How do I avoid the "chosen hero" feeling?
In many works of genre-fiction (I'm talking mainly about fantasy and sci-fi, but others genres can apply), and across many forms of media, the main characters ends up being special in some ways.
Maybe it's the abilities the MC has, maybe there is a prophecy, maybe it's something in his/hers birth or upbringing: it doesn't matter how, but often a character is, somewhat, "chosen". No one else could fill in his shoes because the MC is not-replaceable.
Sometimes this is played up straight. Sometimes prophecies are warped. Sometimes, the whole concept is subverted.
My issue: I dislike the whole chosen hero idea; I'm bored of it. Yet as I'm writing my novel I notice that, somehow, I'm falling into it (my MC will eventually get important thanks to the circumstances of her birth; she cannot, therefore, be considered an everyday woman). So I'm finding myself in a contradictory situation - even hypocritical, if you may.
So, here's my more general question:
How do you avoid writing a chosen hero?
I realize that even when classic elements like manifested destinies and roboant prophecies are missing, you still kind of risk a "chosen" situation. We have the natural tendency to make our characters interesting - after all, we like to read about the struggles of extraordinary characters more often than not.
So, the real question is how to add quirks and characteristic to your characters without making the quirks overcome the whole characterization. Is there a point of equilibrium?
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I'm going to assume you're not writing 'and so the totally-not-chosen-one was victorious despite overwhelming odds and i …
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When everyone is chosen, no-one is. Game of Thrones comes to mind. Every character seems to be important and yet they d …
5y ago
Have your character tell the stories of those around her as if she were a leaf blowing in the wind. The story unfolds fr …
5y ago
While other answers have done well in suggesting specifics, let me try to generalize a bit. Avoid narrative simplicity. …
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I think in large part this is due to the fact that we're all the hero of our own stories, and so when we read a story ab …
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A possible answer I thought of: Meet the Everyman The Everyman (or woman) is a character who's the epitome of being no …
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Add other characters who also fit all the "not replaceable" chosen-one requirements. You could have several heirs, a hig …
5y ago
One approach is to give the chosen one a flaw that she must overcome. It is fine if she has ability. I agree with Mason …
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I appreciate this question as it's something that can definitely be overdone. It seems to be a problem mostly of the plo …
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To answer this question, I think it would be useful to look at The Lord of the Rings. We are explicitly told that Frodo …
5y ago
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To answer this question, I think it would be useful to look at The Lord of the Rings. We are explicitly told that Frodo is "chosen" for the task:
Bilbo was meant to find the Ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it (J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings, book 1, chapter 2 - The Shadow of the Past)
Yet we do not feel, at any point while reading the LOTR, that Frodo is "chosen", "irreplaceable", "the only hero who could save the day".
Why?
I believe three elements are involved:
First, many other characters in the same story have their own crucial tasks. Is Aragorn replaceable, could the Battle of the Pelennor Fields have been won without him? Are Merry and Pippin replaceable? Is Eowyn? If every character is "chosen" for a particular crucial task, then none are "the chosen". Frodo's task is one among many. While without his mission, everything else would have been futile, without any of the others, Frodo would have gained a rather pyrrhic victory.
Second, there is Sam. When Frodo is wounded by Shelob and captured by orcs, it is Sam who saves the quest. Sam is not merely a "sidekick" without whom Frodo could not have succeeded - he is the "backup plan". He could, if need be, finish the quest. In fact, it is never made clear just how far Frodo was "meant" to succeed. And Elrond explicitly says that Sam is "meant" to go with Frodo.
Third, Frodo himself is rather weak and incompetent, compared to other "chosen ones" in the genre. He cannot carry the quest on his shoulders. And he is very aware of his own limitations, even as he tries his best to rise to the occasion. The quest would have failed a hundred times over, had it not been for the help of others. That last one is particularly realistic. No man is an island. No one can achieve what they set out to achieve without the help of many many others. In which case, they are not all that special, are they?
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I think in large part this is due to the fact that we're all the hero of our own stories, and so when we read a story about someone we adopt some of their story where it fits with our worldview.
I'm not sure if there's any really interesting way to write a story without at least some of this feeling. Unless your character is simply an observer, and not really a part of the story.
An example I can think of is Bean from Ender's Game. He was a fairly minor character in that book, but in later books he was the hero of his own story.
Maybe the reason that it's so tough is just the fact that every single one of us is who we are and nobody else - and while most things we could do could be replaced by someone else who could probably do them just as well, there's the undeniable fact that I'm the one writing this response and it's not anybody else - if it were someone else it would probably be different in some subtle way, and maybe not enough to matter.
I think if you want to avoid that feeling of chosen you'll have to be able to make your conflict such that they literally were just in the right place at the right time and happened to make the right decision... but that's kind of a sort of chosen, too, huh?
