Is it possible to write a character smarter than you?

Is it possible to write a character smarter than you?

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote Sherlock Holmes, and he literally believed in fairies. He tried to pull off a fake seance to convince his friend that ghosts were real, if I recall correctly

find accounts regarding a more intelligent person than yourself and just emulate them
just like how you can recognize a braver person than yourself and so on

Your characters can think more quickly and be more talented than you. They may notice things you wouldn't notice in real life and have a better/more accurate sense of intuition. They may have a greater awareness of when emotion is influencing their thinking

this is very obviously true. time matters. I can spend three weeks devising the solution to a complex 5-dimensional chess match of motivations, events, and clues of my own construction, and my character can solve the same problem in twelve seconds based on a mustard stain on somebody's shirt. the answer is yes - OP, provided you're not so penetratingly dumb that you can't come up with anything insightful even given all the time in the world.

That doesn't make him a moron, that just makes him a liar.

wtf i believe in fairies now

This kind of asspull isn't very effective though, the reader knows it's just an asspull.

meant to quote

Here's a nice bost. Watch other writers write smart characters and then do that.

to be honest, Holmes' brilliance as a detective is owed to having extremely thorough knowledge regarding technical details vital to his profession (being able to identify various types of soils and cigar remains, for example) and having fantastic observational skills, which are easy enough to write

How is it an asspull?

fucking lol. this may be true, but how would either of you know?

so what does the believing in fairies part make him? or the part where he "spoke with" the ghost of a woman he didn't know at all, and was immediately called out for faking it?

no, but it is possible to be dumber than a character that you wrote

i read some of the books, i have no idea about that new tv series

look at it this way: it's not possible to write a character dumber than you, OP

This is a board for literature not shounen battle manga.

Well, a story is created only when the reader absorbs it. Same goes with the character. The intelligence of that character is the perspective the reader has of himself, so assuming the reader is smarter than you, you would successfuly create a character smarter than you.

How do writers creative really smart, also omnipotent characters like Dumbledore and Gandalf? Whenever you read these books are they are in a part, there's a sense of comfort because you know they are so smart and capable.

How do they do it?

nice meme genrefag

Yeats went fairy hunting with Lady Gregory and attended seances as well

OP - of course it is. you have all knowledge at your fingertips and years to write. plus it is very easy to make a character 'sound smart': think about stuff on television all those genius doctor shows or what sorkin does: they all sound 'super smart' even though the writers are morons, the actors are morons, what they're saying is stock stuff, etc

the true question is whether it is possible to write a character with a greater moral capacity

and it

is not

>believing in fairies makes you dumb
get a load of this dipshit. there's nothing dumb about believing in fairies

he was a master troll is all

"And Herman was the smartest man who ever lived."

There, I just wrote a character smarter than myself.

Well yeah, because since you're writing them, they have more time to respond with witty answers, you can research everything you want them to claim, etc.

>OP - of course you might be able to take a dump that sort of looks like jesus
>but the true question is whether it is possible for that log to perform miracles
>and it
>is not

just copy my diary desu

Gandalf isn't a genius, he makes plenty of mistakes. Misjudges Saruman, fails to notice the ring under his nose, forgets about the ents, loses his way in Moria, takes ages to work out how to get into Moria. Because Tolkien is a half decent writer who knows an omniscient character would suck.
Dumbledore is written by a hack.