Writers can make a character smart or kind without being being smart or kind themselves, but they cannot make a character funny without actually being funny.
“She’s the smartest person I’ve ever met”
"She always wins at chess (off screen), and leaps to wild conclusions that happen to be correct."
Not like there's much other choice. You cannot write someone smarter than yourself without "cheating" in some way.
You can kinda reverse solve a problem, i.e. think of some answer no one could have guessed and then come up with ways to justify it. It's difficult, but it can be done
This is basically Sherlock Holmes
That's TV Sherlock. Book Sherlock will be like, "The killer was about 5 feet 8." "How do you know?" "The writing they left on the wall. People tend to write at about eye level."
TV Sherlock will walk into the room, do a 360, randomly yell "Pink!" and run away.
Samuel Vimes dreamed about Clues. He had a jaundiced view of Clues. He instinctively distrusted them. They got in the way. And he distrusted the kind of person who’d take one look at another man and say in a lordly voice to his companion, “Ah, my dear sir, I can tell you nothing except that he is a left-handed stonemason who has spent some years in the merchant navy and has recently fallen on hard times,” and then unroll a lot of supercilious commentary about calluses and stance and the state of a man’s boots, when exactly the same comments could apply to a man who was wearing his old clothes because he’d been doing a spot of home bricklaying for a new barbecue pit, and had been tattooed once when he was drunk and seventeen* and in fact got seasick on a wet pavement. What arrogance! What an insult to the rich and chaotic variety of the human experience!
― Terry Pratchett, Feet of Clay
I like this a lot. When I was watching Sherlock on tv and he called out Watson's sibling for being a recovering alcoholic because of the scratches on the phone case near the charge port, I looked and mine and it was scratched as hell. Has no one on tv ever tried plugging in a phone in the dark??
This is because this bit is adapted from the original books, were it’s not a phone but a watch that is scratched up that way, and people don’t tend to wind up their pocket watches in the dark
Have you considered that maybe you don't remember being an alcoholic because of the blackouts? /s
Interpretations of Holmes are certainly all over the goddamn place but there's a lot of merit to the idea that Arthur Conan Doyle was writing a character above his level of intellect. All it takes is a look into his views on spiritualism (particularly given his relationship with Harry Houdini) to see that he was a disastrously poor critical thinker when he was not the one directly crafting the mystery.
lots of people believed in spiritualism and the like in that time. I believe Einstein wrote the forward to Upton Sinclair's book on psychic abilities (not necessarily endorsing it). Carl Jung was a believer in the occult phenomenon for at least part of his career. Doyle was also a doctor and a strong advocated for vaccines.
Doyle was tricked by little girls with paper cutouts of farries.
Also, he was convinced his wife could talk to the dead... that was after Houdini proved she was just asking third parties about her target's dead families.
That is a very accurate way to describe the differences in the depictions of the character.
There's an amazing Greentext on this.
To a degree, yes.
It's more likely that they would walk into the room, Sherlock would announce he knows who the killer is, and then leave to go arrest them. After everything is done, the killer confessed, and justice won, Sherlock would be asked how he knew it wasn't The Other Guy.
Elementary, of course! The killer must have been 5' 8" for the writing on the wall was at his eye level.
The writing...we didn't read about? That no one else saw? Yes, that writing. I'd completely believe it if Doyle's Holmes was so coked out of his brain that he just hallucinated whodunits half the time and the suspects just confessed from pure fear of 19th century policemen.
I liked the quirkiness of TV Sherlock.
The other way to write a character is speed like if it takes a dumb writer an hour to think of something they can just have the smart character think ot it in seconds
This is why I liked Mr Magoo so much.
The opposite of Holmes, he just accidentally wanders through situations and solves the crime.
You'd have to be pretty smart to figure that out, though.
Idk. You have as long as you want to figure something out and have the character figure it out in a minute. Doesn't necessarily take genius to fake genius
I get what you're saying but genius usually means that someone has insight that other people don't have. It's not just that they come to the same conclusions but faster.
I thought about this for a while and i think that, as a writer, you have more time to try and come up with solutions to problems that would take just a few minutes for your sherlock character to solve. Brainpower is a lot like muscle power in that sometimes if you can't carry it all in one go, you'll just have to take more trips then a stronger person might. Not always, though
I really like this description of brain power. Multiple trips to solve a problem is such a good way to describe that process
You have some good cheats at your disposal. For example you often have way more time to think about stuff than your character would have. And you can use your omniscience and omnipotence over the world you are creating to create situations for the character to show how smart they are.