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Have your character tell the stories of those around her as if she were a leaf blowing in the wind. The story unfolds from her interaction with the other characters, but the focus is never on her, instead she is the mechanism by which the focus is moved through the intricate weaving of the other characters stories. Then after having read the story of her interactions we will have learned something about her, not that it is special but she like her encounters is equally relevant.
A teacher who recognizes that each student is on his or her own path allows the non-disordered students to play a minor character in the classroom without having to act as if their whole life is unimportant. 1
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A possible answer I thought of:
Meet the Everyman
The Everyman (or woman) is a character who's the epitome of being normal. This is played quite often in media to make the audience sympathize more easily with said character; even brought to extremes in some cases (a funnily well done example may be the MC from The Lego Movie, who's so generically bland, yet good-natured). Other relevant examples are dr. Watson in BBC series "Sherlock", Sam in the Lord of the Rings, Bilbo in the Hobbit and so forth.
Imho, the Everyman probably negates the whole "chosen hero" concept, being probably it's polar opposite. How to write a good everyman should be an entire other topic for discussion, I guess.
Yet, I feel there are some limits to this option.
First of all, it is a little difficult to write an Everyman in a setting unfamiliar to the reader. I talked about Sam because, I mean, he's a friendly, loyal gardner, yet he's still an hobbit and the Middle Earth isn't your typical place. Grandpa Tolkien did a great job in making him relatable, but well, he was Tolkien.
By definition, the Everyman trope clashes with the whole "interesting background" I cited in the question. The more quirks you add to the character, the more it becomes less "ordinary". This doesn't mean that an Everyman has to be a blank slate, yet making it interesting is kind of a challenge.
Obligatory tv tropes link: the everyman
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Add other characters who also fit all the "not replaceable" chosen-one requirements. You could have several heirs, a highly trained merc squad, a prophecy which covers all first-born daughters conceived under a sickle moon, etc.
It happens that your MC is the person who's available to do the job, but if she wasn't there, someone else could potentially fit the bill. It may be that the other Chosen Ones are doing other, equally critical jobs, or the other heirs are getting married off, or the other daughters are getting killed off, or some of the Chosens might agree with the Big Bad! The point is that your MC happens to be in the right place at the right time to Do The Thing which the plot requires.
This was sort of done in the last season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
when all the potential Slayers were activated at once to battle the season's Big Bad instead of there only being one (or a few).
and in the Harry Potter series:
Trelawney's prophecy could have equally applied to both Neville and Harry, and it was Voldemort who chose to go after the Potters.
If you put your red fish in a pond full of other red fish, it will seem less contrived that the fish you end up catching is red.
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While other answers have done well in suggesting specifics, let me try to generalize a bit.
Avoid narrative simplicity.
And yes, this is three simple words which will cause you no end of extra work. Deal with it.
If you have a strong narrative thrust and a simple conflict, the Good Guy has to be easily identified. Go read Conan the Barbarian stories.
How do you get around this? Other answers have interesting ideas. Probably the biggest and best current example of this is Game of Thrones. Presumably, there's going to be a victor, but at this telling there's no lack of uncertainty among the fan base. You might the call this the
GRRM Principle - have many credible heroes, and kill them off.
Of course, so far this has taken 7 seasons (on TV) and six very large books. Are you up for the challenge? It takes a lot of effort to establish a credible, sympathetic character who deserves to win. Once you've done that, it's hard to put in the effort to develop another (and another and another and ...), but that's what you have to do.
There are other possibilities, of course. One is to make the road to victory so painful that you blunt the thrust of the hero's progress. In GOT terms, for instance, you have
Jaime Lannister losing his right hand, Sansa Stark getting raped by her husband(s), Arya Stark going through a very rough road to becoming a Faceless Man (and arguably becoming a sociopath), and Bran Stark becoming paralyzed. Not to mention Jon Snow getting stabbed to death. None of the contenders for the throne are unscarred.
And some of them are going to die.
But this, of course, makes for a messy, nasty story, not a clean one with a clear goal and a virtuous, deserving winner.
Are you up for it?
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When everyone is chosen, no-one is.
Game of Thrones comes to mind. Every character seems to be important and yet they die with such frequency that you can't ever know which are important enough to make it to the end.
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I'm going to assume you're not writing 'and so the totally-not-chosen-one was victorious despite overwhelming odds and impossible circumstances.'
Luck sucks.... Proper Prior Planning Prevents...
I don't think there's any way an author or director can portray luck that won't be felt by many to be equivalent with 'fated.' But most audiences actually don't seem to mind that, being most comfortable with the idea that the situations they get into have little to do with their own actions and more to do with the god/fate/probability depending on which way their personal delusions take them.
