Moving from Incompetent to Competent Characters

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Sue Grafton

Last week, I wrote about incompetent characters in literature. So, naturally I’ll write this week about…Valentine’s Day yesterday. Oops, just kidding; I’m going to discuss competent characters in literature.

That can mean smart people, handy people, socially adept people, etc. They might be skilled in many areas, or skilled in some ways and not in others.

Obviously, detectives are among the protagonists who come to mind, although many of them are more competent in their work than in their personal lives. For instance, Sherlock Holmes is a brilliant sleuth with loner and eccentric traits in Arthur Conan Doyle’s novels and stories. Val McDermid’s Karen Pirie is also highly intelligent and driven in her cold-case work while not being as successful in off-duty life. Sue Grafton’s self-deprecating Kinsey Millhone is a brainy, brave, dogged, and witty private investigator who had two failed marriages, eats too much junk food, etc.

I’m currently working my way through — and loving — the Millhone-starring “alphabet mysteries” (now reading M is for Malice).

Other memorably competent characters? Hermione Granger is as book-smart as they come, and also has plenty of common sense in J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series. Those books’ wizards — including Albus Dumbledore and Minerva McGonagall — are obviously quite capable, too, as is another wizard: Gandalf in J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

In Stieg Larsson’s trilogy that starts with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, abuse survivor Lisbeth Salander is a determined genius with computers.

Preteen-then-teen Francie Nolan is wise beyond her years — both academically and as a navigator of difficult family dynamics — in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

When one thinks of Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre character, competent is one of the first adjectives that comes to mind. Whatever she does — whether being a governess, a teacher, or generally maneuvering through the difficulties of her oft-challenging life — she does well.

Also quite skilled — and with a strong sense of morality — is attorney Atticus Finch of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird.

Another classic, Willa Cather’s My Antonia, features a title character (Antonia Shimerda) who’s a very competent farm spouse and parent.

In the sci-fi area, we have protagonists like Mark Watney, who has to be unusually clever and innovative to survive when stranded on Mars in Andy Weir’s The Martian. Twentieth-century Black woman Dana Franklin also has to be really skilled to deal with and survive involuntary time travel to and from the slave-holding American South in Octavia E. Butler’s Kindred.

Your thoughts about, and examples of, competent characters in fiction?

Misty the cat says: “This must be one of Norman Rockwell’s larger paintings.”

My comedic 2024 book — the part-factual/part-fictional/not-a-children’s-work Misty the Cat…Unleashed — is described and can be purchased on Amazon in paperback or on Kindle. It’s feline-narrated! (And Amazon reviews are welcome. 🙂 )

This 90-second promo video for the book features a talking cat: 🙂

I’m also the author of a 2017 literary-trivia book…

…and a 2012 memoir that focuses on cartooning and more, including many encounters with celebrities.

In addition to this weekly blog, I write the 2003-started/award-winning “Montclairvoyant” topical-humor column every Thursday for Montclair Local. The latest piece — about a congressional candidate’s welcome win and various weird maps — is here.

97 thoughts on “Moving from Incompetent to Competent Characters”

  2. I miss Kinsey Millhone! I’m currently reading “The Queens of Crime” by Marie Benedict, which uses Dorothy L. Sayers, Agatha Christie, Ngaio Marsh, Margery Allingham, and Emma Orczy as the main characters! It’s told from Dorothy L.’s point of view. They are ALL presented as very competent characters, and I believe the book is based in part on the real people. Very enjoyable!

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  3. Hi Dave, competent people in literature is a great topic. There are many: Aunt Izzie in What Katy Did, Martha the maid in The secret Garden, Alan Quartermaine in King Solomon’s Mines, Stuart Redman in The Stand, Ayla in clan of the Cave Bear and Dick Halloran in The Shining.

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  4. Everybody taken, including Crusoe, Miss Marple, wonderful Mma Precious Ramotswe, and Lord Peter Wimsey – is there anything he can’t do ? – even gives a stylish twist to Harriet’s unfinished sonnet..

    Which leaves me with The Little Red Hen, Matilda and all the Beverley children.

