Writing Believable character interaction: Commanding officer and the new officer

[MadmanRB]

So as I work out the kinks in my story, I came up with a scenario that I want some second opinions on.
Believability is something I know most people complain about these days, so I'm trying to apply some common sense here.
So here is the scenario, I have a commanding officer who is leading his team into a dangerous situation.
And I have my MC who is fresh on the team interact with him and give recommendations.
Now my MC's character trait is that he is incredibly book smart, I even had the commanding officer give him a mini test to prove this.
So when they go into the dangerous situation, the commanding officer actually lets my MC take charge of strategy.
Now my logic is simple, the commander tested him earlier and saw how smart he is.
The MC proved his worth to him, even without much field experience.
Now, one thing I did to counter any Mary sue claims is that I made my MC humble, and he does have some internal conflict.
Sure, he's incredibly smart, but that doesn't mean he has no character flaws.
He does have some self-confidence issues, while not blatant in his characterization, I hint at it with a sense of queasiness.
Still, my logic on why the commanding officer listens to my MC is that he is aware of his intelligence, and like any good commanding officer listens to his subordinates.
If my MC is so smart, why not use his knowledge to help ensure the mission is successful?
After all, the enemy they face has proven to be illusive, no one has been able to catch them so far.
I am kind of thinking on how Star Trek does this, where say there is a new officer and the captain listens to their input.
After all, my goal is to push the story forward, and I don't want the majority of my story eaten up by my MC earning his keep.
Besides, that is not what the story is about, It's what happens during this mission is where my story starts proper.
The first chapter I introduced my MC and his universe
second chapter I introduce my villains.
Third chapter I introduce a key secondary character
and now I am here... where to make my MC more tragic, I plan to do something nasty to him.
I won't spoil what but let's just say the mission goes wrong.
I mean that alone should help alleviate the Mary sue factor, as while my MC was able to accurately pinpoint when and where the events occur he still can't predict the future.
No he came to most of this due to detective work, my MC is a detective at heart and has a batman level of deduction due to his studies.
But what do you think?

 

[KiraMinoru]

So as I work out the kinks in my story, I came up with a scenario that I want some second opinions on.
Believability is something I know most people complain about these days, so I'm trying to apply some common sense here.
So here is the scenario, I have a commanding officer who is leading his team into a dangerous situation.
And I have my MC who is fresh on the team interact with him and give recommendations.
Now my MC's character trait is that he is incredibly book smart, I even had the commanding officer give him a mini test to prove this.
So when they go into the dangerous situation, the commanding officer actually lets my MC take charge of strategy.
Now my logic is simple, the commander tested him earlier and saw how smart he is.
The MC proved his worth to him, even without much field experience.
Now, one thing I did to counter any Mary sue claims is that I made my MC humble, and he does have some internal conflict.
Sure, he's incredibly smart, but that doesn't mean he has no character flaws.
He does have some self-confidence issues, while not blatant in his characterization, I hint at it with a sense of queasiness.
Still, my logic on why the commanding officer listens to my MC is that he is aware of his intelligence, and like any good commanding officer listens to his subordinates.
If my MC is so smart, why not use his knowledge to help ensure the mission is successful?
After all, the enemy they face has proven to be illusive, no one has been able to catch them so far.
I am kind of thinking on how Star Trek does this, where say there is a new officer and the captain listens to their input.
After all, my goal is to push the story forward, and I don't want the majority of my story eaten up by my MC earning his keep.
Besides, that is not what the story is about, It's what happens during this mission is where my story starts proper.
The first chapter I introduced my MC and his universe
second chapter I introduce my villains.
Third chapter I introduce a key secondary character
and now I am here... where to make my MC more tragic, I plan to do something nasty to him.
I won't spoil what but let's just say the mission goes wrong.
I mean that alone should help alleviate the Mary sue factor, as while my MC was able to accurately pinpoint when and where the events occur he still can't predict the future.
No he came to most of this due to detective work, my MC is a detective at heart and has a batman level of deduction due to his studies.
But what do you think?

Whatever test he was given, if it wasn’t the real thing, it doesn’t mean squat. People can do well in a test, but when confronted with a real world situation it’s typically meaningless, the commander should be aware of that. The commander may ask for their analysis of a situation to grasp the MCs abilities and basic understanding, but it stops at that. The commander should be able to point out the flaws in that plan using their own personal experience and practical knowledge out in the field compared to the MC’s purely theoretical by the books approach. The MC would not have the same level of adaptability to change as the commander would because of the absence of pressure that you only truly experience during the real thing.

Book smarts will only take you so far. Theoretical knowledge is merely a foundation, a building block. Practical knowledge is the glue that sticks it all together and makes it work in the real world.