The biggest issue is that many writers don't understand how smart people act, they only know how they appear to others. So they try to replicate that instead. Which usually ends up entirely unconvincing
My least favorite written smart people are those with an encyclopedic knowledge. That just has no relation to reality.
Reminds me of the show Billions. Every single character had the most in-depth knowledge of such obscure shit. They’d launch into some long conversation about some Olympic silver medal winning curling champion from the 1930s as a metaphor, or some radio actor from the 50s, and everyone in the room would contribute and know exactly who they’re talking about.
Sounds like the game 999, except they'd have these conversations while literally freezing to death or when time is otherwise extremely valuable lmao
Lol, that's an excellent description of the series.
Same, but with the exception of the Doctor for me
I've heard George RR Martin say that Tyrion is smarter than him. All the quick witted comebacks that Tyrion makes on the spot take him months to think of himself.
Like when you think of the perfect comeback 3 days later.
The French have a word for that: L'esprit de l'escalier.
you take time, if the character is smarter than you, you sit there and take time thinking of the potential outcomes and there you go. they don't need to know everything, they just have to make the right call without too much time passing.
Yeah, and you can collaborate with smart people to develop a smart character. People in the industry work with scientists all the time.
I’m scared of Russell T Davies (writer of the first 4 seasons of Dr Who after the reboot)
I mean, you could have them just be faster than you. You spend ten days thinking of a solution, then have them solve it in thirty seconds. Or even take from puzzles online or somesuch and have them show off their smarts with the solution
Well then I must be a little smart if that’s true but the voice in my head says I’m a dumbass.
Yeah uh, that's the point.
Research time helps.
leaps to wild conclusions that happen to be correct.
This part leads to a lot of debate about what intelligence is. Traders like Nassim Taleb would say that's intelligence while many academics would classify it as lucky.
dumps glass of scotch into her slot
cheating bitch
You can tell he’s smart by the way he cracks into the mainframe, through the fire wall, by typing 200 words per minutes in vertical green text.
It’s a Unix system!
Thank you for the reminder that they butchered the best tv show ever
Was that a reference to something in particular then?
It's from Game of Thrones where one major character was deemed "smart" by the end of the series but the writers did not show anything that could support that notion. That character started out as a naive teenage girl, went through a lot of traumatic experience, then became queen at the end.
"she was very smart and also very hot, but she didn't knew it yet"
I can already see her taking off her glasses...
and walking boobily down the stairs
breasting, even
Smart characters written by dumb people will be convincing to dumb people because they'll act how dumb people think smart people act like.
Big Bang Theory has entered the chat
When I was a physics major, tons of students and professors in the department loved this show. The first few seasons were genuinely amazing and often (but not always) relatable. The quality declined eventually, but people here love talking smack about it as if it makes them superior in some way. I don’t have any vested interest in the show, but the contrast between its reputation in the physics department and on this site has always fascinated me
There's only so long you can sustain an outsider's view of what a nerd's life is like until you run out of ideas.
Fucking this exactly
big bang was less about them being smart, more just profusely shitting on people who have a nerdy hobby.
I think at least in season 1, they got the socially awkward aspect down pretty good, but after that, its kinda painful to watch.
Sounds like a smart-person problem to me.
“Limitless” comes to mind…
A lot of "smart" characters written by less smart people aren't intelligent, they're just magic. They just know things or make wild guesses that don't have much actual logic behind them but are correct anyway because they're being written that way.
Or they are surrounded by a bunch of idiots so they seem smart by virtue of everyone else being dumber.
I’m noticing this a lot when rewatching Criminal Minds. I didn’t really notice the first time around but now I’m realizing just how many times they figure something out or come to a conclusion specifically because the writers wanted them to get there and came up with some justification for it—even if the justification would absolutely not hold up in real life and definitely does not narrow the options down the way they pretend it does.
IMO Big Bang Theory vs Futurama
Smart characters written by dumb people vs dumb characters written by smart people.
Isn't that kind of the point though? Aren't they supposed to be smart, but also incredibly stupid?
