Stupid Characters

[k_a_webb]

If there’s one thing I hate it’s reading a stupid character. Now, I don’t mean characters who do stupid things. I love it when characters do stupid things, which is probably why I make them do stupid things, because I like to see how they react to things when they realise they’ve made a huge mistake and working out how to get out of it (if that’s even possible). No, what I hate is characters who have information in front of them that means that they could work something out easily and yet they don’t.

Being unable to work something out can happen. I’m not saying that I think that all characters should know everything, but if I’ve worked out what’s going on and the character hasn’t… that’s a huge turn-off for me. I don’t want every character I read to be smart. That wouldn’t be any fun. At the same time I don’t want them all to be oblivious to obvious things.

I read two books in 2012 that had characters not working things out for themselves, when I’d already worked out the ‘major plot twist’, and it irritated me. They are not plot twists. If I know what’s happening and I’m pretty certain that most other readers would have done too, then it’s just an annoyance. When you have certain pieces of information in front of you and a character is still in the dark when they have the same information… I don’t know. Maybe I expect too much from my characters.

Either way, I’d really love to read some books where the characters aren’t stupid. I’d love for them to work out the ‘plot twist’ the same way I have and see what happens then.

Mirrored from K. A. Jones Writing.