A good rule of thumb any commander should go by is to never underestimate the enemy and acknowledge if someone on our side could think of this, someone on the enemy’s side could have thought of it too. How would the enemy counter such a plan if things didn’t play out as it should in theory if it was known to the enemy? And if they did use this counter, what would we do?

 

[MadmanRB]

True, and it's not like the commander doesn't ask questions.
I make sure the commander doesn't just go on a limb here, mind you.
Plus, this mission could be a way for the commanding officer to fully test the mind of the MC in on itself.
I mean, it's not fully in the wrong for the commanding officer to let my MC come up with tactics to fully scope out his ability.
Sure, I am fully aware that book smarts don't equal experience, but that doesn't mean the commanding officer has to brush him off.
Perhaps the commanding officer wants a fresh perspective?
After all, the group my MC is a part of has yet to have success against the villains of my story, perhaps the commander officer can use a fresh mind.
Even experienced officers welcome new perspectives now and then, would seem logical, methinks.

 

[KiraMinoru]

True, and it's not like the commander doesn't ask questions.
I make sure the commander doesn't just go on a limb here, mind you.
Plus this mission could be a way to fully test the mind of the MC in on itself.
I mean its not fully in the wrong for the commanding officer to let my MC come up with tactics to fully scope out his ability.
Sure I am fully aware that book smarts dont equal experience, but that doesnt mean the commanding officer has to brush him off.
Perhaps the commanding officer wants a fresh perspective?
After all the group my MC is a part of has yet to have success against the villains of my story, perhaps the commander officer can use a fresh mind.
Even experienced officers welcome new perspectives now and then, would seem logical methinks.

The entire point of hearing his analysis is to get a fresh perspective, but he’s still not going to use that plan as it is. Because if someone on his side thought of it, it’s better to assume the enemy has thought of it too.

You don’t test someone’s mind on a battlefield. That’s playing and gambling with people’s lives. A commander’s every decision bears a great weight.

The best sort of plan is one where even if the enemy knows what your plan is, they can do nothing to stop it. Unless the plan proposed is one of that caliber, the commander shouldn’t blindly go along with it as it is proposed.

 

[GodlessEmperor]

IRL at most he might ask for his opinion after everything is over. DO NOT ask a newbie to do anything, no matter how good they solved some kind of test, in action. It's completely different from a test.
The officer also realistically shouldn't have any trust in the MC in that situation, he has his vice in command in case he can't give orders or if he wants a second opinion on a plan. Asking the 'promising' MC is only something anyone would do when there is nothing important going on.
In this scenario you won't be able to achieve 100% believability without some 'great luck' like all higher ups being on the verge of death and the commander telling everyone else to listen to the MC or by going a route like KidaMinoru said and having the MC give his opinion and the commander somehow not having thought of a basic thing which he then builds into the plan. If you really want believability you should go for a time skip where MC proves his worth and quickly climbs a commander in just a few 5 years or so, but I suppose that's not what you would want in your story lol.

 

[Werelure]

It could be different from country to country but generally military commanders are not allowed to break chain of command unless it's some special situation so MC should be second in command to begin with for this to work realistically or it should be some not so dangerous situation that suddenly turned dangerous when it was too late to change anything.

 

[Kilolo]

erm, first of all. you said commander right? but what about the MC? is he still a private or already at least 2nd lieutenant position?
why i ask? because ranks matters by a lot in military position.

let's just assume you're not using an actual American military rank as a reference, and and the term of commander you using here is just a person who lead 100-man squad (in other reference it usually be called a Captain, but let's just call it Commander here). so this commander you say in a certain mission leading and in responsibility with lives of 100 people under his wing, i'm sure as heck you wouldn't just leisurely wrote as if the commander use 100 man just as a pawn wouldn't you? i'm not saying you can't wrote the commander as such character, but leisurely is the keyword, you can't simply shrug it off as if it were nothing, that would be an awfully bad writing.

and here's the thing you i need you to understand the most : live is at stake here, someone with a leader position are expected to take an action that wouldn't endanger people around his authority.
a commander asking a low soldier to strategize and decide the army movement? sure. but by no means, any commander do that PRIVATELY alone with the MC, at the very least the vice-commander should be presents to offering a second opinion and prevent bias. because seriously, what at stake here is the live of 100 people.

all of those are just assumption if the MC is just taking care of a strategy for 100 men lives, now i want you to imagine how bigger the moral issue if the scale is bigger than that.

the first thing to consider here is about ethic, and then the commander personality, and what MC take about them.
if you can consider them as a base, then the flow could come naturally to you on it's own.

