Why do characters in fiction seem smarter than their real life counterparts?

[Cli-Fi]

I've been lurking here awhile the past few months and finally got something I wanted to ask.

As per the above is it just because of plot? I'm not talking about creating some type of super lawyer with top notch grades, schools, photographic memory etc..., (since a number of those of course exist), I'm just saying regular joe detective vs fictional detective in a story that is mostly an accurate portrayal of the job.

The types of novels I like to read are generally close to reality if they aren't full fledged scifi. As I read a lot of crime fiction or legal fiction. in this scenario the MC cop, lawyer, detective, etc... always has a way out if the story is designed the way, but in reality some of these massive deals would actually take months or years or decades.

I can't count how many people I've know who went into some type of career due to what they read, or saw on TV/movies and then only to come out of it years later saying it was nothing like what they thought. Thankfully for me, the only show to do IT justice is the IT Crowd and they got that exactly right!!

 

[ckatt]

I'd say it's because those types of characters are more entertaining to read about and perhaps easier to write and make interesting.
I heard someone say that the protagonist should be the most interesting character in your story. Maybe the villain, but the MC has to out smart them in the end.
Even if the character is written as bellow "average" they must act in a way that interests the reader so they keep reading.

 

[The Crawling Chaos]

That is mostly because real life is random and meandering while stories are designed and streamlined.
After rounds upon rounds of editing and smoothing out all the little imperfections your story flows naturally from A to B, your dialogues become sharper, more impactful, far from a real conversation between humans (messy, bloated by filler words, hesitations, gibberish, people asking others to repeat or explain what they said...).
But if characters sound smarter than their real counterparts, they often aren't. And cops in particular. I'm sure most real criminal investigators would tell you that crimes in stories would be solved by page 10 if this was real life. And for having sat through a good number of thrillers next to a police officer friend of mine, I can tell you that I've heard 'Why isn't this dumbass doing this or that?' while talking about the so-called smart protagonist, more times than I care to count (answer: Because the show must go on).
So your question is on point: Characters 'seem' smarter but I don't think they are.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

It’s mostly because people will comment in reviews that the characters seem too stupid to want to believe in for me. And also active characters move the plot on better

 

[Dave]

Only something less than 30% of all crime is prosecuted (metropolitan police figures 54.4% for murder, 30.6% for rape) and quite a lot isn't even detected, then when it goes to court, some cases are found wanting. It wouldn't make a very good story if the detective never solved the case, or if the lawyer always lost theirs. If it is a story of perseverance and tenacity in the face of great difficulty, then the character can't give up half way through, and they must win out in the end. Even if they die, there must be some kind of towering achievement, or at least some closure for the character demonstrated, for the story to have a "happy" ending. Real life is rarely like that. Projects collapse, endeavours fail, people don't recover from illnesses, they don't find redemption, and injustices aren't righted. They just don't have stories written about those.

There is also the alternative problem. I often wonder why the characters are written so stupid. This often happens in those detective dramas where all the evidence is presented, but only the great detective can piece it together.

 

[HareBrain]

"I say, you've done it again, Poirot! You've spent five weeks and hundred of pounds only to conclude that the murderer was someone wearing gloves!"

"'Astings, I do not see why you focus so much on this, when you 'ave dressed yourself again with your underpants on your 'ead."

 

[Biskit]

The types of novels I like to read are generally close to reality if they aren't full fledged scifi. As I read a lot of crime fiction or legal fiction. in this scenario the MC cop, lawyer, detective, etc... always has a way out if the story is designed the way, but in reality some of these massive deals would actually take months or years or decades.

Fiction pretty much has to filter out the long hours/days/months of slog that get you to the ah-ha! moment, and fudge the fact that there often isn't actually an ah-ha! moment, just the conclusion of a steady slog through procedures.

In fifteen years as a scientist, I can think of only two ah-ha! moments*, and they were both wonderful, but if you were writing the story there's an awful lot of routine to go through to get there, and you would probably want to make me seem a lot smarter than I am.

Similarly, in eight years in IT, I can think of only one ah-ha! moment. There were, however, a great many oh **** moments. All those stories where the IT genius solves the problem with a fifteen-second frantic peck at a keyboard... well, that's fiction for you.

(* you had to be there, and experience the long hours/days/months of confusion and misunderstanding, because coming at it cold, "it's got a small permanent dipole" or "oh, it's a crystal phase transition" do not really sound like an ah-ha!)

 

[Wayne Mack]

I think it comes down to competence. There is pleasure in reading (or watching) a character who somewhat exceptional in his or her characteristics. This is also why we find it interesting to watch cooking shows; because there is some who is very competent in the kitchen; why we enjoy watching sports; because there are athletes who can do things well outside our own capabilities. There is something hardwired into humans where we enjoy seeing someone who is good at something.

 

[Travalgar]

I wouldn't want to read a story if its protagonist were as dumb and incompetent as I am!

People read fiction as an "escape" from the tediousness of their mundane daily life. It's natural for us to seek out stories where satisfying things, that would otherwise never or rarely happen in real life, happens. I've also suspected that quite a significant number of authors start writing for the exact same reason.

 

[Toby Frost]

"'Astings, I do not see why you focus so much on this, when you 'ave dressed yourself again with your underpants on your 'ead."

"And ze murderer is... ze murdered man, who shot 'imself while attempting to clean 'is revolver!"

Incompetent Poirot would be great, providing anyone survived the first episode.

 

[JunkMonkey]

I wouldn't want to read a story if its protagonist were as dumb and incompetent as I am!

