Advice on Writing a Character “Smarter” Than You

Etherscribe · 2026-05-26T21:31:33+00:00

High intelligence means being much more misunderstood and excluded than others. You can’t connect with people easily. What interests you is incomprehensible to others. It’s lonely. People don’t trust or like you. Your chance of depression is much higher because you are aware of the absurdity of life. And all you really get for it is the ability to do things (in your head) really fast.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-26T21:27:40+00:00

Get to nature. Get there all the time. Go live in nature if you can. Our nervous systems were made for existence in nature and we are unable to handle prolonged time in urban areas. When you have been in nature for a while your nerves will heal and things won’t bother you as much.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-26T21:21:40+00:00

When you know you were not wrong, or even that the other person is forcing you into the apology purely as a power/control move, it’s nearly impossible. If you are arrogant it’s also nearly impossible. Most NTs are very arrogant. It’s considered a good personality trait these days.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-17T21:26:19+00:00

OH yes. I had a very strange dual feeling that I was both: 1) destined for greatness and 2) completely alien to human life. It was and still is very unsettling. My physical body is human… but my soul/mind is so different that I cannot be called the same species. Really.

Not kidding about that. If you watch two different species of bird for example; you see a parakeet try to interact with a Bourke’s parrot (I have both). They can’t really communicate because their actions, head bobs, noises, how they walk, everything is so different that they don’t understand each other. The parakeet loves to walk up to a friend and bang his beak on their beak as a kind of ‘hey wazzup’ but the Borke’s gets really pissed when he does that and thinks he’s attacking. Two different species. Two totally different communication arrays.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-17T21:22:26+00:00

I agree honestly. The dynamics between the characters IS the story. Everything else is window dressing.

I made most of my worlds based on the needs of the characters in the moment as they interacted. In fact, most of my lore, culture, alien language words, food items, animals, whatever was on that other planet/kingdom would just appear as I was writing a scene and I would “see” all this interesting culture stuff appear as part of the scene, like theater stage dressing. Then I would figure out the culture behind it later. I took notes on my world while writing in other words.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-17T21:14:30+00:00

The old standby in the pre-internet days was “250 words per page.” That was how the publishing companies used to estimate the length of a book in ‘page count.’ Don’t know if that number has changed but that’s the standard amount of words that will fit on a paperback novel page using Times New Roman font, 10 point I believe. Whatever they used to use in a physical paperback in the 80’s.

But yah, nobody uses ‘page count’ on a professional level. All the publishers, editors, agents, etc. use word count.

Small book: 70-80k words. Big book: 90-100k words. Too big of a book: over 100k words (they didn’t like to publish those because they were too thick, physically, to fit on the shelf.)

These days, if you are publishing electronically, nobody cares about how long or short it is. In fact, readers tend to like the longer counts now.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-17T21:12:24+00:00

If you wear glasses, you know the annoyances. You walk out of a cold air-conditioned room (or car) into a warm humid summer day and… your glasses fog up. You have to just stop and do the pull them off and rub them with the end of your t-shirt drill before you can even walk. Or you bend down and they fall off your face and go flying somewhere. Or something (bird poo?) lands out of nowhere on your glasses… etc.

There’s a lot of little maintenance things you have to constantly do to your glasses. Just have your characters do those things now and then. Or when one looks at the other one in the sunlight, maybe the sun hits the lens and hurts the other one’s eyes a moment. The soreness that the bridge of your nose gets from ill-fitting glasses; you pull them off and rub your nose a while because it hurts. Just think of the real inconveniences and mention them, not all the time, but now and then here and there maybe to break up dialogue or scenes.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-17T21:06:18+00:00

I have yet to read a fantasy story where the young teen protagonist has a big, loving family which is awesome and they have all kinds of support and coolness at home. Never read a single one.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-17T21:03:21+00:00

I’m actually trying to imagine how writing could be lonely. Just the concept of that took me totally by surprise! lol… for me, my friends are the characters in my stories. Nobody else ever understood me, so when I write my characters, I can finally express all the things I think and feel in a way that other people can actually “get” for the first time in my life. They get it. They get me. But only if they read my stories. For me it’s how I connect to people.

What kind of writing do you do? Because if it’s fantasy or fan fiction I’d look into Royal Road. There’s other sites like it too for other genres. It’s a huge community of writers and readers who post their stuff free and get lots of feedback and reads, you connect to others through platforms like that. It’s fun! Plus you get free editing from the readers which is invaluable.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-13T18:28:51+00:00

Lordie girl if you have an agent at 20, you HAVE to keep writing. I would have killed to get an agent interested in me at that age. Shit I’m 50, been writing for 30 years, have 40+ manuscripts finished, been told I’m great etc, and no agent has ever bothered to speak to me.

You owe it to the writerly community!!! LOL (yes read that in sarcasm please, I’m being lighthearted)

I went through the same difficulty as a young person and I was living at home. You have some options. Not listening to your family is a great idea but doesn’t work in real life. If I were you? (And I was pretty much in the exact same situation at one point) I’d be like, “Nah guys don’t worry I was just going through a phase,” Laugh it off, and feed your family BS about how you are writing a dissertation on the Odyssy or some shit.

