writing intelligent characters

Story Scholar

There are many subtle ways of conveying the intelligence of a character without resorting to the “walking encyclopaedia” trope — though personally I’ve nothing against the cliché, and I think it can be used successfully in conjunction with other techniques.

Of course, intelligence isn’t simply a matter of intellect. Though knowledge, memory, mental agility and physical dexterity make a character appear clever, there is also a broader connection with the sphere of ideas and impressions that we’ve discussed in previous articles, and that are equally important for a character making their way through the story world.

Intelligent characters can:

Inform the reader without being didactic.
Appear more likeable to other characters, and to the reader.
Create a contrast with unintelligent, less likeable characters.

In this article I wanted to highlight some of the techniques that Philip Pullman uses in Northern Lights, to develop the character of Lyra Belacqua.

☞ This article contains spoilers for His Dark Materials!

1 | Important Information

When writing intelligent characters, it can be helpful to place them in contexts that reinforce the importance of knowledge. By establishing Lyra’s home in a university college, Pullman is able to show that despite her age and her mischievous nature, she is able to hold her own in a community of very clever people.

Lyra’s curiosity and eagerness for knowledge is also significant to the symbolic role she plays in the prophecy.

Bonus: Lyra is clearly passionately curious and hungry for knowledge, but she’s also crafty at avoiding book learning and giving those scholars tasked with her education the slip. I love this rich contrast between theoretical and practical knowledge, and how it develops Lyra’s strange position in the university.

How can you establish the importance of knowledge and intelligence in your story world?
What (symbolic) significance does the pursuit of knowledge or intelligence have for the character?
How can the character appear more intelligent by contrast with others?

2 | Seeking Information

Lyra asks questions of everyone, all the time. In fact, it’s difficult to find a character with whom she has a conversation without coming away with some useful or interesting tidbit.

she questioned Ma Costa about every detail of the story of her birth. She wove the details into a mental tapestry even clearer and sharper than the stories she made up, and lived over and over again the flight from the cottage, the concealment in the closet, the harsh-voiced challenge, the clash of swords…

The questions she poses Ma Costa help Lyra define her (new) identity. But other interrogations have more practical intent. She asks Iorek:

“… I don’t know anything about Svalbard, except it’s in the farthest North… Is it all covered in ice? Can you get there over the frozen sea?”

and Lee Scoresby:

“Mr Scoresby, how would you fly to Svalbard?”

Even in a dungeon with one sole, mad inmate, Lyra scrounges what she can:

He was mad, and no wonder, poor old man; but he might have some scraps of information that Lyra could use.

This sort of seeking and questioning fits naturally into the Quest stage, when the character is meeting new people and learning the rules of the new world.

Bonus: Lyra collects information from different sources — from Iorek Byrnison, from Lee Scoresby, from the witch daemon, etc. This develops the depth and variety of the story world, while demonstrating Lyra’s cleverness at communicating with people and adjusting to environments.

Who has information that the character may find useful or interesting?
How do they find opportunities to gather information?
Why are they naturally curious and hungry for knowledge?

3 | Connecting Ideas

Once she’s collected information, we see Lyra putting the pieces together:

… a wild notion flew into Lyra’s mind as she remembered all those witches in the night sky; but she said nothing about that.

It takes an agile mind — and perhaps a child’s naïve perspective — to combine balloons and witches and come up with a solution to fly to Svalbard:

“Oh, please! Before you go! Witches… They do fly, don’t they? I wasn’t dreaming when I saw them flying the other night?”
“Yes, child; why?”
“Could they pull a balloon?”

While the information that a character collects may not help them accomplish the overall Quest plan, it can provide results for mini-quests, or even turn into the larger revelation in the Power.

Bonus: By delaying the revelation of Lyra’s idea to the reader, Pullman increases the sense of curiosity and suspense.

What is a problem that the character is trying to solve?
What is a solution?
What are the components of this solution, and how can the character collect these components?
How does the character combine the components to reach the solution?

4 | Thinking & Recollecting

Lyra hears an important piece of information early on that she then remembers by degrees:

“He is called Iofur Raknison.” That name shook a little bell in Lyra’s mind. She’d heard it before, but where? And not in a bear’s voice, either, nor in a gyptian’s. The voice that had spoken it was a Scholar’s, precise and pedantic and lazily arrogant, very much a Jordan College voice. She tried it again in her mind. Oh, she knew it so well!
And then she had it: the Retiring Room. The Scholars listening to Lord Asriel. It was the Palmerian Professor who had said something about Iofur Raknison. He’d used the word panserbjørne, which Lyra didn’t know, and she hadn’t known that Iofur Raknison was a bear; but what was it he’d said? The King of Svalbard was vain, and he could be flattered. There was something else, if only she could remember it, but so much had happened since then…

This is a piece of information that will eventually allow Lyra to escape the dungeon, free Lord Asriel, and reinstate the bear king, so drawing out the process of recollection not only increases the narrative suspense, it also emphasises the significance of knowledge and intelligence. In Northern Lights, this is the missing piece that allows Lyra to step into her Power.

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Drawing attention to mental processes can make characters seem more intelligent, but that doesn’t need to involve lengthy figuring out. In the end, the way that Lyra recollects the missing information is realistically simple:

Quite suddenly, with no warning at all, she remembered what it was that she’d heard the Palmerian Professor saying in the Retiring Room all that time ago.

In fact, glossing over the details of Lyra’s thinking allows Pullman once again to keep information back from the reader in order to increase suspense:

And as she thought that, a plan came to her: a way of making Iofur Raknison do what he would normally never have done; a way of restoring Iorek Byrnison to his rightful throne; a way, finally, of getting to the place where they had put Lord Asriel, and taking him the alethiometer. The idea hovered and shimmered delicately, like a soap bubble, and she dared not even look at it directly in case it burst. But she was familiar with the way of ideas, and she let it shimmer, looking away, thinking about something else.

I find the way that Pullman describes the fragility of the idea, and Lyra’s expertise in dealing with it — and her immediate, profound doubt as soon as she puts the plan into action — particularly astute.

Bonus: Because the information about the bear king’s daemon is given at the very beginning of book, and its application comes near the end, the reader has likely also forgotten what was said, and only remembers when Lyra does.

What is a key piece of information that the character has trouble remembering?
What triggers the recollection?
Can you hide the character’s thought process from the reader in order to increase suspense?

5 | Applying Knowledge

For an active heroine like Lyra Belacqua, information can hardly remain theoretical. We see her repeatedly putting her knowledge and experience to good use, whether it’s a child telling her about a loose ceiling tile:

“How far can you crawl in the ceiling?”
“I dunno. We just went in a little way. We reckoned when it was time we could hide up there, but they’d probably find us.”
Lyra saw it not as a hiding-place but as a highway.

or an adult telling her about a fire drill that leads to an escape plan:

Well, thought Lyra, there’s an idea.

and to starting an actual fire:

A moment later she had turned on all the gas taps and flung a match at the nearest burner. Then she dragged a bag of flour from a shelf and hurled it at the edge of a table so it burst and filled the air with white, because she had heard that flour will explode if it’s treated like that near a flame.

Bonus: Once you’ve established the general intelligence of a character, it feels natural for them to know and apply information without the need to introduce it earlier. Though this is best confined to less important facts, like Lyra’s knowledge about the combustive properties of flour.