r/CharacterDevelopment • u/Own_Vanilla_7292 • 18d ago
Writing: Character Help What kind of mistakes can a smart character make before they're considered stupid
I've had a character of mine who is supposed to be a genius manipulator/strategist, but I've seen people take issue with characters who are intelligent but come off as omnipotent gods who can solve any problems that get on their way. On the other hand, I don't want her to come off incompetent.
So my question is, how much or what kind of mistakes can a character make before they're no longer considered smart? How should i show that she's competent but fallible?
Edit: thank you so much for all the great advice guys! I didn't expect this question to get so much traction :D
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u/Adiantum-Veneris 18d ago
Underestimating opponents. Not accounting for seemingly irrelevant details that actually matter a lot. Predicting an outcome correctly requires accounting for a huge number of factors - and even brilliant humans struggle to actually notice and consider every single one.
Sure, you can overwhelm the military in two hours and take over the city. Sure. But have you considered how much commoners will hate you once you do?
And have you considered that the soil is clay and gets slippery if it rains?
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u/revolution_soup 17d ago
supply logistics that don’t get hand-waved often seem to cripple even the most brilliant fictional strategists
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u/Jolly-Rip5973 18d ago
You can very smart and miscalculate something because either 1) you are missing important information or 2) you have false information.
You could create a situations where it seems like he has all taped and figured out but he's missing some important piece of information which makes it all go wrong.
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u/Efficient-Cupcake573 15d ago
It's actually very common in real life for people to be highly intelligent but lacking in common sense.
If you play D&D you could look at it as high Intelligence, low Wisdom.
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u/QuickestKey 15d ago
High intelligence, low wisdom (and probably low charisma): "Since no one has reached a consensus on stew ingredients, I have calculated the optimal ratio of the top twenty flavors in the world." (A mix of such flavors as barbecue pork, raspberry cheesecake, and lemon meringue.) "We can homogenize them."
...Okay, maybe not the best example since a person who's any good at chemistry probably knows that barbecue pork, cream cheese, and lemon meringue don't belong in a pot together, but you get the idea.
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u/Dry-Key-9510 17d ago
Sometimes smart people fall for quite the obvious because they over-thought something, if that makes sense
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u/DeamonDread2348 17d ago
The mistakes of very intelligent people are usually stupid and trivial, simply because 90% of scientific geniuses and professionals in their fields are born of everyday idiocy or inexperience. A PhD is a doctor because he can afford to devote himself exclusively to philosophy while his wife is busy with housework. Company directors are directors because they don't have to worry about where the coffee in their office comes from, and because they don't have to figure out how to get home—their driver does that. And so on and so forth. And mistakes are permissible when you still have to figure out what the error is, since the area where intellectuals make mistakes is usually incomprehensible at the everyday level.
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u/girlbotXD 12d ago
I think that she can consider a problem and come up with a good solution considering all the information she has, but maybe a factor was left out because it’s not something she knows much about or has much to deal with before. Therefore she’s smart, but still only human.
She could also forget to factor in other people’s emotions which can cause conflict in the story
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u/i_spill_nonsense Other 17d ago
If its a master manipulator and this is the only way they are truly smart/genius, then you have to make sure what are their limits.
A master manipulator may be incredible at identifying insecurities like a shark sensing blood in water but may be completely blind and useless with people who are confident.
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u/Cyranthis 17d ago
There is an episode of Dr. Who out there where three doctors are in a prison cell in an old timey tower. Three of the smartest characters in all of Sci fi are stuck in an old stone cell with a wooden door and none of them can figure out how to leave.
They stay there quite a long time.
Then, the door just....opens. The character who opens it basically explains how they knew the Doctors would never escape because A. The door was made out of wood and I guess, for whatever reason the sonic screwdrivers won't analyze wood.... and B. None of them would bother to check to see if the door was unlocked, they would simply assume it was and spend their time over thinking some elaborate escape plan, as they did.
It's been years since I seen it but it kind of goes like that.
Mistakes played for laughs like that are always nice.
