Writing great characters: Jezal in The First Law by Joe Abercrombie
An analysis using Brandon Sanderson’s Likeable/Proactive/Competent model
Criticizing a really bad book might be fun, but it is mostly useless. What should be changed to make this book good? Everything. Very helpful.
Criticizing a great book is quite pompous — after all, who are you to criticize far more accomplished writers? Yet, if 95% of a book works great, it is much easier to focus with intention on the 5% that put people off.
In this piece, I’ll address one particular prevalent criticisms (as far as Goodreads reviews go) of the brilliant First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie.
Criticism: A lot of people absolutely hated reading about one of the viewpoint characters — Jezal dan Luthar.
What makes this truly interesting, is that the First Law trilogy has some of the best character work in Fantasy. Many people in the fantasy community, including BookTuber Daniel Green, hold Inquisitor Glokta up as one of their favorite fantasy characters of all time, and with good reason.
“I stand by my claim.. that Glokta is one of the greatest characters that the fantasy genre has seen in recent memory. He’s spectacular.” — Daniel Green
So, Abercrombie can most definitely write excellent characters. Skill is not the problem. Yet, there seems to be a large portion of people that hate Jezal in particular.
The problem with likeability: bug or feature?
You might argue that Jazels being hard to like is the whole point — he starts an ass but has a satisfying redemption arc that makes him much more likeable by the end of the series.
This is a legitimate concern. After all, if this was the plan of the author all along, it is a feature rather than a bug. For example, a lot of people don’t like the cynical nature of the First Law books. Nonetheless, this is most definitely a feature and other people love the grit and cynicism. After all, we’re speaking about @LordGrimdark, not @LordYA.I think, however, that the problem with Jezal isn’t a feature. It is one thing to hate a character but to love to read about them. It is entirely different to hate reading about the character.
What makes a character interesting?
In his lecture about writing SFF characters, Brandon Sanderson (bestselling fantasy author) introduces a concept of three distinct dimensions that make a character interesting.
- Likeability
- Proactivity
- Competence
If you want to hear the man explain the concept himself:
In a few words, we like to read about a character that’s high-enough at least on one of these three scales. The sense of progress, the character arc, comes from movement on the scales (usually growth, but sometimes even regression works well).
Brandon gives the example of Peter Parker: he is extremely likeable and relatable for the target audience right from the start. His character arc is mainly about growing more competent (mastering his newfound powers as Spider-Man) and proactive (mastering the responsibility that comes with his powers).
Gandalf, on the other hand, starts with all three dimensions almost maxed-out. He stays relatively constant throughout LotR (called an iconic character), but he’s still fun to read about because he’s pretty awesome on all three scales. The sense of progress comes from him working toward his goal, rather than him changing.
Tyrion is another great example: he starts off extremely likeable (the rebel black sheep of the family) and quite competent (in his case –a sharp mind). His main character arc comes in the form of moving away from his carpe diem way of life and towards accepting responsibility and stepping up to the occasion (a form of proactivity).
The problem with Jezal dan Luthar
Jezal has plenty of growth (or at least change) in all three dimensions over the length of the trilogy, which is good — a sense of progress. However, he starts very low on all three scales:
- Low likeability: he looks down on people, even his friends. He’s a narcissist. He’s highly privileged (from a rich family).
- Low proactivity: he drinks, plays cards, and only begrudgingly trains fencing because his father made him. He has ambitions of becoming an important person in the future but doesn’t do anything to move in that direction.
- Competence: quite bad at fencing when the story starts, which is his main area of competence.
This means that even though you end up liking him by the end of the third book (and finding it more interesting to read about him), you spend most of the first two books reading his viewpoint parts quite begrudgingly.
Possible solution
Obviously, if this theory is right, the solution would be to boost him on one of the three dimensions right from the start of the story to make him interesting.
- Likeability: this is his main character arc, so it doesn’t make sense to make him more likable from the beginning. He needs to lack compassion initially in order to be able to build it, and he needs a huge ego in order to have it shattered by the end of the third book.
- Competence: his growth in competence, at least in fencing, is also an important form of progression for his character arc, especially in the first novel. Moreover, all other viewpoint characters are quite competent, so his incompetence and growth in this dimension are refreshing.
- Proactivity: increasing his initial proactivity could be a possible solution. Maybe he could be politically active and scheming at the start of the novel to try to further his grand ambitions, even if he’s ultimately unsuccessful. The goal is to get a feeling into the reader that even though the character is very dislikeable, the things he does are interesting.
Of course, this is only a mental exercise, and how those decisions are executed is what matters in the end.
Nonetheless, I believe Brandon’s framework provides an interesting and very useful tool for analyzing fictional characters and understanding why readers (or viewers, etc.) are drawn to them.
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