Big Bang Theory is basically nerd blackface
Lool. Well my late husband was a self proclaimed nerd and also incredibly intelligent and he liked it
But he was also really weird. (Maybe a microcosm within a microcosm). He liked Jerry Springer and the Steve Wilkos Show too so he was no stranger to stupid tv haha. He also had an unusual sense of humor
Maybe it's like blaxploitation films
Big Bang Theory, at least in the early seasons, was indeed fun for nerds. Because that's the only people it was for - nerds.
The problem is, it ran at the same time that traditionally nerdy culture entered into the popular culture, and became the cultural norm. So suddenly the surface level homages to old nerdy stuff weren't unique or creative, and the writers began to appeal more to the bigger, newer audience rather than the nerds that watched the show at the beginning.
I wish nerd shit would go back to being nerd shit. I'm so sick of hearing about the MCU, Star Wars, and whatever other squeezed-til-its-last-nickel IPO is currently spewing itself into my frame of vision
It's lot better for nerdy kids growing up though. No more hiding interests or parts of yourself because it's "nerdy". Purposefully doing bad in school because only geeks are good in school, etc.
Big Bang Theory is still a less egregious example of this than Jamie Foxx is Amazing Spider-Man 2 or Kristen Wiig in Wonder Woman 84.
Big Bang Theory
I don't know anything about the Big Bang Writers, but if I had to guess, this is more of a case of them writing for their audience.
They didn't write the "nerds" dialog how they thought "nerds" spoke and they thought it was smart, they wrote that dialog because it's funny to their target audience.
I think the first few episodes of BBT did actually have some smart humour. But it very quickly devolved to jokes that simply sounded smart for a wider audience.
Good news everyone!
A good writer can definitely write someone smarter than them if they do some research (the character solves instantly something that takes hours to the average person), or if they have enough test readers ("are my clues enough without being obvious?")
Though by that logic OP is wrong still, being funny is easier when you also write the setup for the joke and don't have to be fast
Yes, more precisely, it's doable to write a character that finds in a few minutes ideas that you -- the writer -- would take hours if not days to find. Because in fact, you can take multiple days to work on a single scene.
However, long term smart plans are more difficult to craft, because you and the character are now on an equal footing with respect to how long you have to craft the plan, and the ressources at your disposal (especially if the character has access to the same internet as you do, every research you do, so can they but better because they're supposedly to be more clever than you).
At some point, you will need to cheat a little bit, and the skill is in doing it in a way that doesn't break the suspension of disbelief of your reader.
True I forgot about long term plans, though they also fitted in the "test readers" category to check for obvious flaws
It's easier in movies, they just have to play chess.
Code Geass’s King Check enters the chat
If death note was written by somebody dumb that would be wild
I always get a laugh out of non-engineers writing engineers.
The absolute non-understanding of just how damn long things actually take. Especially if you are working with a company.
And especially the delay between designing parts or materials and actually getting parts in your hands.
So many fictional engineers are just somehow able to compress weeks, months, or years of work into hours or days.
Similar for lawyers. The amount of "just say this one thing" or trial by ambush always makes me laugh.
One of my favorite things about A Few Good Men is when Cruise decides to just go for the ambush on Nicholson knowing it's a crazy longshot that will absolutely ruin his career, he looks so fucking surprised that it actually works. Like everyone is WTF, but no one is more surprised than he is. You could say it's so unrealistic that it's lazy writing, but they did a great job at making you believe even the characters think it's unrealistic.
Isn’t that just done for the sake of time?
For me, the worst part is how every movie/show try to make people seem smart by having them solve things in their heads. THAT IS NOT HOW IT WORKS!
I've known a couple of really smart math guys who did. One did numerical control programming and would do the calculations to drive the lathe for shaping complex metal parts in his head. He'd stare at the wall, type in a few numbers in the terminal, go back to starting at the wall. By the time he was done, all the adjustments were in and you'd be ready for a test run.
Literally Scotty, and he even gets called out for it in the show eventually
Mostly just done by making people make smart and calculated decisions in a split second. Using that gap can really help a character become smarter. Another way is that being smart means being prepared for any situation, but when you write you can only face them with situations that you have ideas for and make it seem like they truly were prepared for anything.
Every scene of big bang theory I've ever happened to stumble on. Cringiest show ever.
Sheldon?
I mean they do it all the time with super scientists. They just have them not even try to explain how they invented their stuff.
