Vijay
asked
Lois McMaster Bujold:
I love your books! I want to be the strong intelligent characters that you portray. Their perception and understanding of the world around them is so intelligent and easy to understand. Do you have anything from a very unintelligent protagonist (making wrong interpretations of the world, making incorrect judgement, repeatedly)?
Lois McMaster Bujold
In general, SFnal audiences do not care for stupid protagonists, unless it's a tragedy like Flowers for Algernon. After all, the tacit understanding is that readers are expected to identify with the protagonists, and if there's one thing the SF crowd valorizes above all others, it's brains. They also don't much care for stupid antagonists. So that role is pretty much relegated to side characters.
That's not to say even smart characters can't make mistakes or have biases; they just do it on a higher and trickier level. When a smart man sets out to fool himself, he has to be really convincing. I believe Michael Shermer has some whole books on this subject.
The other authorial trick is of course to make the protagonist young and inexperienced, in which case the story arc must include them becoming less so. Inexperience can be fixed; stupidity, almost by definition, can't, since it pretty much consists of not learning better.
There is also a psychological mechanism whereby people defend themselves from information or learning that threatens their self-identity; also not the same thing as unintelligent since it happens at every IQ level.
Ta, L.
In general, SFnal audiences do not care for stupid protagonists, unless it's a tragedy like Flowers for Algernon. After all, the tacit understanding is that readers are expected to identify with the protagonists, and if there's one thing the SF crowd valorizes above all others, it's brains. They also don't much care for stupid antagonists. So that role is pretty much relegated to side characters.
That's not to say even smart characters can't make mistakes or have biases; they just do it on a higher and trickier level. When a smart man sets out to fool himself, he has to be really convincing. I believe Michael Shermer has some whole books on this subject.
The other authorial trick is of course to make the protagonist young and inexperienced, in which case the story arc must include them becoming less so. Inexperience can be fixed; stupidity, almost by definition, can't, since it pretty much consists of not learning better.
There is also a psychological mechanism whereby people defend themselves from information or learning that threatens their self-identity; also not the same thing as unintelligent since it happens at every IQ level.
Ta, L.
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Jan 31, 2016 07:07PM · flag