You Have To Be As Smart As Your Geniuses

I do love stories about smart people. It never ceases to impress me what puzzles people can solve by putting the right clues together. I am equally impressed by the puzzles people can create and get others to try to figure out.

I would love to write stories about these people, but there is one distinct problem: you have to be as smart as the geniuses you write about. You can use some tricks, like taking the ending and working backwards, or taking a fairly simple puzzle, but then add a lot of red herrings that the character has to sift through.

Ultimately, though, the idea of smart characters is that they are problem solvers. They are observant, have good memories, and can make connections between things that most people miss. And if you have the ability to build any kind of story, then you have the ability to make a puzzle that a genius could solve.