It matters to you though, huh.
Write out luck. Write in scenes and trends that are plausibly confronted by the character you have, rather than requiring ever greater leaps of amazing fortune/power.
People talk about Tolkien, and luck certainly plays a part, but think about say, Shelob meeting Sam and Frodo. It had already been established that the greenskins made patrols, it had already been established that Galadriel had some visionary capacity etc etc. Everything that occurred in the conflict made sense because Tolkien went back and made it make sense, not copping out and saying "hey cool he rolled all 6's" or giving Frodo some magical ability (other than a friend loyal beyond all reason.)
Frodo could well be the inoffensive chosen one, that is, chosen because he and those around him had qualities required to succeed. As opposed to the 'affirmative action' chosen one, who is needs a leg-up from the author in every scene to succeed.
We all of course grew up in a world where people have been inventing magical effects, items, potentials for decades, it's hard not to just cop-out and give characters the ability to do the impossible once you've come up with a scene or goal, rather than simply making the scenes possible through you know, writing character interactions and stuff.
I sure do hope none of that was legible or useful, maybe I should give myself a +10 circlet of grammarly.
//ofc, this is all skipping such things as jeopardy, giving other characters pivotal roles without making them ridiculously OP too, even Tolkien failed with Gandalf ofc, having built up the nazghul too far and etc, he had to upgrade him or invent some more OP-ness.
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I appreciate this question as it's something that can definitely be overdone. It seems to be a problem mostly of the plot driving the characters. We need people to do XYZ, so let's have characters who can do XYZ. That's okay to a point, but it can feel contrived, which is, I think, your issue with it (and mine).
In my own novel, I do have characters who play certain roles in moving along the plot (otherwise you can't really have a plot). While I knew my plot going into it, the characters developed as the plot did. In many cases as well, I have structured the plot around who the characters are.
Take any group of people and a set of tasks that need to be done. Certain people will gravitate towards certain tasks. Some will want to be leaders, some will be managers or support staff, and some may play the hero. It doesn't matter who the people are, they will each find their niche (or they won't and you'll have conflict).
My MC is the only one who could have set my plot in motion. It had to be her. Except if she didn't exist, it could have been someone else in another community. But her role in the novel is not interchangeable with anyone else's.
Is she special? Only in the sense that "everyone's special!" Which is a modern joke, though true to a degree. The reality is that everyone is an individual, with hopes and dreams, with skills and experiences, with a like or dislike of various tasks, and so on.
She's not a "hero." She's not perfect. She lacks skills that other characters are good at. And she doesn't really know what she's doing (yet). Was she "chosen?" Ehhh, I suppose slightly, since there is some magic involved and her mind was the one receptive to the call for help from the past, and she fit in other ways. But there is absolutely no talk in the story of her being unique or the only one in the world or needing to save the day. It's just not the way I roll.
None of us know where we'll end up in life. We don't always get to do the things we're good at. Or use the skills our parents instilled in us. But they're always part of us. If I were in a crisis situation, I could step up to help in certain ways but not others, based on who I am and what my skillsets are. Someone else could step up in ways that have some overlap with mine but are also different. The roles we take on will depend on chance and who else is around with what skillsets and desires.
Show this back and forth. Show who the various characters are and what makes them different. Show the conflicts when more than one wants the same role. If someone really must be the one who takes on that role (Frodo from Lord of the Rings, for instance), show their reluctance, their imposter syndrome, and how they are far from the perfect choice.
The more you make the characters fully fleshed out real people, the less they will be defined by the roles they take on. And this is how you'll get out of the "chosen hero" trap.
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One approach is to give the chosen one a flaw that she must overcome. It is fine if she has ability. I agree with Mason Wheeler; special ability, particularly ability that demands training and attention to sustain, is not the same as being born a prince, or born with more magic than anybody else. Having an innate aptitude for music is great, but it doesn't automatically make somebody a world class violinist or pianist; that takes years of grinding work. The same thing goes for fighting, the world's best swordsman will undoubtedly have a great aptitude for the task, but isn't born the world's best, and doesn't get to be the world's best without decades of practice.
That said, one way to counter the "chosen one" feeling is to give your MC not only a gift, but a curse. Something they are terrible at. Maybe more than one thing, and so much so that this may sabotage their mission. Alienate their friends. Endanger their comrades. You can make them arrogant, or so self-assured they don't listen to common sense. Let them use their skill to win battles, but make it so they can't win the war unless they can overcome their flaws.
Admit they were wrong. Beg for help. Make amends. Reconcile a hatred. Become a better person. Then that becomes the real breakthrough in their story, and the victory over the villain is not just a triumph over the evil of the villain, but a triumph over the flaw in their own soul.
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