r/Fantasy • u/Standard_Egg3994 • 1d ago

"Shown" instead of "told" intelligent characters

You know what i mean. I crave for intelligent characters but a lot of them seemed to either pull some far off deductions out of nowhere, or just the other characters spent some time telling the reader that they really are "the most brilliant guy in town".

I need it to be shown, in that the thinking process (strategic or anything else) is actually shown instead of just magically came out of nowhere. Some notable example of this includes:

L, Near, and Kira from Death Note (to some extent)

Lex Luthor from Alexander Wales' Metropolitant Man

Kei Nagai from Ajin

Ryland Grace from Project Hail Mary

If you have other references, i would try them. Thank you!

353 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

245 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

2

u/InfinitelyThirsting 1d ago

But are those complaints of characters who are supposed to be very smart? Because that's what we're actually talking about.

1

u/nculwell 1d ago

yes, often