 

[MadmanRB]

Let me clarify a few things a bit here:

Well I am not talking about an army here nor a war.
This is a small scale skirmish between a gang of criminals/terrorist and what is in essence a police force/anti-terrorist group.
At best, either side has at least 20 members in this skirmish.
It's not like this skirmish will hold the fate of a nation, though it is a key event in my story.
In terms of pecking order, the commanding officer is three maybe four ranks above my MC, so it's not like he's some 5 star general.
And while it's true my MC is new to this situation, I do mention he had training and limited field experience.
It's just this current mission is his first time as a full member of his group and in a situation like this.

Also, let's talk about my commanding officer character a bit, he's going to be an ally of my MC later on, so I can't make the commanding officer that hostile or unfriendly to my MC.
He is captain yes and my MC is a private in comparison, but that doesn't mean my captain character earned that rank from sheer experience or work in the field.
Actually he was placed as captain by my stories secondary antagonist and in my universe the captain is more like a glorified desk job.
As captain yes, he has authority over most of the affairs of this unit but hes not the one fully calling the shots.
the secondary antagonist promoted him mainly to get the captain character out of the way of his own goals.
the situation is a little more complex than your typical military ranking situation and is a plot point in my story.

 

[MadmanRB]

IRL at most he might ask for his opinion after everything is over. DO NOT ask a newbie to do anything, no matter how good they solved some kind of test, in action. It's completely different from a test.
The officer also realistically shouldn't have any trust in the MC in that situation, he has his vice in command in case he can't give orders or if he wants a second opinion on a plan. Asking the 'promising' MC is only something anyone would do when there is nothing important going on.
In this scenario you won't be able to achieve 100% believability without some 'great luck' like all higher ups being on the verge of death and the commander telling everyone else to listen to the MC or by going a route like KidaMinoru said and having the MC give his opinion and the commander somehow not having thought of a basic thing which he then builds into the plan. If you really want believability you should go for a time skip where MC proves his worth and quickly climbs a commander in just a few 5 years or so, but I suppose that's not what you would want in your story lol.

Yeah if I structured my story in a normal military style story it would be 800 chapters before anything happened.
So yes I do have to make some shortcuts as this is an action/science fiction story.
It would sure as heck slow the pace of my story to a crawl, and I am aiming for something more action oriented.
If I was writing a story where a private became a general and the story centered around that, it would be more appropriate.

Here let me further clarify things farther so that any future commentary can be on the same page as me:



First: this is not a story about the army or military, nor is it about a character's journey to earn his rank to a higher grade.

Second: the genre is science fiction/fantasy/action so bogging my story down with chapters where my character goes from private to a higher rank is not an option.

Third: I choose to make my character new to his team of cops/anti terrorists so that when something happens to my MC we can sympathize with him more. A theme of my story is youth cut down by circumstance and my MC overcoming this.

Fourth: I don’t want my MC to have too much time on the force, as he is intentionally young, 25 years old at start of my story.

Fifth: there is a plot in my story where the force my MC is a member of has become corrupt. My MC is good-natured at heart so having too much time on his belt would make the audience wonder why he sticks with my cops/anti terrorists when they do nasty things.

I figured starting him relatively fresh would be a good way for the audience to understand him and what makes what's going to happen to him even more tragic.

Sixth: I want at least one or two good guy authority figures in my story, with most of the others corrupt there has to be someone in my organization who values justice over brutality.

Seventh: and I want one of those characters to be of a higher rank than my MC, someone who spent years in the service who can become their ally later on and uses his powers to help my MC.



So yeah thats what I have as otherwise I would spoil my plot.

 

[GodlessEmperor]

Let me clarify a few things a bit here:

Well I am not talking about an army here nor a war.
This is a small scale skirmish between a gang of criminals/terrorist and what is in essence a police force/anti-terrorist group.
At best, either side has at least 20 members in this skirmish.
It's not like this skirmish will hold the fate of a nation, though it is a key event in my story.
In terms of pecking order, the commanding officer is three maybe four ranks above my MC, so it's not like he's some 5 star general.
And while it's true my MC is new to this situation, I do mention he had training and limited field experience.
It's just this current mission is his first time as a full member of his group and in a situation like this.

Also, let's talk about my commanding officer character a bit, he's going to be an ally of my MC later on, so I can't make the commanding officer that hostile or unfriendly to my MC.
He is captain yes and my MC is a private in comparison, but that doesn't mean my captain character earned that rank from sheer experience or work in the field.
Actually he was placed as captain by my stories secondary antagonist and in my universe the captain is more like a glorified desk job.
As captain yes, he has authority over most of the affairs of this unit but hes not the one fully calling the shots.
the secondary antagonist promoted him mainly to get the captain character out of the way of his own goals.
the situation is a little more complex than your typical military ranking situation and is a plot point in my story.

