Still thinking about Sherlock, but this is a more general question...

[magnetic_pole]

I had an interesting exchange with donnaimmaculata on Monday about our frustrations with Sherlock and the way the show treats his "cleverness" as a superpower, which in turn got me thinking a bit about the various types of intelligence, and how they manifest themselves, and how you can depict them in fic.

So my question for you, flist, is this: is there someone in your life who's particularly bright in one way or another, and how can you tell? How would you go about representing that kind of intelligence in a fic? And/or, if you've written fic about a particularly bright person, how did you represent that aspect of their character?

Comments

[mecurtin]

I have known a good many *extremely* intelligent people over the years. If they have a distinguishing quality, it's that they're *thinking* a lot -- more than they're talking, even if they seem to talk constantly.

This means they often seem distracted or "out of it". And then when they "tune in" again, what they say doesn't always seem to connect with the last step in the conversation -- because they've already gone past those steps in their brains.

BBC!Sherlock is pretty good at showing that quality. What they don't show is how for v.v. smart people coming up with the "right answer" is also a matter of trial-and-error (we call that "science"), it's just that they run most of the trials in their brains and very quickly.

Sherlock Holmes (whichever version) has a *social* intelligence, or at least an intelligence about human behavior and motivation. This means that he ought to spend a great deal of time observing human beings, coming up with theories about them and discarding them as new observations come along. ACD!Sherlock does two kinds of observation: reading newspapers, especially the "agony columns", and dressing up (as one sort of not-so-upper-class person or another) and immersing himself in various social contexts. Neither modern Sherlock is a master of disguise, which is a kind of odd choice: why *not* show your actor acting?

[magnetic_pole]

BBC!Sherlock is pretty good at showing that quality. What they don't show is how for v.v. smart people coming up with the "right answer" is also a matter of trial-and-error (we call that "science"), it's just that they run most of the trials in their brains and very quickly.

*nods* And, ironically, seeing the process makes it more believable to me. I feel like some of the earlier episodes, with their slower pacing, allowed for more trial-and-error in Sherlock's methods, which brought me on board. The faster episodes seem to arrive at an answer too quickly. I think it may be because there's a certain something to seeing when you're wrong, or adjusting an answer to make it fit. Seeing Sherlock right all the time, immediately, makes his deductions seem more like a trick.

I'm with you on the social intelligence, which is one reason why this version doesn't always work for me. And the disguises--yes! I'm not sure why they haven't gone there very often. M.