So I can write someone with an IQ of 161?
Honestly, I don't even understand how I'm smart. I mean, I am. I have had it explained to me, I don't believe it most of the time, but I can see the case for it. I feel like I was just lucky, but, you know...
Writing for someone with an IQ of 161? I can't even conceive it.
Ok, THIS is exactly what I'm talking about. You are the same as most high IQ people in this sense. A smart person doesn't think of themselves as smart. The reason for this is you, by nature, do not compare yourself to other people. Instead, you are smart enough that you can learn from other people, and literally everyone, including people with a MUCH lower IQ than you, has something to teach that you don't know. This naturally humbles you and in that humbleness you do not under-estimate or look down on the knowledge of other people.
It is an application of the other side of the Dunning-Kruger effect. That is the effect where the less you know about a subject, the more confident you are of your own knowledge of the subject. If you are dumb, you think you're a genius. On the other end of the spectrum, people who know a lot about a subject are informed enough to see the gaps in their own knowledge and become aware that there's a lot more to know. You become more conscious of your own inadequacies.
A high IQ person has this level of awareness toward a broad enough scope of subjects that they can actually convince themselves that they're the dumbest person in the room. Thing is, that person isn't dumb. They're the person who's the most self-aware of the holes in their own knowledge, and the reason they're so aware of this is because they have more knowledge than anyone else there. It's a strange effect.
Because of all this, a genuinely smart person rarely if ever thinks of themselves as smart.
As a genuinely smart person with a 146 IQ, you have first-hand knowledge of this quirk of smart people, and you can therefore portray it in any character you write very well. As for the place the extra 15 IQ points come in, that just comes from the plot bending in favor of the character's thought process. They are able to think faster than a real person because you, the writer, give them the solutions faster. They are able to be more knowledgeable than a real person because you can supplement their knowledge with internet searches. They are able to discover other people's schemes more easily because the author knows about the schemes and they can just let the smart character figure it out. The smart person's plans work out more beautifully because the plot says the plan will work.
So, the writer can just make the protagonist that little bit sharper than themselves in just about every area. A writer of any level could conceivably do this, but a writer can't go too far from their own IQ because the character becomes less believable if you do. If you are within 1 standard deviation, it still makes sense for the intelligence-related quirks of the character to be similar to the ones held by the writer. Meanwhile, the writer is able to conceive of and write out plots and scenarios that their own brain can conceive of, and a smarter writer can write a smarter scenario for the character to figure their way through. And, if the writer really pushes themselves to create the scenario, then it will almost always be the case that the character who's easily able to solve the scenario will come off as being 1 standard deviation of intelligence higher than the one who thought it up. This is the difference between how an omniscient writer's intelligence is perceived Vs. the limited awareness of the character.
(And I do mean that the character will naturally be perceived as being exactly 1 standard deviation of intelligence higher, because however smart the scenario the writer came up with is, the best scenario the writer can come up with is a reflection of the writer's own intelligence, which means any horridly convoluted plan thought up by a 100 IQ person will look like a 100 IQ person came up with it, and it's unavoidable that it will look like a 100 IQ person came up with it, and therefore it will not be as impressive when the character solves it. Compare this to the best scenario you, as a 146 IQ person, can come up with. The character who manages their way through this scenario will come off looking like a 161 IQ person.)
wouldnt know, i never watched Sherlock i just heard some things. Does it really matter how he plays into tropes? it gives the illusion he's smart and thats good enough for most people, and him being an asshole is more a character trait than anything.
nah you really can just copy what other writers do. Its easy.
See my response to TheEldrichGod.
