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Stupid Characters
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.
Yes...
I feel the same way.
>>Now, I don’t mean characters who do stupid things. I love it when characters do stupid things, <<
I love it when characters make mistakes, not because they are unable to think clearly, but because they have an innate flaw or acquired damage or blind spot: something that causes them to miss things another person would have no trouble spotting. And you can see that because you know the character; it adds to the tension when you realize that although you know what's about to happen, this particular character is going to walk right into it anyhow.
>> 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. <<
Some examples of what I hate:
* Characters fight over something pointless and then split, instead of actually working through the problem.
* A character keeps making the same kind of mistake throughout a series or a novel with a long internal timeframe, and never learning from or otherwise achieving personal growth. Okay, if someone has a flaw, it's going to be hard to fix. But if they are making NO progress that is just stupid and makes me want to go read something else.
* The female character is described as "smart" but still falls for one or several (usually several) guys who are jerks. NO NO NO! STOP-TROPE! Die die die stab it with pencils beat it with lesbian omnibus curbstomp it to death! This is so ubiquitous that it is turning me off of whole subgenres. On the bright side, this is how I met Brenda in P.I.E.
* Any character is warned about something and ignores the warning. Unless it's a white person ignoring brown people and getting bitten in the ass; that can be hilarious.
>>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.<<
Feel free to prompt me for this in any fishbowl where it seems to fit. It does indeed make for wonderful cascading plots where people have to work through several layers of activity.
This is why I say there is no such thing as overpowered characters, only underpowered opposition. If your character is a supergenius then you can throw really challenging scenarios at them. It's a key reason why I made Schrodinger's Heroes. They figure things out stupendously well. It's enough ... most of the time ... because they're up against things like "figure out how to save the world before it unravels into pink sparks."