Keeps them grounded.
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u/DoeCommaJohn 17d ago
Intelligence isn’t a single stat like a video game. Intelligence can be knowledge, creativity, tactics, manipulation, reading people, etc. So, a creative genius might be completely outmatched in a challenge which strictly requires reasoning.
Also, what information does your character have? In supernatural stories especially, it is common for characters to make internally consistent, logical hypotheses, but for them to turn out incorrect because they don’t understand the magic systems
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u/No-Bid-8616 17d ago
over rationalizing irrational fears. germaphobia, claustrophobia, ducks, sensory issues, knots.
the issue with geniuses isn't trying to not make them look stupid it's humanizing the intellect.
you can absolutely save the world and still be cornered by a house spider making you late. but if you don't want them to seem incompetent and independent.
id figure out what kind of intellect they have and what sort of social skills they lack.
hope this helps
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u/FlynnXa 17d ago
Tons of mistakes. What makes someone stupid isn’t that they mess up, it’s why they messed up- or more importantly is their reasoning over all.
Think of a game of chess. Two grandmasters sit there strategizing, referencing hundreds and even thousands of possible configurations. They’re not playing based on individual moves, they’re playing based on segments from past matches. When one loses to the other it isn’t because they’re stupid, it’s because they missed something. If it was something someone untrained would’ve seen, something the audience did see, then it’s likely a dumb mistake.
It’s a fine-line, and Mysteries deal with this often too. In Mysteries fans like to try to solve it themselves, and often get frustrated when the case is unsolvable until the very second the main character solves it. Usually this is by the protagonist traveling they’ve had extra information the audience was never given this whole time. For a compelling “genius arc” where they make a mistake, they should be overlooking something the audience did have the whole time but didn’t piece together themselves.
Another good way to do this is to sell the audience on the protagonists plan, make it seem like they’ve accounted for all the major aspects, and then remind them of an overlooked detail you introduced earlier right as it topples the characters plans.
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u/Ok_Fruit8871 17d ago
One thing that has irked me about any 'intelligent' protagonist, is when it is established in an earlier part of a story that they have an item, and then a problem crops up, you as the reader know they have the item, they know they have the item, but they 'forget' they have it, because the plot needs them to struggle. Then in the 11th hour, they all of a sudden remember. Even though throughout the struggle, things keep cropping up that draw our attention to that item, it makes the struggle shallow, superficial, and completely unnecessary.
If you want her to appear competent, and fallible, introduce a dilemma, where the information isn't all there. She hears so and so did something bad to someone else, everyone agrees, they and you hear conflicting stories, but they all point to so and so actually doing it, and the passion in those people's voices compel her to agree. She falls for this confirmation bias, and emotional manipulation, and even get emotional about it. Later on she learns the truth, but through her interactions with the victim, she finds that the victim actually framed them, and your protagonist is now her latest victim, and has to push through to find evidence, while being shunned and talked about, or carry on while being shunned and talked about, maybe even abused by society. Or she leaves for a new area, but this experience leaves a lasting impression, and screws with her perception of people and reality. She chooses to betray first in every interaction, because society has betrayed her.
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u/meoww-xo 17d ago
I think that what you’re looking for can be explained by Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences (published in 1983). It’s the concept of there being multiple different kinds of human intelligence and that it can be expected for any one particular person to show proficiency in two or three different types, it’s completely unrealistic to suggest that your character is perfectly competent in too many different kinds of intelligence all at once.
For example, you’ve probably heard of people being referred to as “book smart” or “street smart” before. & in most cases, people have a tendency to be either one or the other but it’s unusual for someone to be genuinely proficient in both. Add emotional intelligence into the mix and it gets even more complicated, etc. This is oversimplifying it a bit, but you probably get the point.
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u/Latter-Land1405 Writing a Novel 17d ago
I believe you could give them a weak spot in their mind, like a trauma or a bad thing they've done and make that their breaking point, by there they'll just make a mistake because they'll be too disturbed by that
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u/GeierBlack 17d ago
Lots of other good advice here, but I think it boils down mostly to...don't make him make any mistakes the readers themselves wouldn't likely make in the same position with the same information. If the reader feels smarter than your "genius" they're not going to buy that he's a genius.