I hate when they describe a person, often the protagonist, as someone smart and special, and then they have the reasoning of a brick, and are as basic as flour.
Show don't tell is what I say, if you write a person well, they will show on the screen or page what they actually are, and then, and only then you can comment on it.
Most young adult novels suffer heavily from this, but the same goes for so many tv shows. "He's so smart!" someone says, and then he goes on failing to put a plug into a socket.
"The professor" in money heist. This character pretty much single handedly ruined a great show for me.
Yes, I have watched the West Wing.
Star Trek Discovery in a nutshell. "She's smart because I wrote it in the script right here, and I also wrote down that all the other characters think she's smart"
It's like an actual Pitch Meeting sketch.
I was watching that "Baby Reindeer" TV show and wondered what the purpose of making his stand-up comedy so terrible was. Even when he's at the height of his comedy career or receiving comedy advice from the show, writer at 'the fringe' it sucks. All I could think of was that short of hiring a professional stand-up comic to write the jokes and routines, it was probably just easier to make it all consistently suck than to attempt great stand-up when it's not really relevant to the story.
Do you think arthur conan doyle was as smart as sherlock?
Usually revolves around herculean leaps in logic or incredibly obvious solutions that every other character was simply too stupid to figure out
Yes. It's frustrating.
No, but I’ve watched the Big Bang Theory
i think i felt the whole of the fan fiction universe heave a collective sigh.
Aggressive dolphin noises
- Derek Flint
Like in the big bang theory, the dialogues of the boys had to have been by a smart person
Melodia from The Dinosaur Lords comes to mind, she keeps being called one of the smartest people but her decision-making skills are consistently awful.
like the Harry Potter series?
The further from your personal experience you go, the less believable the character is. If you are average and try to write someone very smart, it won't come off well. In the same vein, it is hard for very smart people to write characters who are of below average or sometimes even average intelligence well, as one doesn't understand the way in which they function.
Kind is a little easier because no matter how awful you are, you usually have been kind at least a few times in your life unless you are an utter monster. Evil can be harder actually for those who are kind. Writing good villains is difficult for those who have not experienced that side of things, making them often coming off as unbelievable.
Charismatic characters can be especially hard for those who do not have a lot of charisma themselves.
Humor is hard for EVERYONE.
Ever since i lost my arms in that tragic unicycling accident I haven’t had a humerus bone in my body.
Thank you for this perfect example of how hard it is to be funny
Maybe you could give me a hand with it?
I charge an arm and a leg.
I never make anyone scared if I meet them in a dark alley. I'm practically 'armless.
some Donny Dunn humor there
But how's your relationship with your mother?
Every. Damn. Thread.
William Gibson made a book called Virtual Light, and the main character is a dumb-as-bricks cop, we all know the type. He's probably the most realistically written moron I've ever read, he just oozes stupidity, but occasionally has moments of brilliance because he's good at being a cop basically. William Gibson can't write a woman for his life though.
The further from your personal experience you go, the less believable the character is.
That must be why, when I try to create authentic and fleshed-out D&D characters, no matter where the character idea starts it always seems to end pretty close to me IRL.
humor comes down to two different skill sets
quick wit, the kind of person who can say something off the cuff and have it be funny in the moment, but unless you were there, there is no humor in it
and people who can set up a funny scenario/situation and walk you through it well enough that you can imagine it happening.
I have some degree of quick wit, and I can do the latter as well, just not well enough to make a job out of it.
Humor is just hard to write. So much of humor depends on the context and delivery. You can write the funniest joke ever, but if someone is in a bad mood when they read it they might not crack a smile, or could even fail to recognize it as a joke.
Skill issue, I'm a clown
In the same vein, it is hard for very smart people to write characters who are of below average or sometimes even average intelligence well, as one doesn't understand the way in which they function.
You're saying this really confidently but we have many, many examples of famous works that completely contradict this statement.
Makes me think of the clip of the "genius" dude in a college class impressing the professor because he's heard of the Monty hall problem before.
Hard to write serial murderer.
You do have an advantage in that you have a long time to write the character. So you can think of funny or smart things with all that extra time.
The pitfall for writers when writing smart people is always that they don't really know what smart people think like
The best way to remedy this is by having a "Watson." Don't write about smart people but what it's like interacting with a smart person as a normal guy. It is common experience meeting someone who is genuinely smarter than you, then write a story about that experience.
