Competence Porn

A Throwback Writing Article

This article was originally published at the Mad Genius Club back on November 24, 2018. My husband still makes my eyes sparkle when he does something clever with his hands, um, not… oh, never mind.

The First Reader hates the term, because it has negative connotations. Competence does not mean perfect. We should all like competent heroes. Take Miles Vorkosigan for instance. He was competent, but far from perfect.

Last week, I was in Texas (this weekend, I’m in Kentucky. I really need to settle down and spend some time at home one of these days...). I was there for other reasons, but while I was there I had the amazing pleasure of meeting up with most of the North Texas Writers and Shooters Association. It was a bracing experience for the writer in me, since I realized I’d missed the company of writers badly. The chance to talk about all the little details we get into here on the blog, but accompanied by very good food, and stories told by some extremely competent people.

One of those people was JL Curtis, who writes the Grey Man series. If you haven’t checked it out, you should. If you have, you may understand my chuckle when he asked Dorothy Grant and I over dinner ‘why do women like the Grey Man series?’ He figured a grumpy semi-retired veteran with action stories full of loving weapon details was not going to appeal to women, but here he is, with a legion of female fans. Dorothy and I may have looked at each other, looked at him in disbelief, and one of us said ‘because it’s competence porn.’

Some readers - not all, but a good chunk of the kind of readers I like (because I am one) - really enjoy a well-told story full of characters who can do things. But not perfect. They don’t get everything right. They might have to try more than once to get it done. But they never whine, and when they are knocked down they get back up best they can and dust off before diving back into it. It’s an attractive trait, competence. My First Reader, although he’ll protest when he sees this post, is a competent man. I’ll tell a little story. We were headed home with an old truck he’d picked up and when we stopped for gas, it wouldn’t start up again. Now, my beloved is many things but has never claimed to be a mechanic. While I was trying to call AAA with no cell service, he deduced that the battery connection to the battery post was loose and broken. So he walked to the hardware store, came back with a pair of pliers, and a screw. I watched while he got the screw in and snugged up the loose connector and voila! The truck started. I’d have been still trying to figure out how to call AAA in the gas station. I told him later there are few things sexier than watching a man fix things with his hands.

Hence, competence porn. It’s very satisfying to watch people who know what they’re doing. It’s almost as satisfying to read about them. And it can be hilarious to listen to a skilled raconteur tell stories about them. I can’t give you that in person, as I had the pleasure of it, but you should read this.

The trick is writing a competent character who isn’t perfect, and who isn’t perfect in a way that doesn’t make him a broken character. It’s a fine line. I was talking about how I really hated characters who seemed competent, but who had character flaws I find repugnant - that will vary from reader to reader. In my case, the example that leaps to mind are action heroes who fall into bed with every available (and some not) woman, while being a married man. I just don’t like that, but it’s a common thing to find written into action stories, in an ill-advised effort to make the competent man seem like he has flaws. Sorry, no, that flaw makes him a deeply untrustworthy man, not a competent man.

I grew up reading Louis L’Amour stories. Although the man didn’t write a lot of variety, he wrote competent men I admired. I wanted one for a mate, and I got one, although he’s going to give me a look when he reads this. But you see, I actually knew cowboys when I was a girl. I’ve known a lot of men and women through my life who just stepped in and did the job when they were called on. And some who weren’t called, they just did what needed doin’ and they would object to my calling them heroic. I know competence when I see it, and when I hear their self-deprecating stories of what other people did, and when I see them shrug it off and get back to the work when they’re praised.

So what makes a story competence porn? And what books do you love that fulfil that criteria?