Various Types of Brilliance

Sometimes I feel really stupid. Did you know that? Well, now you do. Considering I'm friends and family with a bunch of uber talented super geniuses, it shouldn't be that much of a shock. There are musicians, artists, mathematicians, scientists, philosophers, and fellow writers who can write my socks off with their eyes closed and their hands tied. I feel like the John Watson to everyone else's Sherlock.

I'll just stand over here and react to your brilliance. Don't mind me!

However, just as John presents his own talents, abilities, and smarts, I daresay I make my own contribution. There is this theory that there are nine types of intelligence, which I only know a little about because instead of taking psychology in high school, I took Honors World Cultures and AP US Government. Point is, I dabble in most of the types, but there is no doubt that I am heavy on the linguistic intelligence. I confirmed this by taking a quiz on About.com (and before you judge me, just know that I couldn't find the one the school psychology kids used). According to the results, I'm good at the following:

• Good at explaining things to others
• Able to use humor when telling stories
• Strong abilitiy to listen and remember spoken information
• Understands both the literal and figurative meaning of words
• Able to use language in many different ways, such as to entertain, to persuade and to inform
• Strong grammar skills

I mean, that's pretty much a complete list of my greatest strengths. (Humor is debatable. I try, but I'm not saying I succeed.)

So instead of sitting around and feeling stupid because I can't remember the dates of virtually any historical event or because I can't do ballet or something, I should really just cherish the gifts God did give me.

In case you thought this post was just me fishing for compliments, I have a proposition to make. I propose we writers take into account the different types of intelligence when devising characters. You have people who are "musical smart" and kids who are "number smart" and others who are "people smart". For example, Sherlock Holmes is not people smart. There was that one time and that other time and that other time which would totally happen to me and wow all of these have to do with Molly. Gosh, I love Molly.

(He's not really a sociopath. Do your research.)

However, Sherlock is the master of deductive reasoning. He also is violinist who dabbles in dance (yes, DANCE), and may be not as deficient in the people skills area as it seems. He's intelligent, but a certain type(s) of intelligent. Write characters with different types of intelligence and you'll have much more variety and interest. Or maybe you have characters whose similar types of intelligence clash or create competition, or maybe just work together in a two-heads-are-better-than-one situation. Just remember that every character has something to offer, and so does every person.

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