeping their qualities and realism is hard.

As you know, anime quality and design are limited to what year they're made. Even if the anime is set in futuristic 2077, you can't lie that the anime is made in 1998. even if the production technique were ahead of their time, you can't easily lie about age.

Novel also that way, you can feel the difference of novels made in either 1990-ish, 2005-ish, and 2020-ish, despite all of them telling the same Isekai hero story, love romance, or adventure.

Most character made is pretty much the "ideal" version of what the author envisioned. You can make him sound smart, yes, but it's pretty much only within your range of what you perceive as "smart". Beyond the boundary of your writing, you can only do so much.

 

[BearlyAlive]

Show your MC planning and plotting. No matter how stupid he actually is, if you show him planning most readers will think he's smart. Something as stupid as the actual act of planning is enough for most readers to make a character seem smarter than others. Or like a monologuing villain, but those are also perceived as smart for some reason.
Don't let him Lelouch his way through a 312-step plan and then go "I expected you to counteract my contingency 1 to 123553 for step 45 and planned for this to happen", didn't work in Code Geass, and neither in Derp Note. The moment you unironically pull an "All according to keikaku (keikaku means plan)", you're out of smart territory and right down bullshit alley.

Let your MC improvise. Adaptability is also perceived as a sign of intelligence. If your Character can adapt and overcome unexpected situations he's most likely smart enough to not seem dumb, which is half the work.

Another hack writer trick for smart characters is for them to actually question how smart they are. A common misconception is that the more humble and prone to agreeing with not knowing something they are, the smarter they must be.

You can also make them quote non-edgy philosophers to make them seem smarter. Same with using longer words, but in those cases chances are they just come off as pretentious.

 

[Shard]

I'd like to note, unlike others here, that sometimes smart people can be incredibly stupid in areas outside their expertise. Don't be afraid to make them really suck at some things and excel at others.

As to making them appear intelligent, try working backward, have a result, then find a set of logical steps that lead to it, then put in hints/clues/actions/speech that lead towards making those logical steps. You want a clear line of logic from start to end, even if it seems insane at first. Perhaps they can simulate the trajectory of an object mentally, so seeing where something is sitting and marks on a wall lets them figure out roughly what happened. Another intelligent person might completely miss that due to a different talent or skillset.

Additionally, rapid thinking and reaction tend to be seen as intelligence, though only the first part really has anything to do with it. Have something happen and the character goes through a dozen thoughts before coming up with what to do, and explain afterwards, possibly via someone else asking why they acted as they did. Sometimes this can take the form of freezing up for an instant before acting according to a well-made plan and other times it can just be immediate reaction with a decent response.

 

[sage61]

One of the thing that makes me think a character is smart in the story, is the character's observation skills in spotting the hidden Easter eggs in the story. Where a seemingly unimportant event become relevant in the plot because the action from the smart character. Such as the blue striped lines on the villain's shirt symbolizes something, and the way the smart character uses his observations skills and wits to decode that leading to his victory or something, is what makes me think that the character is smart.

 

[Deleted member 113259]

You don't. Make them learn from his mistakes. It's kind of hard to do that once you show them to not be a moron.
What you can do is show there's something special in the way they think. Have them constantly make plans for the future, and make sure they have backup plans whenever something goes wrong. The backup plan should still be less effective than the original plan though. If he wanted to make $1000 through their original plan make them earn $800 from the backup.

When they make plans, make sure it's something only they would think of. My MC for example found a monster that can control goblins. Normal people would simply use it as an easier way of hunting goblins.

Spoiler: What my MC plans.

Kills all the useless goblins, moves all the competent ones into a collapsed secret dungeon, has them start breeding and builds up a civilization of evolved goblins that not only serve as a disposable army so that he can rebel against his own nation but also serve as a sweatshop that mass produces mediocre gear he can sell.