[Caelum's Scrapbook] Use Your Words.

by **Caelum** on February 18th, 2015, 8:01 pm

Thanks, Rosela.

I’m doing good. Mostly healed up and back to work. I still aren’t allowed to lift anything heavy and whatnot, but that’ll change soon.

by **Rosela** on February 18th, 2015, 8:32 pm

Wonderful, glad to hear it. Take your rest while you can!

by **Caelum** on February 19th, 2015, 4:35 pm

Guys, my mother in law got a puppy for Valentine’s Day and she just sent me a picture. I can’t. I need. The wrinkles. Ohmygod. Want. (And yes those are goats in the background. You're not imagining things.)

by **Ball** on February 19th, 2015, 4:38 pm

puppy!

by **Monarch** on February 19th, 2015, 4:47 pm

Ohmygodwantneedthatdog.

Wrinkly dogs are the best because they're wrinkly.

I can't handle the amount of cute in that picture.

I'm going to go cry now.

by **Caelum** on February 19th, 2015, 5:22 pm

How To Write About Characters Who Are Smarter Than You

A friend of mine shot me this article because, as the title suggests, it’s about some of the more difficult and uncommon aspects of fiction writing. It’s a topic we are often discussing over work.

The point the author is attempting to make is that writing hyper-intelligent characters isn’t about exclusivity and confusing your reader with technical jargon. That is, in fact, the opposite of what any decent writer wants. Writers are communicators and clarifiers as much as they are artists. All art even strives to show someone else a shade of feeling, an angle of light, a perspective of the human condition that is more, that is different, that is resonant. If a writer throws a bunch of data onto a page to make a character seem smart, then they are failing their reader, and their art.

A quote from the article:

Doyle does not portray genius in the say-that-again-in-English way. His moment of genius does not make you think: “Only some crazy egghead would ever think of that!” Doyle makes the reader go: “God, why didn’t I think of that?”

And this is one of the things that I found so rewarding in writing about Alan Turing: that trying to convey his intelligence on screen was a democratizing act. That opening his one-of-a-kind mind up on screen was about letting other people in; not about shutting them out. That genius is conveyed by sharing intelligence, not by hoarding it. We’re all in this smart business together, in a sense.

It's worth a read, and it talks about Doyle and Sherlock and, yes, even Cumberbatch too. So that's fun.

by **Caelum** on February 19th, 2015, 7:08 pm

For you, Monarch.

by **Keene Ward** on February 19th, 2015, 7:18 pm

Oh my wrinkly lanta. Did you paint her toenails? haha

by **Monarch** on February 19th, 2015, 7:52 pm

Caelum, I can't handle this. I'm out.

Like, I'll be leaving this scrapbook after another two hours of staring at this puppy.

by **Ball** on February 19th, 2015, 8:28 pm

Aww such a cute puppy