Writing from the POV of a stupid character

I was writing a comedy in which the MC is immune to mind reading because she\'s such an airhead that she doesn\'t really think.

Then Fridge Logic set in and as a POV character, she has to think at least a little. Is there a way to write a story from the POV of a comically stupid character, or am I better off writing it from a different character\'s perspective?

Changing POV presents a few issues. For one thing, it worked as she was an outsider looking in and seeing this strange world. On the other hand, her making observations of this new world requires thinking. But somebody who lives in that world wouldn\'t think much of it either.

You can write from the point of view of a comically stupid character, but having a character that has no thought processes whatsoever wouldn't work at all. They'd either be an animal acting solely on instinct or they'd be a shambling zombie. Maybe I'm looking at this to literally, but yeah, that's what a character who doesn't think would sound like to me. Characters like Homer Simpson, Beavis and Butthead, etc. all have thought processes going on inside their heads, however warped and impaired they might be. I would consider approaching this kind of project more from that standpoint than "she just doesn't think at all". There's also the possibility of real-world mental illnesses, but you might not want to get into that, so I'd recommend a female Homer Simpson, or something along those lines.

You say that "observing requires thinking" but they are actually two different things. Observing - seeing, hearing, smelling etc. - is just gathering information. Thinking is processing this information, and that's where a stupid character would go wrong.

For example, this character in question could see two people, a boy and a girl, holding hands, hugging and doing all kinds of stuff like that, yet she would fail to deduce that they are in fact dating. Or she could see something, let's say a guy polishing his bowling ball with his back turned towards her (a classic!), and instantly jump to the conclusion that he is having A Date With Rosie Palms.

Your character can still observe the world around her and comment on it; just make her misinterpret the stuff she sees and hears, fail to understand stuff normal people would consider obvious, and jump to conclusions too quickly and with little information. That should do the trick.

edited 9th Jan '15 12:58:23 PM by Paradisesnake

Read Flowers For Algernon.

This too.