Or put them somewhere on the spectrum and have them act like an idiot until they need to be smart.
it is common experience meeting someone smarter than you
Sorry, can't relate
I think tyrion from GOT is a perfect example of why this isn't true. The moment the source material ran out he became an idiot
Yeah most of the characters became a type of personality rather than an actual character fitting into the overall plot(such as it were). At least they knew they were out of their depth with Littlefinger and Varys and promptly killed them off. Probably just saw Tyrion as sassy dwarf man making comments on things.
And yet GRRM specifically points out that he considers Tyrion smarter than himself. But whereas GRRM spends literal decades on writing, the characters have barely experienced more than 2-3 years in the story. So he can spend as long as he needs on coming up with the perfect wisecrack and the best triple-agent scheme that Tyrion comes up with on the spot.
Nah, he's got all that stuff already, he's been spending the last few years coming up with the perfect elaborate meal descriptions.
Balls
The premise is wrong. Dumb writers cannot write convincing smart characters.
I feel this pain so much watching shows...
Could it be that it's just meme plane image bias? Have you considered that your favourite good "smart" characters might have been written by average people?
I mean, writers who can fully relate to their characters probably have an easier time but i wouldn't go to absolutes right away
This is an interesting point of view. I think the subtext to these discussion in that the people having them secretly or openly assume they themselves are very smart, or at the very least have privileged insight into how smart people are. I think only a redditor going intentionally for self deprecating humor would suggest that they themselves weren’t as smart as a tv writer of average intelligence.
I’ve recently enjoyed Richard Rhodes’ The Making of the Atomic Bomb, and the physicists in there are described in interesting ways. Most are described as energetic, hard working, and with diverse interests. But there is a lot of diversity among the geniuses - most are described as hard-workers, but Teller is not. Many have philosophical bents, but Lawrence is not. Many are irreligious, but Rutherford is not. Many are musically gifted, but Fermi was not. It would be hard to take that book as accurate and make generalizations about how geniuses “really are”.
I would argue that a person that can convincingly write a smart character is by definition smart, at least in a specific and narrow domain.
Survivorship bias.
They can make a character funny... Unintentionally. "Oh hi Mark" -Johny, The Room.
The Room is on a different plane of existence
You have to be smart to write any of it
I'm reminded of Aaron Sorkin's TV show Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip with Matthew Perry. It was essentially the Sorkin version of 30 Rock, where we see the people producing a sketch comedy show.
The characters kept saying how Sarah Paulson's character was the funniest person ever, but that character was never shown on screen being funny in any way. I damn near strained my eyeballs rolling them so much at all the telling without showing.
As someone who's accidentally told jokes for years while being completely serious I think it depends on a few more things.
Like a lot of really bad movies are funny that I'm sure weren't intended to be.
Honestly you do need to be smart to have a smart character that can show it.
Andy Wier is a perfect example of a smart writer making characters that are smart. He actually knows just stuff, so he can accurately articulate through his characters to prove that they are smart.
Andy can't write dialogue to sound like actual human speech, so I'm not sure that fully tracks.
I read The Martian and Project Hail Mary and didn’t really notice it. I also am not reading his books for realistic dialogue, but rather the content of that dialogue. I guess it is what you are looking for out of the book that gives you that perception of his books.
Are you saying the writers of murder mysteries aren't always murderers themselves? Got it.
I mean, your brain might not be quick enough to be funny on the spot/in conversation but given a lot of time to come up with something like in writing it could work
Comedy is a gift that only few can write well perfectly
Actually a lot of good comedy is written by people who couldn't say the funny thing in the moment, spent all day thinking about what they should have said and finally wrote it down.
Hush people. We have an elder in our midst. 12 Years. All bow and chant. Ahhhh—ooooo-ummmm. Ahhhh—ooooo-ummmm. Ahhhh—ooooo-ummmm
I don't totally agree with this, but I get where you're coming from. However a social awkward the who's jokes don't land could write a funny character given time and preparation. It's easier to write someone witty when you have time to think about it. However I think the reason to write someone kind if you're unkind may be due to the fact that it's an inherent personality trait rather than an ability if that makes sensr
"Bob had a habit of leaving the room in stitches, whether it was a jape involving the boss' new toaster, or a quick one-liner he he qas the office comedian. He had a particularly hilarious anecdote about a Yorkie, a pizza, and a startlingly realistic Joe Biden impersonator, need I say more?"
