...Is bloody fuckin' hard. And before someone says that it's not, let me warn you: I have a very smelly, very dead fish to smack you with if you say it.
I see the mouths snapping shut from here.
You see, the thing about writing a genius character is that you either underdo it ('Jimmy saw the paper-clip, and realised that the thief had obviously removed it from the stack of deeds he had stolen') or overdo it ('Jimmy looked at the lake and realised that the evil Dr. Amorpheus had stolen the keys to President Reagan's personal go-cart and was planning on rigging it with atomic bombs stolen from Area 51'). Genius is hard to capture in real life, but in fiction? Fuck looking for a needle in a haystack, you're looking for one atom of anti-grav per several billion iron atoms (Thanks, Whitley Strieber!)
So, what makes a genius different from other people (other than being really smart?) Seriously, think about this. Do you personally know anyone you would describe as brilliant? What else is different about them? Somehow, I doubt they use their 'powers' of intelligence to score chicks. And, if they do -- wow, you've got some kick-ass friends. I also doubt that they use them to solve crimes or save the world. Triple the badass if you know one who does all three. Watching a James Bond movie does not count.
No, genuine genii are hard to capture in a few words. I mean, they're smart, yeah. But that whole idea that with brilliance comes madness? Yeah, that's not too far off the mark. That link leads to a site dedicated to psychiatric patients who are really fucking smart. Articles, forums, the whole shebang de bang (I also really like the name Icarus Project. Go to the forum page).
The thing about really smart people is that, well, your character is likely way smarter than you. Statistically. Not sayin' you're stupid, or something, but the threshold for MENSA application (depending on which test you take, of course) is 132 for the Stanford-Binet, 148 for the Cattel, or at least in the 98th percentile. Just to put that in perspective: average scores are 90-109, a 100 on the Cattel, or really anything below 97%. It's really, really hard to be classified as a genius. Brilliance, however, may be closer to you than you think.
Brilliance is not the lack of genius, but rather the lack of classification. Everyone has their moment in the sun, and if writing a brilliant character is too difficult (or too out of the question), writing a character with those occasional bursts of beyond-the-pale intelligence is within the ballpark.
Victory will have to do a full post (or several. Or a novel) on the art of characterisation, but for now, the genius post will do. I think at some point I'll address archetypes...
Oh! And keep this on the down low, but in a couple months you might see the advent of a new set of artists, here in podunky Vermont. Proser Studios... we shall see...
God, it's good to be back.
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