negativereader:

joemerl:

negativereader:

Hey guys, just a tip. Don’t talk about how smart your character is. Because if they do something stupid, it’ll just keep coming up as people mock their ‘intelligence’.

Of course, there are different kinds of “smart.” Which is why my protagonist is a genre-savvy mad scientist who spends the whole book screwing up his personal life. 

Oh, that’s completely different. That’s actually contributing to his character and the plot.

I mean more when the narrative and other characters keep telling the audience that ‘oh aren’t they so smart!’ and just assuming that that means I’ll accept it. It’s a bad move, and the audience ends up LOOKING for things to mock the protagonist over.

You see it in a lot of bad YA books.