My Writing Guide

How to write a genius/prodigy

Just keep in mind that, while hyperintelligent people share some traits and quirks, intelligence is a trait, not a personality. Your character's intelligence should be one facet of their being.

Some basic traits you'll find in most extremely intelligent people:

ProcrastinationSpecializationCuriosity + fascination with inner workingsConnectionEnormous store of random facts

Procrastination comes from knowing you can do just as fine now as you can a day before the deadline. Over time, this develops into the feeling you can't do anything to your satisfaction unless you're under the gun of a deadline. It's a vicious cycle.

Specialization comes from natural gift or interest, or both. Many people aren't all-around smart. They're good at math or chemistry or music. My gifts are writing, music, and language. Yes, there are people who are just good at anything they try, but even they have a skill set they are especially good at. My best friend is literally good at everything, but his specialties are music, sports, and mathematics.

Curiosity is, I think, what makes a prodigy. You need to have a real passion to learn and discover. A prodigy won't necessarily love learning everything, but they become borderline obsessive about their chosen topics. Part of that curiosity is learning how things work. If you're really smart, you take joy in discovering the inner workings of your topic, be it the private talks surrounding a major treaty, musical theory, the relationship between stream temperature and fishing flies, or calculus theorems. After you take all the components of the topic apart, you can use each individual fact to combine in different ways to create a different analysis or view than what the prodigy has seen before. The way I see it, most people are interested in the who, the what, and the when. Hyperintelligent people are primarily interested in the how and the why.

Connection comes from all this knowledge you've absorbed. It isn't floating around abstractly. You're linking it to different concepts, images, sounds, and strategies. You can easily see patterns and underlying concepts, and you can use this knowledge to better understand whatever it is you're looking at.

Random facts comes from ... the world, I guess. You remember the most random things. Memory has something to do with intelligence, although it's not as straightforward as it seems. Sometimes it's a pain in the ass - like remembering an interest someone you barely know mentioned a month ago in passing - and sometimes it's an asset - like remembering answers for a test. Most of the time it's just there. You can wow people by answering Jeopardy questions.

Smart vs. Smart

There's two kinds of smart: the smart you earn and the smart you don't. Earned intelligence is studying, learning to ask the right questions, paying attention to lectures, taking notes, and being a good student. Born intelligence is scraping your brain to remember a lecture three weeks ago and remembering enough to pass the test.

People with earned intelligence tend to be well-spoken, go-getting, determined, forward-thinking people who are either total assholes or really nice. People with born intelligence run the gamut, but don't be surprised to find a lazy streak and massive bouts of procrastination. Then there are people who have both born and earned intelligence and they will cover the earth with their dark pall and reign as Monarchs of the Universe.

Book Smart vs. Street Smart

It's all well and good to be smart when it comes to books and science. Hyperintelligent people are not the wisest when it comes to dealing with people and situations. For example, many scam victims have above average intelligence. They thought they were too smart to fall for a dumb scam ... while they were falling for a dumb scam that any other person would have seen straight through.