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  6. One of the reasons I enjoy reading (and also writing) police procedural-style mysteries is that I need competent detectives. As a result, I avoid mysteries classified as cozy. They usually follow a pattern where a woman with a small business in a small town finds a dead body and falls into finding the murderer, always successfully, but with much humorous ditziness along the way. I’m sure I’m being unfair to many cozy mysteries with competent amateur sleuths, but the pattern exists. Nothing annoys me more in a mystery than the detective (amateur or professional) rushing mindlessly into an obviously dangerous situation without the proper knowledge, equipment, or back-up.

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    • Thank you, Kim! I see your point. A bumbling, amateurish detective can work in fiction — and can be very relatable — but would not be someone we’d want in real life. Of course, “rushing mindlessly into an obviously dangerous situation without the proper knowledge, equipment, or back-up” might be “cringe” but can create some page-turning drama. 🙂

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  8. LOVED the Martian. And Project Hail Mary as well (also featuring a very clever character!). I actually had a couple reads from last year pop into my mind for this topic. The Martian put me in mind of Isola by Allegra Goodman. It features a very clever woman of the 1500s who, like Mark Watney, winds up as a stranded castaway and must figure out how to survive. The other read was All the Colors of the Dark, which features a very clever young girl turned detective who dedicates her life to tracking down a local killer/kidnapper. Both excellent reads!

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  9. Indeed, Dave, not even the most competent of fictional characters are without some flaw. That’s what makes them so fascinating and even endearing. I don’t recall reading any of Sue Grafton’s Millhone crime mystery novels. I’ve lots of catching up to do 🙂

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  11. WOW Dave, what a thoughtful—and quietly joyful—celebration of competence in fiction. It’s been especially helpful in the writing of my newest Molly Marple Mystery book. I love how your examples resist the easy trap of equating competence with flawlessness. Instead, you highlight something far more human and far more interesting: characters who function well in the world even as they remain complicated, lonely, bruised, or morally tested.
    Thank you for sharing this priceless information. It is much appreciated.

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    • Thank you, Carolyn, for the kind/eloquent words about the post and competence! So true about competence and flawlessness very often not going together; people are human, not the robots desired by some of today’s tech oligarchs. 🙂

      The best of luck as you write your next Molly Marple mystery!

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          • I’m not familiar with Palantir, nor with the Palantír from The Lord of the Rings, but I’m genuinely looking forward to reading more about both now. Thank you for that. It does feel harder these days to find integrity in so many corners of life.
            And thank you to Misty, too — did he get a new harness? 😍💕

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  12. Timing! I just read a new post from Joy Neal Kidney and hopped to your post here, Dave and immediately thought of Joy’s grandmother, Leora – even though I was introduced to her thanks to Joy’s memoirs and not fiction. I love the resiliency in Joy’s writing and saw Liz offered the same thought in her comment. Synchronicity! 💝💝💝

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  13. I very much appreciated the novel “To Kill a Mockingbird” and its hero Atticus Finch, Dave! Now I would like to mention Emma, the main character of Barbara Taylor Bradford’s “A woman of Substance”, for her efficiency as owner of a company or as a maid. Many thanks for making us thinking positively!

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  14. Linda Castillo’s Kate Burkholder is an example of a competent police chief (although sometimes bumbling), and Tana French’s Cal Hooper has a keen cop’s eye. I have jumped back into Michael Connelly’s Lincoln Lawyer books, which have lots of competent characters.

    Great topic, Dave. I always learn about new authors in your posts.

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    • Thank you, Madeline, for those great mentions of competent characters created by those three authors! I’ve read some of Michael Connelly but not the other two; I have much to catch up on. 🙂

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    • Thank you, Ada! “A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” is a very affecting story. I got even more enjoyment out of it from having lived in Brooklyn for several years — albeit many decades after the Betty Smith novel’s time.

      Like you, I wasn’t a big detective-fiction reader, but have been enjoying a number of those novels recently as an escape from the miserable news in the U.S.

