Except in the eyes of some religious devotees and in the mirrors of narcissists, no one on earth is infallible. Everyone makes mistakes. I used spell check on narcissists ten seconds ago. What allows you to progress as a person is the ability to recognize why those mistakes arose from your own failings and work to improve yourself thereafter. In a simplistic and succinct story this revolves around one character and their central flaw that persists to the third act climax before resolution. Some stories try for greater complexity and those that don’t collapse under their own weight can be pretty good too. But some authors, for their own purposes, attempt to create infallible characters. Play with fire and ye shall get burned.
Know-it-alls can be annoying. In real life they either pretend to know about everything or have earned a semblance of that status through a mix of education and life experience. The degree of annoyance depends on how the character carries themselves and treats others. If the know-it-all does nothing but chide others for not being as knowledgeable they won’t be appreciated for it. Even the wise old sage can be annoying if their cryptic advice to the protagonist can be misconstrued thereby putting others’ lives in danger.
Outside the story’s narrative, what makes infallible characters difficult to accept is their impossibility. For the sake of a story, I’ll accept a fifty-foot-tall talking sofa. I find it hard to suspend my disbelief that that sofa is infallible. Again, the exceptions are divine belief or complete self-absorption. Without an airtight in-universe justification, the former reeks of the author’s hand simply handing the character that status. An unearned superiority doesn’t bode well for a protagonist. If the character is diluted to the point where they believe themselves infallible, then they’re either a villain or sometimes a comedic figure of the too stupid to know they’re dumb variety.
Within the story’s narrative, an infallible character is death for dramatic tension. All surprises are lost if exactly what the character says will happen happens exactly as they say it. It’s the equivalent to sitting down to a sporting event and being told the final score. Put another way, the infallible character is basically the Superman of talking. We all know what’s going to happen, the best that can be hoped for is something interesting on the way there. Maybe the joy is seeing how an improbable conclusion comes to pass but that switches focus from the infallible character onto plot progression.
A good shade of that is found in Sherlock Holmes stories. There the titular detective is expected to unravel a mystery to the last strand but the fun lays in how he arrives at that conclusion. He isn’t disparaging in his summations of how he cracked the case but uses a disarming, hyperbolic charm. Meanwhile, outside the narrative any reader can arrive at the same conclusion because they’re given all the same information as the detective. The evidence doesn’t poof into existence moments after the arrests are made. We know Holmes will succeed, but the how keeps us hooked.
Once there is an infallible character the only remediations are either they don’t know something or are wrong. You could specialize the know-it-all so they are merely the one true voice on horticulture. It doesn’t make it much more believable when all the plot relevant questions revolve around gardening. “‘How long to cook an egg on a skillet?’ ‘How should I know?’ ‘I don’t know how to plant tomatoes.’ ‘I am the God of this realm. Kneel before me and hear my proclamations of PH levels in differing soil compositions.’” It’s a real Band-Aid on a fissure. They could be wrong for the first time but that’s a one-off trick. After that you can’t rely on that character for the same story use. Their most pertinent trait has been squeezed for all it’s worth. You can also just have them not be at the point of conflict ready to dispense their surefire wisdom but that’s a copout.
Though all these negatives and pitfalls surround infallible characters they still exist for a reason. As I’ve experienced, especially when I was young, they carry an undeniable coolness factor. It’s fiction, at a base level I’m putting myself in that character’s shoes. Do I wish I was never wrong? Of course. When the action hero tells his arrogant adversaries exactly how he’ll defeat them and is immediately proven correct, it’s hype. When an astrophysicist explains when an asteroid will hit the earth to a panel of dispassionate bureaucrats, I have my face and heel right there. It’s easy to know who to root for if they have a white hat or shining armor or are always right. This comes with a tradeoff of relatability found in a more realistic character but that’s only important if it supports the story.
If you’re writing this character archetype, learn from what’s been done. Go all the back to ancient Greece and Cassandra. A woman blessed with prophecy but cursed that no one will believe them. In this way the action hero and scientist templates are derivative of the tragic Greek figure. It’s an extension of fate, another way to have an all-powerful voice speak the plot into existence. The point of Cassandra as a narrative tool is dramatic irony. The audience is diegetically foreshadowed without other characters realizing. What keeps other characters from listening is ignorance, genuine or willing. In other stories this is harder to believe because it relies on other characters always being wrong as the inverse to the always right protagonist. Flipping a coin doesn’t always land on a single side. Once more there’s the author’s hand. We get it’s fiction but to that degree it’s a slap in the face. If your story has an active infallible deity or prophetic figure, tread carefully that they don’t dictate all mystery into the ether.
If you put a thumb in a vise and told me to spitball an infallible character, I’d first use the vise as a club to free myself from my captors and then dilute the premise. I wouldn’t go full infallible but rather faux infallible. The character isn’t divinely correct but rather just far more experienced compared to other characters. They don’t even have to be too bright. I just like the image where a tired old person watches a bunch of kids lead a horse to water and stating the obvious. Perhaps that’s just me getting older and watching young people make the same mistakes I made but I like the emotional unavailability to weep for the stupid and the comedy in knowing how and why those kids will fail. I picture a kid in a kitchen, “I’m gonna bake the best cake in the world and I don’t need no stupid recipe… Why are you making popcorn and pulling up a chair?” The older person wouldn’t stop them for both the entertainment value and the opportunity for the kid to learn from their mistakes. Faux infallibility comedically paired with faux constant fallibility as the disparate sides of experience and naiveite.
Colin Klawans 