Main male character description
I've been asked to write a story as an assignment. It should have as the main male character an unusually smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful guy who is somewhat reserved and mysterious. The point is that I cannot figure out how to draw a good, lively and convincing description without being stereotypical or boring. I guess that this kind of character is quite common: can you suggest me some examples of good descriptions that can be found online so that I get an idea about how to proceed? Thank you.
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You might benefit from some ideas:
1. Avoid the info dump (a long description scene)
2. Add your description in showing/active sentences
3. Use character contrasting (contrast one character to another)
I explain more here: How to describe your point of view character in a first person novel?
If you want your character to be:
unusually smart clever, insightful and thoughtful guy who is somewhat reserved and mysterious
then Let your character develop as you write. You can do some pre-work. For each description in your list, ask this question
What is your character doing or going to do that is (smart)?
Keep these tag lines around and as you write, just make the character act these ways. I don't know what your character will do. So here is an example from my book:
My character is also smart. I don't actually ever say he is smart. I do say he is a Jeek, half jock half geek. He plays chess. He is watches the some college videos on chemistry just before his high school senior senior year to help prepare himself for AP chemistry. He talks about getting a scholarship either with sports or grades.
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/12248. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
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As others here have mentioned, you want to show, not tell--have your smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful guy do smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful things, rather than just dictating a description.
That said, if you can't think of smart, clever, insightful and thoughtful things for your character to do, here's a way to cheat: think of some people you actually know who are smart, clever, insightful or thoughtful, and model your character after them. This is an easy and effective way to add detail and realism to your characters. The adage "good artists borrow, great artists steal" applies to real-life experiences as well as other artists!
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1) unusually smart,
I presume by "smart" you are not saying the same thing as "clever", "insightful" or "thoughtful", which IMO leaves an academic understanding of how things work. You show this by finding an opportunity to have the character explain something others (including the reader) may not understand very well. Of course as an author you can "cheat" by doing an hour of research on some question relevant to the storyline, and learning something surprising that your smart character can toss out in a paragraph or so.
2) clever: You show this by the character being inventive on the spot, coming up with a solution to a problem that seems like a good idea. This can be a solution to somebody else's stated problem, or a problem of his own.
3) insightful: Being insightful is usually understanding a problem or situation in such detail that conclusions can be drawn that were not stated or obvious. This is particularly true in relationship issues; an insightful person not only understands another's situation as stated, but understands the person well enough to know what they are not saying, or how they feel about the situation, and uses that. In fiction, they might state that, and elicit agreement from the person they are talking about.
4) thoughtful: This is somebody that thinks ahead to what WILL be needed, or what others will appreciate or need when the time comes. It is related to memory, but also to caring for others. For example: Joan is coming tomorrow, I know Joan, so I will shop today for Darjeeling tea because that is what she will want. Thoughtful involves thinking about others, thinking about the near term future, and taking action in the present to make the near term future better in someway.
5) somewhat reserved: Many highly intelligent people are also insecure and feel a need to show off their intelligence and receive praise or accolades for it. But not all of them. Some highly intelligent people know they are intelligent, and know that braggadocio and constantly reminding others they are the smartest person in the room, alienates them. In a way, it is applying their intelligence to understanding the patterns of social interaction. So they ARE somewhat reserved, willing to help but not insisting they know best or should be in charge or that all the stupid people should listen to them.
In fact, some smart people, besides knowing they are smart, also know that being a "know it all" is a pejorative; it can be threatening or off-putting to the 99% of people that are not as smart as they are. And knowing that, and being insightful, they will only assert their intelligence when it is really going to matter, when they anticipate significant negative consequences of failing to speak up.
In this way, most exceedingly intelligent people portrayed in fiction as socially awkward or lonely are actually be portrayed as stupid or defective, for all their brains they cannot figure out how to make friends, woo a romantic partner, or learn to use humor to relieve tension. All of these are learnable skills.
6) mysterious. Highly intelligent people can take actions on opportunities or threats that others do not perceive. Intelligence is about being able to predict the probable future (or for detectives what most likely happened), and the highly intelligent do this better than others. Thus what they are doing can be mysterious; if they don't explain it, we can't figure it out. You show this just by having them do things that seem significant, but are not explained.
I know I am not giving you examples; I think the point of this StackExchange is to provide instruction on how to accomplish what you wish in writing.
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As others have said, show, don't tell. Because that advice is rather vague, however, allow me to explain. The way I understand 'show, don't tell' is 'let the reader form his own conclusions. Just make sure they are the ones he is supposed to form.' For example, you don't need to say that someone rolled their eyes in exasperation. The fact that they rolled their eyes alone will usually make the reader deduce that they did it in exasperation. The same thing can go for characters. If they are smart, clever, insightful, and show it, you won't need to tell the reader that. He'll already know it.
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