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  16. Loved, loved, Rebus and Morse and also Adam Dalgliesh by P.D. James. She has written so many excellent books and several of them have been made into series on the box.

    Talking about Agatha Christie with Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple, there is also Tommy & Tuppence, and those two have also been made into TV series (and wonderfully too).

    Finally, I will mention Alexander McCall Smith with his excellent characters in many books in the 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh. Great fun!

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  17. Who’s more competent than Hercule Poirot, Dave? Not the slightest small detail slips past his little grey cells, to become part of the bigger picture of solving the case in hand. It took me a night’s sleep to come up with him, and from the same boat we have Colin Dexter’s Morse, the books about whom have turned into a TV series much-beloved in my house. I will find more – Miss Marple? – including Shakespeare’s Duke from ‘Measure for Measure’, who goes undercover in the city to uncover corruption in his own government. I also give you, by way of a character who thinks she’s competent but who’s the exact opposite, Jane Austen’s Emma. I will find more, but I think that’s not a bad start. Thanks for yet another brain-teasing topic, Dave. Have a good week. 😊

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    • Thank you, Laura! Hercule Poirot is indeed super-competent! Great that you mentioned him, among other characters. Totally agree with you about Jane Austen’s Emma, and among Austen’s truly competent “heroines” is Anne Elliot of “Persuasion.”

      Have a good week, too! 🙂

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  19. When it comes to all around capability for survival, we can’t forget Robinson Crusoe. I must admit I haven’t read Daniel Defoe’s novel, only a comic book version for kids back in the 1960s. I remember admiring Crusoe for his skills in building things, growing food, etc. I think the comic book left out the cannibals, though.

    Come to think of it, Mark Watney of The Martian is sort of a space-age version of Crusoe.

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  20. For the sake of my response, I’m going to include memoir as literature. By far, the most competent woman I’ve encountered in any book is Leora Goff Wilson in the Leora series by her granddaughter Joy Neal Kidney. Despite grinding poverty during the Depression, family member’s deaths, and three of her sons killed in WWII, she took exceptional care of her family with intelligence, ingenuity, and grit.

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  21. I love your examples. I’ve read almost all of them, including everything about Kinsey Millhone.

    And come to think of it, I’d add Kinky Friedman. The author’s style sometimes makes it sound like he stumbles into solutions, but in fact he is very much like his hero, Sherlock Holmes. Well, when Kinky’s sober…

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  23. Dave, I always enjoy how your Sunday posts spark a different kind of literary inventory. Last week ineptness, this week competence.

    Since you mention detectives, I’ve been reading Ian Rankin’s latest Rebus novel (Rebus is now retired after a long career), and he strikes me as a fascinating example of competence that isn’t polished or performative. Rebus is not socially smooth, nor is he particularly gentle with himself, but his intelligence runs deep. It is the kind that is instinctive, persistent, and morally alert. He sees patterns others miss. He listens to what isn’t being said. His competence lies not in charm or academic brilliance, but in a kind of hard-earned discernment shaped by years of walking Edinburgh’s streets. He exemplifies a different model of intelligence that is rough-edged, intuitive, and stubbornly ethical.

    What I notice in so many of the characters you mention, from Jane Eyre to Atticus Finch, is that competence is rarely about perfection. It’s about steadiness. A capacity to act when action is needed. A moral centre that holds. Perhaps that’s why such characters comfort us. They remind us that while life is messy, it is possible to move through it with skill, conscience, and quiet resolve.

    And as John Rebus said: “You don’t stop being a detective because you’ve retired. It gets under your skin.”

    Another spectacular topic and a great follow-up conversation.

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  25. Dear admired author, Your incompetent and competent characters are of special importance to me since my thesis focuses on recruiting and retaining competent diverse academics. I like inviting literature to management research, as an innovative approach. Gratefully, Ahmadou

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  26. A great idea to swap it round the other way from last week. You have many favs of mine here when i comes to competence. Sherlock Holmes especially. To return to the not so competent ones I always thought it was interesting that Dr Watson was often portrayed in films as kind of bumbling, when in the books he is anything but. .

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