+

Yeah if I structured my story in a normal military style story it would be 800 chapters before anything happened.
So yes I do have to make some shortcuts as this is an action/science fiction story.
It would sure as heck slow the pace of my story to a crawl, and I am aiming for something more action oriented.
If I was writing a story where a private became a general and the story centered around that, it would be more appropriate.

Here let me further clarify things farther so that any future commentary can be on the same page as me:



First: this is not a story about the army or military, nor is it about a character's journey to earn his rank to a higher grade.

Second: the genre is science fiction/fantasy/action so bogging my story down with chapters where my character goes from private to a higher rank is not an option.

Third: I choose to make my character new to his team of cops/anti terrorists so that when something happens to my MC we can sympathize with him more. A theme of my story is youth cut down by circumstance and my MC overcoming this.

Fourth: I don’t want my MC to have too much time on the force, as he is intentionally young, 25 years old at start of my story.

Fifth: there is a plot in my story where the force my MC is a member of has become corrupt. My MC is good-natured at heart so having too much time on his belt would make the audience wonder why he sticks with my cops/anti terrorists when they do nasty things.

I figured starting him relatively fresh would be a good way for the audience to understand him and what makes what's going to happen to him even more tragic.

Sixth: I want at least one or two good guy authority figures in my story, with most of the others corrupt there has to be someone in my organization who values justice over brutality.

Seventh: and I want one of those characters to be of a higher rank than my MC, someone who spent years in the service who can become their ally later on and uses his powers to help my MC.



So yeah thats what I have as otherwise I would spoil my plot.

That's why I said a time-skip was one of the options you have, no need for 800 chapters. But if you want to keep your MC young and fresh that isn't an option. You gotta think of a scenario that'll make it believable that's more specific to your plot.
A hostile commander can still become an ally later on, no need to have him as an ally from the beginning so that is false. Humans have emotions and experiences and their opinion of others can and will change overtime unless they are cardboard characters, those stay forever. Well not everyone has t completely change but you know what I wanna say. Trash example: "Oh, youre so shmart, but you don't have any expewience you nerd!" ... "Wow, your deduction saved us multiple times in dire situations already, from now on I will support you, and even if your rank is low I'll make it so you can speak out in the future!"
I think it is fine to spoil in the authors forum? I mean just give a warning or something, use the spoiler tag yknow, more details = better help.
Points from everyone stand even if its not a war and "just some thugs" you say "just 20 people" but those have an aftereffect right? What happens when one side wins? People not involved get hurt. Noone has skirmishes without any reason (except street thugs and small gangs) something else happens in teh bigger picture, and that gets influenced so the responsibilty is still huge.
A good execution of this scenario would be tokyo revengers imo, but that wouldn't work out with you because the premise is extremely different. I tried to keep everything as general as I could. These aren't solutions or critique, just thought food you can ponder about. Maybe it helps.

 

[MadmanRB]

Well the thing is the organization my hero joins is already headed by a hostile character, I created the captain to be my MC's commissioner Gordon to his Batman.

If I must deliver my plot well...

My story is set on an alien world and my MC is an alien himself.
He lives in a mostly futuristic society and is a member of an organization called the Legion.
When my MC was younger, his father was a member of this legion, and he joined it to follow in his father's footsteps.
The legion once protected the innocent and the city from harm.
However, his city underwent a 9/11 scenario when an enemy nation attacked.
The city was a prime target due to it being the capital of the nation my story takes place in.
A war happened, and the enemy nation lost.
But now a string of refugees flee its boarders due to civil war.
Most came to my MC's city in search of better lives.
But while the city recovered from the attack physically, old hatreds still fester.
Now a gang of crooks from the enemy nation came with these refugees and have reopened old wounds.
Blinded by hate, the legion is now falling to corruption, my MC joined it in hopes of restoring the legion to its former glory (and his goal of following in his father's footsteps.)
And I wanted him to have allies among the higher ranks.
That's why I made his captain so affable and open, as he is one of the few good guys left in the legion.
He sees how smart and polite my MC is in comparison to the rest of the legion, and that is why my captain character has a connection with him.
The captain character himself is compassionate and hates what the legion has become, but that is why he is captain in the first place.
The real leader of the legion is an almost Ahab/Hitler figure, and my captain character was a nuisance to him.
I even mentioned this as a plot point, that by all accounts my captain would probably be more in the lines of being a commander or lieutenant.
Instead, his commanding officer chained him to a desk with limited authority other than having final say in some matters.
My captain character really doesn't have that much power TBH, he is captain in name only but remains de facto commanding officer in the field.
Thus, why in my mind at least the captain character listening to my MC despite his lack of experience makes some sense.
He sees my MC as a beacon of hope in the madness, and perhaps why he lets my MC have some freedom.
As unlike so many he encountered so far, my MC has a brain and the ability to think beyond the rigid, almost fascist mindset of the others.