It is like someone told You a person is funny, not that You experienced it. That makes a difference.
Likewise, a writer can’t make a character with a twisted imagination without having a twisted imagination themselves.
What do you mean by "twisted"?
I can't write kind people.
My beta readers keep asking me why all my characters are inhuman creeps who don't act even the slightest bit [and then they use some sort of word or phrase that blends together and sounds like radio static].
And I just shrug noncommittally and adjust my fake personality a bit.
I can't put a mask like that on made-up people. I don't know why.
No, they can't, lol. But that's more telling of you than them.
Characters you write about can be only about as smart as you are.
You can use zingers you've heard in a book.
As such, a funny charachter in terms of his barbs and wittiscims.
But you can't fake an intelligent charachter.
It'll come off weird and choppy.
Morbius would like to have a word.
The funniest people I know in real life are incredibly quick witted, and I think a big part of being funny is timing.
So it would be possible for someone who lacks both of those to sit around writing jokes all day and then creating a scenario in which the timing was perfect.
Not true, you can only write a character as smart as you are, same as funny
Kindness is imaginable, but also sticks to this rule.
They can - there is simple trick for it. Dont write what he told but describe other people reaction only. I saw it multiple time when writer don't know how to make character a very sociable person when he is not himself.
It is actually pretty hard to properly write a smart character if you aren't at least moderately intelligent.
You could just write [put something funny here] and have a funny actor come up with it while saying it
I made this comment at my last book club meeting haha. I’m so sick of first person narration where they try to make the protagonist funny/witty/clever and they’re just not at all.
Disagree completely. Shitty writers make their average characters dumb and shitty to make the protagonist look smart and kind. It's quite difficult to write an intelligent and / or compassionate character who's capabilities and values stand on their own.
That can but not on purpose.
You cannot create something you yourself cannot understand or are able to do.
If you are not capable or do not understand kindness, you cannot create a kind character.
If you are not smart, you cannot create a smart character.
Any attempt at such acts would be characters with serious, obvious, flaws.
Good point.
Although I think writing a smart character is also pretty difficult. Usually they just use a shorthand like having other characters talk about how smart the character is.
Having a believably smart character requires some intelligence on the part of the writer as well.
Wrong. A person can know all the elements of funny and still not be able to execute. They should be able to write a funny character without being funny
"OP was a world famous comedian and everyone thought they were funny."
Done.
I would argue that it's hard if not outright impossible to write a character as smarter than you are.
This is a bad post in general but people referencing The Big Bang Theory 500 times in the comments makes it truly awful. I appreciate your thoughtfulness but this is just bad all over.
I'd say it's really the same thing. You can write a character as smarter and kinder than yourself, but the less experience or research you do, the less likely you'll pull it off. The same is true for a funny character. You can find jokes or do some deep research and planning to create the character, but the funnier you are yourself the easier it's going to be.
Now that I've thought a bit, I think kindness is the easiest of the 3 to fake. Unkind people often fake it their whole life.
I remember in the movie The Manhattan Project they didn’t just tell us the kid was smart but also peppered the movie with small things he did that showed us he was smart. One example was a puzzle to put four ball bearings into holes on opposite sides of the puzzle. Tilting one ball in would ruin the others. He took one look at it and spun it to let centrifugal force line them all up at once. Another is his mom was going to core a head of lettuce with a knife, he turned it upside down and slammed it on the counter to remove the entire core with one pull.
Notice how comedians do best on Jeopardy and news people do worst. Cleverness culls, glibness dulls.
i would say that unkind writers cannot easily write kind characters. They just write them as gullible or naïve
and smart is hard too. They can say 'he did the math mathily' but that doesnt show intelligence, it tells it. They often also just give the smart person info only the writer would know so that it looks like they're smarter. Like a villain who is always 3 steps ahead and somehow magically knows or can deduce what the good guys did
Nah, some people aren't funny but make funny characters by accident
okay, sure, but if they can do all those other things why would humor be exempt? oh, you mean the writer themselves...well that all depends on the editor
I mean that depends. Intentionally funny that's difficult. Unintentionally funny can and has been done.
Have you ever read a character that's smart that was written by someone who isn't? It seriously shows.