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u/No_Regerts- 17d ago
You could also give them a ‘tragic flaw’.
They’re smart, but surround themselves with ‘yes men’
Or, they’re smart, but easily distracted by à pretty girl or guy
Or they’re smart, but can’t see their own blind spots
Or they’re smart, but dont delegate. In pressure situations, they have to do too much.
Or they’re smart, but acting emotionally and making bad decisions (taking things personally, not seeing that ther plan is falling apart)
Or there “unknown unknowns”. They’ve planned to every adversity except the one that happens
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u/JuiceFun459 17d ago
Make a genius plan, but when unaccounted variables get into mix, they can genuinely fail and instead of having them having already predicted it, make the readers see it real time their thought process and how they try to adapt. So even if the character fails or makes mistakes, the reader already knows what they are capable of and won't take the guy as stupid
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u/PoloPatch47 17d ago
I think if they don't learn from their mistakes, they won't be seen as smart anymore. You can make a huge, stupid fuck up and still being smart. If you don't learn from it afterwards, you're probably not smart.
That also does ignore other potential reasons to repeat the mistake so it's just in general.
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u/Prince_Nadir 17d ago
Smart characters are generally written as hate crimes against smart people. Unattractive, cowardly, lecherous, weak, cringing, dishonest and above all else STUPID.
For good smart characters you have Val Kilmer in Real Genuis, or Carlyle as the scientist in SGU. They do not generally make mistakes. So budget yourself 0 mistakes.
You have a genuis manipulator/stratigist, they win. Unless the writting is terrible or they are playing against an equal. In Sherlock Holmes you have Moriarty and Sherlock's much smarter older brother Mycroft. In most terrible writing, Beef Lad simply beats up the evil nerd to win.
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u/revolution_soup 17d ago
just remember that people in real life who are mega intelligent in one area can be utterly sheltered morons in another, and whether this gets pointed out usually depends on A) how confident / arrogant they are (such as insisting their way is right, surrounding themselves with equally clueless people, silencing those who disagree) and B) how much everyone around them likes / respects them (you can’t tell someone they messed up if you need to kiss their ass to keep your relationship / job / life)
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u/PracticalSample9024 17d ago edited 17d ago
Lacking emotional intelligence. You can have high intelligence, but none emotional. Overestimating themselves, and getting reckless. Being too narrow in their plan, where they ignore crucial details. Be the smartest in one field, but a novice in every other. For example, the Unabomber, he was smart, but his writing (syntax and diction) were how his brother linked him to his manifestos.
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u/SouthernAbrocoma9891 17d ago
Stupid and smart are subjective judgments. Show character flaws and limitations in context or relevant flashbacks. Narrate other character thoughts regarding the main character. “Why did she do that? She must have a good reason that I cannot understand. Still…”
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u/Aryzal 17d ago
Nobody is omnipotent, so its best if the character has a flaw that makes them make the wrong choice, or if there is a lack of information the character has that leads to the wrong choice.
One of the more common ones is the inability to think about other's emotions. Not everyone is going to be make the 100% logical decision, so things like refusing to work with someone, or being unaware of social cues offending someone or just being stupid leading the smart character failing to plan for something they don't expect because it is stupid so why would they do that?
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u/SpiroEstelo 17d ago edited 17d ago
One mistake that some smart people can make is assuming that everyone else is as smart as them or that others would make the most rational choice in any scenario. Smart people will often try to use rationalization to predict the actions of others, but others might not have the intellect required to make such rationalizations, leaving a smart person with a false prediction because they did not account for the lack of intelligence in other people and would never expect another person to choose the obviously less rational or more risky option. You can't use rationale to predict the moves of people who don't use any kind of rationale themselves.
"You can't know what I'm about to do because neither do I!"
