One of the big problems of authors in general is the difficulty of writing about fictional geniuses when the authors themselves are not geniuses. A very difficult problem.

But authors have to do something else as well, which might be easier, but seems to be more overlooked.

They have to create stupidity.

I was reading a book and it was talking about a battle in the American civil war. Not only was this battle more complicated than most fictional battles I've read, but there was much more stubbornness, ignorance, and stupidity. The one big example of this was when troops were preparing to leave a fort for a middle-of-the-night foray. They got ready to march a couple hours earlier than they needed to...and then decided that since they were ready, they'd just march without waiting. * shakes head very slowly *

Anyway...they basically ruined the entire engagement of that night and were utterly defeated, mainly because of that one big stupidity, but also because of the added ignorance, cowardice, and stubbornness of several of the commanding officers. Everyone thought that the troops were only supposed to be leaving the fort later, and they were attacked at least once by mistake, by troops on their own side who were already deployed. The gunfire alerted the enemy. And it went downhill from there.

Is it hard for y'all to think up or include mistakes like this into your battles and fighting in general? Any tips for going about it?

Heh, that's something I'm going to have trouble with. Given how irritating I find it when I'm reading a book in which the characters are ignoring the (to me) blatantly obvious, I doubt writing it will be very easy. It might be easier to throw in tactical and strategic mistakes in battles, though, I'm not sure. Of course, part of the problem is that it's really hard (for me, at least) to know exactly how smart people are, or just what most people would think of and not think of.

That's a good point, Juliet. Perhaps one way to do it is to show the flaws of characters well before a battle. That way, if a general is arrogant and stupid in battle, it seems natural and the reader isn't surprised, since that general is always arrogant and stupid.

I try to include things like this in my scenes... I can think of one very big mistake I allow my MC to make that has serious impacts, but I think I sometimes forget the little mistakes, you know? The big mistakes/character flaws are easier for me to implement.

This is similar to one of my dilemmas. I watch scripted TV shows and read books, and then I watch news segments and realize something: In scripted TV shows and movies (Dramas, superhero stuff, etc.), they don't misspeak, unless intentional on the scriptwriter's part, or the actor/actress messes up and they roll with it because its funny/something else.

Which is why sometimes I put misspeaking in my stories - and not just for comical jokes afterwards.

What this *points up there ^* and this thread subject have in common is one thing: Human error.

Human error in your stories can and should be allowed (Like misspeaking). In my opinion, it adds to the realism of the story.

So, allowing stupidity, as it were, is wholly acceptable in my eyes, though I'm not sure how you'd go about it in that particular scenario.

I don't do it, really. I'd end up strangling my characters and then I'd have to resurrect them, and that means loads of paperwork.

I probably should though. It would make them more human, since a lot of them aren't.

I feel like this would go over better when it happens to the good guys in the story rather than to the villains... If the villains are doing stupid mistakes, it just degrades the villains so that they aren't really that scary... If the heroes are the ones doing it, on the other hand, those types of concerns vanish and it's a lot more believable...

Ooh, that is a good thought! I had not really considered it but, now that you mention it, I totally agree.

Yeah, being a writer is painful sometimes. Personally I find it more painful to make someone act stupid than to kill them off.

Yeah.

That is a good point. I sometimes come across stories where a character causes a problem and it feels to me as if the only reason they did it was because the plot needed more tension at that point.

But one thing to keep in mind, is that sometimes people will be ignorant or foolish in one area without necessarily being the same in a different area. A general in the battle I used as an example added to the disaster by his ignorance of military matters. However he was much more competent when it came to politics.

Aye, good point. I hadn't thought of that.

When it comes to villains, I think it depends. I mean, if only the heroes ever make mistakes/do stupid things, that might be irritating. On the other hand, a serious villain (incompetent villains can be quite entertaining, but usually not for serious things) who keeps making stupid mistakes is, well, not as good of a villain, in general. I think what would be most important, though, is to make the villain's mistakes consistent with his character. For instance, in the Lord of the Rings, Sauron makes the mistake of not considering the possibility of the good guys destroying the Ring. Which makes sense, because, well, it's a really powerful weapon; he would never consider destroying something like that; he'd use it. But there are villains that that particular mistake really wouldn't work for.

Exactly.


Yes. If a general was a good politician, but arrogantly awful at cards, that might be a good way to set it up.

I have put some mistakes in my battles, though just mainly with one character. Sort of along the lines of what has already been said, I find that when I take my character's, well, character into consideration, it produces some stupidity. In one of my novels, my character's battle mistakes are generally born out of pride, anger, and fear.

There are two points that I learned from Writing to Sell by Scott Meredith that I'd like to apply to these questions:

First, if you ever have your characters acting like idiots because if they don't the plot stops moving, you're doing something wrong. (If you've built up that a character is an idiot about a certain category of things over the course of the story, and at a critical moment other characters take advantage of that blind spot, that's another matter entirely.)

The second is a point he made about coincidences----he used the example of a character who's racing against time having to wait for a train to pass---that I think applies just as well to character mistakes. It's not a problem in the least if characters make minor stupid mistakes once in a while. But for repeated mistakes, major mistakes,and mistakes at critical points, you need foreshadowing and justification, like for any other major action at a critical point, only more so. Remember, fiction is about what is plausible, not what is possible, and is additionally expected to omit little mistakes ("little" in not rising inevitably and organically from the character's character) as it does the "dull bits" of life, the "ums" and "ers" of conversation, and so on most of the time.