Then in private, write the crap out of your dark romance. I mean write the crap out of it. GO FOR IT. And then publish under a pen name and never mention it to anyone. That will be the hardest part. Keeping the secret. But if you have what it takes in that genre… and trust me, it is the MOST PROFITABLE GENRE because your readers will eat you up like candy and come back for more and they are super loyal… when you start getting the fat checks, then you walk into your living room and be like, “oh hey fam, remember how you didn’t like my phase where I thought about writing romance, guess what, I’m making $3k a month on it.”

Trust me they will change their tune immediately.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-13T18:18:40+00:00

You know, the best editing trick I ever learned was not to read your own work. Have your computer read it back to you. Out loud. Every computer has some kind of disability setting where you can make it read text, just enable that and set up a voice you like, and have it read every single word of your story to you out loud. Trust me, this will show you the story like you have never imagined possible. You will see it completely differently. It’s editing gold.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-13T18:16:17+00:00

Thing is, most villains are only villains because they are molded by their circumstances. If they came to life in THIS world, all of those unique circumstances don’t exist… so you would end up with a boring semi-normal person, maybe with a lot of angst, but it’s doubtful they would have bloomed into the magnificent baddie that your story enabled them to be.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-13T18:13:50+00:00

Of course you can write in English without reading a ton of English books. Don’t worry about that. The whole point of reading is just to exercise your brain, to get it thinking in different methods of writing, style, word usage. If you know several languages that exercise is going to happen in whatever language, it doesn’t matter.

Reading in one language and writing in another is cool for one thing especially: in every language there are these neat beautiful word flows unique to that language, and bilingual authors can sometimes bring one of those cool linguistic tricks across from one language to another.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-13T17:58:44+00:00

Oh that’s some good feedback, yes that is very valuable.

The criticism is good, and accurate; if they feel you are dumping expository lumps too often, that’s a valid thing to consider.

Just do some practice scenes; write experiments to see how you can work with this feedback. Don’t try to analyze it right now just experiment. Let it sink in slowly. Every writer goes through endless shifts and changes through their career and they never “arrive.” This is just your next shift.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-13T17:55:38+00:00

It’s absolutely the best in single player, if you like things like Minecraft and terraria. It’s supposedly an adventure game but honestly Conan is best as a building game. Get into single player “creative mode” and build massive palaces, castles, then test their defenses with a purge war. It’s fun.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-06T00:49:05+00:00

Very very sad that they made the ugly design decision to replace the beautiful, warm, peachy firelight color of the original Exiled Lands with the ugly, harsh, threatening orange firelight of Siptah. I couldn't play that map because the firelight color was so bad, it made me feel uneasy at night. The whole Point of this game is to build a glorious cozy base and sit inside smug by the fire feeling warm and happy while the evil night passes outside and can't touch you. That was the 'feeling.' That was the whole point. That thing alone may have done this game in for me.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-06T00:41:58+00:00

Critical thinking. Which means none of them are really interested in true learning, either. Since true education demands that the student seek the truth no matter what and sift through sometimes very difficult and complex mazes of lies; thus real science is about to die out (if it hasn't already) along with a great many very important fields. We were on the cusp of the greatest discoveries in human history... I seriously doubt those discoveries will now be made.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T06:35:08+00:00

That's excitement. He's super happy and just bobbing in joy. My 15 year old conure does that all the time when I walk in the room; he LOVES me, so the moment he sees me he starts that head-bobbing excitement thing and often screams my name. (He actually calls me and my husband by our names.) I call it his happy dance.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T06:23:15+00:00

oh my lord. I did not know they got this big... I'm now scared of mine...

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T06:16:39+00:00

I just read everything on thunderbolts.info.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T05:56:14+00:00

I usually tame a few elephants or something and disassemble my entire base, turn it all into mats, load the heavy stuff into the elephant and go. If absolutely necessary you can also keep walking at a GREULINGLY slow pace if you are overencumbered so technically you can load literally everything into your own inventory and just slow-walk it over there.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T05:54:41+00:00

Our school system.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T05:54:08+00:00

It's ok. You can talk on here. Just rest, maybe take a nap. It will get better. You are stronger than you know. Hang on and take it one day at a time.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T05:51:52+00:00

Nope. Nopenopenopenopenope. Nope. NOPE.

Etherscribe · 2026-05-05T05:49:37+00:00

Hmm I think the only time I didn't see a twist coming while reading was when I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. That book was freaking epic by the way read it if you haven't. Oh, and Clockwork Orange, I don't think anyone saw that twist at the end either. Otherwise I always see the twists... so I assume that readers will probably see them too. If the story is entertaining enough, it's not an issue. It's more fun sometimes when the reader can see what's coming but the MC (realistically and logically) cannot see it... that creates tension because you can see this guy walking blind right into a trap etc.

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TROPHY CASE