Unless it was a comedy. Comedy where everyone is incredibly smart and witty becomes astonishingly dull after a while. (You can prove this to yourself by watching any of Woody Allen's films made later than 1976.)

 

[Cli-Fi]

All those stories where the IT genius solves the problem with a fifteen-second frantic peck at a keyboard... well, that's fiction for you.

I guess being that this is the closest to my line of work, it would be similar if I was a doctor or a cop or a detective. It's not really that exciting. Now I guess I know why my brother always says his jobs are boring. He may be comparing it to what he sees on TV or reads, though IDK too many novels about data scientists.

 

[Cli-Fi]

Only something less than 30% of all crime is prosecuted (metropolitan police figures 54.4% for murder, 30.6% for rape) and quite a lot isn't even detected, then when it goes to court, some cases are found wanting. It wouldn't make a very good story if the detective never solved the case, or if the lawyer always lost theirs. If it is a story of perseverance and tenacity in the face of great difficulty, then the character can't give up half way through, and they must win out in the end. Even if they die, there must be some kind of towering achievement, or at least some closure for the character demonstrated, for the story to have a "happy" ending. Real life is rarely like that. Projects collapse, endeavours fail, people don't recover from illnesses, they don't find redemption, and injustices aren't righted. They just don't have stories written about those.

There is also the alternative problem. I often wonder why the characters are written so stupid. This often happens in those detective dramas where all the evidence is presented, but only the great detective can piece it together.

I think there is an appetite in modern media to show some of the boring mundane stuff, but then it often gets over dramatized pretty quickly. The what really happened with this scandal type of shows or novels. But it still doesn't seem close to reality. I think L&O did this the best with their ripped from the headlines stuff, and if you paid attention to the court dates you'd see how long it was taking to solve the cases.

There are also some novels or shows that are much more gritty and realistic too, but they portray the stupid characters in most of those roles.

There are some high profile trials going on NYC right now that are just taking sooo long people are getting frustrated to see results. Maybe fiction can help speed up and transform some of these processes in the future so people can get justice quicker.

 

[Toby Frost]

I once went to a talk at a writing group, given by a police officer. He said that a lot of the errors in police dramas were made so that the story either fitted into the pacing of a novel or a TV show or gave the detective and villain the opportunity to develop as enemies. One example would be the questioning of suspects which, in the UK, may be done by another officers and wouldn't be so strong dramatically. Likewise, there are no gavels in UK courts. Nothing to bang dramatically!

 

[Cli-Fi]

I once went to a talk at a writing group, given by a police officer. He said that a lot of the errors in police dramas were made so that the story either fitted into the pacing of a novel or a TV show or gave the detective and villain the opportunity to develop as enemies. One example would be the questioning of suspects which, in the UK, may be done by another officers and wouldn't be so strong dramatically. Likewise, there are no gavels in UK courts. Nothing to bang dramatically!

I would bet a number of fictional scenarios don't happen:

1. The cops may be targeted by their enemies but rarely as dramatically as seen on TV/novels.
2. The cops who interrogate people they are very close to friends relatives lovers would not be allowed anywhere close to it in real life.

 

[AllanR]

1. The cops may be targeted by their enemies but rarely as dramatically as seen on TV/novels.

Someone I once met, while he was awaiting his trial date, got caught stealing booze from the home of the officer who had originally arrested him.

 

[Montero]

I saw a documentary a while back about times when criminals do something dim. My favourite was the masked man robbing a bank, who avoided speaking by passing over an old envelope with his orders written on the back. His name and address were on the other side. The police were waiting for him when he got home.

Oh, and Nicholas Montserrat's "Three Corvettes" about his wartime naval experience.
NM to defaulter "So Stoker x you are charged with setting fire to the bed in your lodgings."
Stoker "The bed were on fire when I got into it, sir!"

 

[stevejk]

It's all about the art of storytelling; speaking to the readers emotions and imagination. Otherwise, as others have stated, it's just a list of technical information relevant to the reasoning of the situation, but not to the reader. Then again, we can also make the characters relevant to a target age group with little creativity at all.

"That was a brilliant work of detective reasoning DCI Jones! How did you solve it?"
"Simple, I Googled it."

Then again in a si-fi or fantasy how can you explain it? Thats when the art of storytelling comes in and now, the characters are very smart indeed!

 

[paranoid marvin]

I wonder how many people decided to become archaeologists after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark? I'm betting quite a few!

 

[AnyaKimlin]

I wonder how many people decided to become archaeologists after watching Raiders of the Lost Ark? I'm betting quite a few!

Maybe showing my age but it was a combination of Time Team and Agatha Christie for me. Adding Quincy to the mix and I wanted to use it to become a forensic anthropologist before CSI, Kathy Reichs and Sue Black made it sexy.

To answer the original point - I heard so many stories from nurses, police officers etc growing up. I read my great-great-great grandfather's diary (one of the first Liverpool Police Officers). When you hear the stories they never tell you the boring bits (well unless it's spending months in the winter in a hen house whilst taking the speed you mother was prescribed or the standard nurse joke about the infertile couple and the belly button).

When I had police officers using my house for surveillance, I had little sympathy for their boredom lol and it's probably based on stories that might be over blown or untrue. I mean did Ken Dodd really pay the local coppers £5 for a good gag?

George Gently, the TV series, uses lines I remember my uncle saying in the 80s and I had put into a story I was writing. The show had the exact same lines and stories so I think they're stories and lines that were trotted out. (unless my uncle knew the scriptwriters which is sort of possible).