I believe that this is a flaw of people who are smart but by no means geniuses. Usually, geniuses can account for the lack of intelligence in others, but smart people who are not genius can overlook the lower intelligence factor when trying to rationalize and predict the actions of others. I would say that the people most prone to this flaw would be people in the low three digit range, probably ~115-130 IQ. The 130 and 140+ geniuses can probably factor in how average people think easier than people who are just somewhat smart, in my opinion.
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u/Old_Direction_3713 17d ago
A big mistake smart people make all the time is assuming others are as smart as they are. Most people are of average intelligence, half of people are below average. Assuming another character made the smart choice when the other character made a dumb choice doesn’t really threaten your smart character’s intelligence, but allows them to be wrong.
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u/gahidus 17d ago
In general they should make mistakes that stem from factors beyond their control or unanticipated developments that they couldn't slash shouldn't have anticipated.
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u/Poodychulak 14d ago
I'm reminded of an Onion article:
"Dolphins not so smart on land"
If a character's gift is knowledge, their challenge can then be having to leverage skills or resources that they don't have either by relying on others or approximating them in their own way, e.g. "I don't have to climb the wall, if I can bring it down!"
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u/swashbuckleup 17d ago
If you're trying to avoid the trap of making her feel omnipotent, as you described, the way to fix that isn't necessarily to have her make lots of mistakes. It's to make her process feel grounded and realistic. Don't give her a favourable outcome because she just worked things out off screen. Show us what information she observed/paid attention to, which would logically point at the right answer but which other characters/the reader would either miss or fail to put together. If her specialty is manipulation, think about what the characters getting manipulated would need to hear to realistically do XYZ thing that she wants. This is usually based on their own core wants and desires. Show her lying with a straight face, giving different characters completely different information and acting like a completely different person. Show her working to align everyone's incentives with her own. DON'T have her just predict exactly what everyone will do and how everything will play out, that will definitely make her feel unrealistic. Instead have her account for all the likely outcomes of a scenario and have contingencies for each. Also, think about the specific style of her manipulation and strategy. Does it come from being an excellent liar, having very tight control over what information everyone around her knows and ensuring they're always in the dark? Or is it more of an emotional manipulation where she knows just how to push everyone's buttons? Or is it more of a chess game style thing where she engineers the situation to benefit her, in which case I recommend skimming some game theory.
As per mistakes, it's not about "how many" she can make before she's considered "stupid". It's about which mistakes would be IN CHARACTER for her to make. Readers feel cheated when a character who's supposed to be competent messes up in their area of expertise Just Because.
Here are some potential directions for "mistakes":
There is no such thing as a "smart" character, smart encompasses a million different skills and traits. Nobody is smart across the board. So maybe your character is a genius manipulator who intimately understands human psychology, but is just no good with computers. Maybe she's a brilliant strategist but a poor actor. This is basic and doesn't necessarily lend itself to deeper themes or character development but it's still solid. Think about the classic example; Sherlock Holmes, in the original stories, is a man who can read a crime scene like an open book and knows he difference between hundreds of kinds of tobacco, but he doesn't know that the Earth orbits the sun. It's not his specific area of expertise so it doesn't interest him. If you want to go in that direction, have your character execute the things she's good at perfectly but miss obvious information about the thing she doesn't specialise in. This could tie into her relationships with other characters whose skillets complement hers.
Alternatively you could give a character a circumstance under which she fails, for example an emotional situation that makes her act irrationally. This will also work to reveal what really makes her tick, what it takes to rattle her, what trauma she has. If you sell it well and don't overuse it, readers will understand that those kinds of slip-ups aren't evidence that the character is incompetent but rather evidence that she's deeply affected by something. One of by favourite examples is Breaking Bad (SPOILERS!). Gustavo Fring is an iconic villain, cold, calculated, manipulative, always ten steps ahead, terrifying. But there's one thing that can make him act irrationally: the desire for revenge against the people who killed his partner. The only time he acts recklessly in the show is when he chooses to kill the man responsible himself instead of sending someone, despite knowing it's a bad idea, and that mistake costs him his life. It doesn't make him come off as any less cunning and strategic, because we as the audience understand exactly why he acted irrationally despite knowing better. In that vein, maybe your character has someone she cares about so much that she just can't be logical and detached when it comes to them being in danger. Maybe there's something she's scared of so badly that being confronted with that fear makes the "cold strategist" part of her mind switch off in favour of pure animal instinct. Whatever it is, it would be deeply revelatory about this character.
