I love creating competent characters. It's much more challenging to create and escalate the conflict the characters go through when they aren't stupid. You have to push the stakes. You have to discover what weaknesses they have and exploit them in a realistic way.
A good way to do this is to take a character trait or desire that defines them, and push that to its limits, exploit it to the point it becomes a weakness... then they must adapt or die. Even better if you can do this for multiple traits they have, or create another trait that helps them to adapt. Helps with making them more well-rounded.
@skells I appreciate the sentiment! Although it will probably be hard to share the finished novel. But who knows? Maybe you will find it on the shelves some day without realising it and read it. I don't want to hype it up too much because I'm still a novice figuring these things out, trying to finish one of my many planned novels. There just isn't much out there on this topic though.
