Story notes: how to establish competence in a character without lowering stakes.

There are three critical things a protagonist must have in an adventure or fantasy story; competence, proactivity, and likability. 

Today I will talk about competence and how to make your character competent without lessening the stakes. There are two methods to achieve this: first, give your character a very niche skill that must be used creatively to solve problems; or second, make him a big fish in one pond and a small fish in another. 

Let's talk about method one. A character must be competent at something in order to engage a reader (specifically in an action-based story.) Without competence, the reader will not feel as if the character is qualified to be doing what they're doing. There is also the fundamental problem that an incompetent character cannot reasonably survive the kinds of trials that an action story protagonist goes through. They have to have some kind of ability that allows them to kill at least some mooks. Giving a character the perfect power to solve their problems, however, is not very interesting as there is not much tension. Tension is the number one driver of action and adventure stories. When you know the protagonist can win every fight without much effort, the stakes drop and the reader gets bored. Thus, one solution is to have the protagonist be very skilled at a certain zone of competence that doesn't exactly overlap with their problems. Thus, they must use creative methods to defeat the enemies and overcome the obstacles they face. This will allow the reader to think to themselves: how will they do it this time? In this way tension is created. 

The second method of establishing competence without lowering the stakes is to make your character a big fish in one pond and a small fish in another. Maybe your character is a top level boxer in his home town, but when he gets to the national level, he has to face off against equally powerful individuals. It's not that he's bad at the game; it's just that his competence was impressive where he started and becomes less impressive when paired up with equals. This allows the character to be competent without destroying their status as an underdog. The result is tension. 

These two methods are not the only options for establishing that a character is competent without lowering the stakes. However, they're the two most common.