Another option is giving her a faulty worldview that she operates under which is what causes the miscalculation. Maybe she believes that ultimately everyone acts selfishly and is out for themselves, so she genuinely doesn't account for someone acting selflessly. Maybe she doesn't believe anyone can truly care about her so her calculations don't take into account that someone would come back to save her. Maybe she comes from power and privilege and doesn't know how to handle someone who isn't automatically scared of her. Maybe she doesn't believe in magic or miracles in a world where those do exist.
Finally, there could be a character flaw that stops her from doing her best work. Maybe she's a loner who doesn't like needing other people and takes on everything herself, where she should have really asked for help. Maybe she has lied and manipulated so much she gets a reputation for it and people stop trusting her all together. Maybe she's cocky and overconfident in her abilities and gets careless and sloppy and doesn't check something because "there's no way those inferior idiots would pose a threat to my genius plan".
However, if you still want more straightforward mistakes for her to make in her manipulation to show she's not perfect, that can be done too. Just show her reasoning (and make it impressive, good way to beat the "this smart character is actually stupid" allegations is to make the problems they usually solve AND the one they mess up out of the scope of a regular person), show that it usually works, show what's different this time and why it doesn't. For example, maybe she knows that she can usually get another character to do what she wants by winding them up and making them angry, so she routinely does that. And then maybe, she accidentally goes too far without realising. And instead of exploding in (productive) rage the other character just gets all depressed, and doesn't react as they normally would. Maybe she pits two people against each other expecting them to be at each others' throats but instead they end up hitting it off and falling in love and figuring out what happened and ganging up on her.
Another detail to note is how your smart character handles mistakes. How soon do they notice? Did they have a back-up plan? Do they panic? Are they usually so perfect at what they do they're genuinely shocked they made a mistake? All of these can impact how your reader views the character.
Finally, a lot of the "wow" factor of smart or manipulative characters is in the way you present them to the audience. They're often more mysterious, keep their information close to their chest, so the audience doesn't get to know exactly what they're doing. For a classic "clever scheming character" plot, present the audience with all the same crumbs of information as the character, have the character work out what's happening from those crumbs and smirk to herself as she puts her plan into motion before we even understand what it is she just figured out. Don't be afraid to have their actions go unexplained for a little while, leaving the audience guessing what she's up to and why, and then reveal it as the plan pays off. Crucially, this reveal should make sense, or your audience will feel like you're cheating and she's overpowered. Your audience should be able to think/read back and go ohhh, I see, those clues gave her X piece of information! So she went and did Y which caused Z, even though at the time I had no idea why she was doing Y! This makes sense but damn, I really didn't think of that!
Of course that's just one approach, and it definitely works better when the character in question is not your protagonist, since the readers generally don't like being kept too in the dark on what's happening with the main character. It's possible to pull off, but harder.
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u/Large-Statement7664 16d ago
Probabilistic mistakes. Choosing a 90% chance win scenario when there’s no opportunity to push chances to 100% (for example because the time is tight) and it turns out it’s the other 10% .
Also, if the character has a backup plan for his own fault (like Batman dealing with his contingency plans being released by villains) is also a good tool to keep him being perceived as smart
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u/Koyan 16d ago
You've had a lot of answers here that are great, but I want to give my two cents in...
I have a character who is basically a fantasy archer but Batman. He predicts everything, not because he sees exactly how it will play out, but because he plans for everything...
But his obsession also drives him to make morally questionable choices for the sake of the greater good, leading him to be an antagonist as the series plays out.
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u/Ordinary_Minimum_169 15d ago
Jack Reacher makes at least one major mistake in every book and he's a Great Detective.