And then there's the fact that readers (I generalize from a single instance, namely me ) don't like sympathetic characters to make major, preventable mistakes. I'm somewhat willing to overlook the implausibility of a villain's mistake, but even when the protagonist's stupidity is foreshadowed to the point of becoming logically necessary, I'm likely to say "I can't look!" and either set the book down or skip ahead instead of continuing to read. (There's one of my favorite books that I generally start after the cascading disaster that the protagonist brought down on himself, which is about a third of the way through, rather than at the beginning, when I reread it.)

Yes, it is painful for readers sometimes. But so is having a character die sometimes. Some people (one of my cousins, for instance) hate watching movies that are too sad for them. But that doesn't mean I would give that as a reason for someone to avoid having anyone die or get hurt in a story. Similarly, I would not say that is really a legitimate reason to avoid your characters making stupid mistakes.

I honestly think that stupid characters sort of occur naturally and that there are far too many of them in today's literature and the last thing we need to do is create them intentionally.

Making them human, fallible, and capable of mistake? Sure. But that's different from being stupid. I hate stupidity in real life people; and I sure won't tolerate it from characters I can control.

There's also a huge difference between stupidity, ignorance, and arrogance. Although character who behave stupidly also drive me insane and I think we have far too many of them.

(Although the very worst thing ever is when characters behave stupidly for the sake of Plot as they do on far too many American TV shows.)

I think we might be using different ideas of 'stupidity'.

There are epic stories where every mistake made is for a reason – an epic reason. In a recent book I read, for example, one of the characters made a really big mistake. But he did it after agonizing over the situation and eventually making a very difficult decision – which was the wrong decision. But he did it to try and do good. To try and save his people. Out of anger over the betrayal of someone. It was an epic mistake.

That's fine. It works in stories, especially epic stories. But sometimes it's a good idea to get a human element in there as well – apathetic, arrogant, and ignorant as we are.

An example of this would be in Charles Williams' 'Greater Trumps'. Ralph and his father weren't...well...'villains'. You couldn't call them that. They messed up quite a few things, didn't understand many more things, and were spectacularly...common. It was painful reading that book, for me – it was so very much me. The me that I would rather ignore. The way Ralph and his father thought, the things they did, reminded me of myself to such a degree that it felt almost like I was going through surgery.

Another example from someone less weird and metaphysical than Charles Williams (:P): Searching For Bobby Fischer, a movie about the seven-year-old chess genius Josh Waitzkin.

Josh is learning chess from Bruce, and Bruce keeps telling him not to bring out his queen too early in the game. Josh keeps doing it. Why? Well, he just wants to. When he's in the middle of a game, he thinks that using his queen will help him do this, and help him do that, and he brings it out before he's supposed to. There's no back story (like 'I've always felt powerless and intimidated because of my Dad, and that's why I strike quickly with my biggest piece to show that I'm not weak'). There's no major psychological or emotional reasons (like 'I want to lose because I don't like the pressure'). He's just a little boy, making mistakes in his chess playing, sometimes stubborn or foolish ones. Bruce makes the 'epic' mistake of trying to force Josh to become Bobby Fischer. Josh's dad makes the 'epic' mistake of trying to push Josh too hard. They do it for reasons – 'epic' reasons. That's not bad for the story. But neither is Josh bringing his queen out too early.

That's what I am trying to express by 'stupid'. Maybe not the best word.

I don't watch 'em, so I don't know any of the examples you're thinking of, but I know what you mean. Characters doing anything for no other reason than Plot is extremely annoying and frustrating, from Heroism to Conflict to Stupidity.

Excellent points, Katie and Juliet.

I think there's a big difference between "allowing stupidity" as this thread is about, and having "stupid characters". The first is allowing a real part of every human into the story, which, done right, can greatly improve the story. While a plain stupid character makes me not care to read the book at all as well.

Interestingly--I was trying to write a short story from the perspective of a rather dumb character the other day...and I just hated it. I ended up changing the character a little and using a different character's POV throughout most of the story, just so I could write the thing.

No, "I don't like it when ..." (or "readers don't like it when ...") isn't a reason that we should never do whatever it is. But it's something to be aware of; we shouldn't write scenes readers won't like to read for no good reason.

Actually, character stupidity is much like character death: if you include either pointlessly or without buildup, this is usually a sign that something is wrong.


Like I said, if there's buildup and follow-up, for a character to make a mistake is fine; ideally, the story will set this up so that at that point the character can do nothing else. (Unpleasant as it is to read.)

It depends on what you mean by "human element." It's entirely reasonable to paint a character as apathetic, arrogant, ignorant, or something like that, and have plot-relevant actions flow from that characterization, much like it's reasonable for a character to meet an old acquaintance briefly in the street by chance. It's less reasonable to have a character suddenly, "randomly," act in an apathetic (etc.) way, just like it's not really reasonable for a character in a race driving against time to get stuck "by chance" behind train after train after train.


Exactly.


"done right" and "can" are the big words to emphasize there. There are a lot of sides of our multifaceted characters that we don't show the reader. If you're writing an "office drama," a character-driven story about the interactions between the protagonist and his coworkers in an office, you don't usually need to show much about his home life, let alone tell what he has for breakfast at home, and what conversation he has with his wife over breakfast, every morning. Exposing this facet of the character could improve the story, but it's also likely not to.