Make this Make Sense (and add more context).
Although, you don't want to write only smart characters in your story. You (the author), at least, want to be able to demonstrate your characters are capable of intelligence.
There's a whole field of evoluotionary psychology that wishes to discuss how intelligence was developed from babies to adults and evolved into problem-solving and incredible memorization but that's outside the scope of this blog.
I'm also making the assumption here that if a shrad of glass is picked and held tightly, with the sharpest and mostly pointy edge is held like s knife. It's safe to assume that piece of glass will be used as a weapon.
Subversions are only effective, when the audience is distracted from the main purpose / use of the object.
My main purpose is to describe a few interesting traits that I've discovered in other stories that have intelligence and have proven it to the audience in real-time.
There are two ways this can be done. 1. The character has the freedom to explore who they are and what they can do. 2. The character is restricted by rules from doing whatever they want.
There's also the mindset needed for them to be intelligent thinkers or for it have the opposite effect.
1. The character must play by the rules effectively
2. The character mut find the truth hidden within the truth.
The character(s) like the audience first learn of the rules of the games and then actively test and see what they can get away with and what rules are enforced rigorously and what is intentionally left out.
The rules exist to prevent the intelligent character from doing directly what they want so they have to work around the rules to get what they want, through any means necessary (this is where the character trait comes into play.)
The important part is here, is the discovery.
All that trail and error from earlier is put into play. Everything that the audience and characters have learned are coming full circle.
What makes this unique from Exploiting Loopholes is either repeatability and/or the relevatation of the loophole.
At this is point, it's up to you (the author/writer) to determine whether the intelligent character should give a play-by-play of his plan either out loud or in his head or have the action/plan play out (and leave the audience to fill in the blanks).
This is also the perfect time to introduce small tactics and gambits that paid-off or have been set-up in the past to be used as part of the master plan to achieve to make progress or to take specific actions they couldn't make otherwise.
1. Improvization because nothing were goes perfectly
2. The weaknesses need to be deeply exploited and abused as a crux of the strategy.
3. Prior knowledge needs to be established otherwise the overturn isn't earned.
Most of you think problem-solving, memorization of key facts, noticing important details, at the right placetime is a given but there's so much to unpack here.
Intelligence is never only just logical.
These aren't elements but tools for great intelligence and it doesn't always have to be the logical kind. There are many kinds of intelligence that often get overlooked:
1. Battle IQ (I'm watch enough anime to notice this)
2. Emotional Intelligence
3. Geographical Navigation
These are all different avenues of intelligence.
Hot Take: Characters are only as smart as the authors that write them.
This is the perfect excuse to research your topic and know it well. I'm calling you a baby (if you don't know the subject you're talking about that well).
Always do your Research.
Cite it in your notes and your drafts if you have to. The last thing you want to do is to have the concieted idea that you know better than your audience (whom you can safely assume will attempt to fact check you).
Your audience (especially the smart ones) will greatly appreciate when you (the author) research your topic, cite your sources, and beautifully craft in your ways about a topic that deserve the respect that your audience gives to it.
There's no excuse for not doing this. A big exmaple of this terrible planning in a plot and it feels disingioues to both the audience (excited to learn and enjoy while doing so) and the author that wrote it.
Audiences ALWAYS crave for good well-written out stories and there aren't enough of them out there.
You (the author) are letting yourself down by not improving or even using this chance to learn. Even if the story doesn't hit the shelves, you have learned something new and have a new found apprication for it and it will become a book of knowledge that you can reference when you want to write a new story with a similar subject matter.
This is the one profession that allows you to pour everything including your intelligence into a craft.