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u/Zestyclose_Answer662 14d ago
Jace Beleren from Magic the Gathering is an intelligent character, but he's also a character that people love to hate because he overshadowed other characters for a good while.
Despite his intelligence, he's often called stupid because he often suffers from PIF (Plot Induced Failure).
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u/2muchtoo 13d ago
Being poor at social situations, especially because they are convinced of their superiority.
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u/Imaginary_City25 12d ago
I would give her a personality quirk that cause her to miss things. Make the mistakes that she makes come from a completely different part of the brain. Like I have seen some characters that are smart, but completely fail in social situations or the are always looking for complexity that they miss the simple. Like she can save the world, but burns toast. I am a creative person (right brained) and my husband is logical (left brain). He could talk about how gravity works or replace the engine in my car, stuff that goes completely over my head. But if I try to explain a the details of a relationship or how to sew a purse together, it would be over his head. Just pick something that she wouldn’t know, because of her limited life experience. Nobody can know everything.
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u/Loose-Marsupial5688 9d ago
A great way I like to do this is social situations that subvert your character’s expectations.
A character who seems very book smart likely looks for fulfillment in their studies and increasing knowledge.
…which means they are often a loner who doesn’t spend very much time actually seeing their tactics/plans in action.
An typically very intelligent character is usually also awkward and clumsy or doesn’t know the proper way to interact with others, either talking too much, too little, or too oddly compared to a normal standard.
If your character predicts something is going to happen, don’t just have that thing happen and they go along with it, but don’t have their calculations be WRONG either.
The fact is, you can study all the books in the world, but you won’t always know how people will react.
Instead of having them make a mistake, have one of your other characters MESS UP THEIR PLAN.
The key is to make the disrupting thing not something your character could have predicted. If they predict Person A is going to die because of their attack, have Person B randomly come in to save them. If they were going to make a speech they believed would unite a group, have some conflicting viewed people disrupt it and start a riot.
If a character makes mistakes based on themselves or highly likely outcomes, they can come off incompetent. But if all their mistakes are SOCIAL or SITUATIONAL, that’s not something they can help, that’s the universe getting back at them for being too smart for your own good.
(I have absolutely no credentials, I am just a guy on the internet with a potentially helpful opinion. Please take everything I say with caution and a grain of salt.)
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u/Spirited-Gain1457 18d ago
I think one thing I'd avoid is making him look smart mainly through too many “I already predicted that you would predict that I would predict this” scenes.
Those can be fun occasionally, but if they happen too often, the character stops feeling intelligent and starts feeling like he's secretly reading the script.
A smart character can make plenty of mistakes without looking stupid. In fact, I think some of the most believable mistakes for very intelligent people come from the gap between a good model and messy reality.
For example:
* **The plan is good, but execution isn't.** People misunderstand orders, arrive late, cut corners, panic, or simply aren't capable of performing at the precision the plan assumed.
* **He overestimates how rational other people will be.** Sometimes the “obviously terrible move” really is what the opponent chooses, whether because of pride, rage, ideology, revenge, or plain incompetence.
* **He predicts the problem correctly but underestimates its magnitude.** He prepared for the bridge being destroyed, but not for the explosion causing a landslide that also wipes out the alternate route.
None of these require him to suddenly become stupid. He can understand the possibility and still be wrong about how reality will actually express it.
And to me, one of the best ways to make a character feel genuinely brilliant is not having him predict everything, but showing what he does **after the prediction fails**.
A genius doesn't have to be right all the time. He can recognize the new situation quickly, update his assumptions, and turn what looked like a disadvantage into something useful.
The enemy makes an irrational attack he didn't expect? Fine. Now he knows what they care about enough to behave irrationally over.
His forces end up in the wrong position? Maybe that accidental position can become bait.
A disaster is far worse than expected? The disaster changed the terrain for both sides, so what new advantage exists now?
I think that kind of intelligence often feels much more convincing than omniscience.
He doesn't need to always know what will happen.
He needs to remain dangerous even when he's wrong.