Bernadette Benda

I lot of articles have been written on the chosen one trope. Your average Joe is actually a hero, or the one destined to take down the evil overlord, etc.

I don’t have much to add to the consensus of WRITE CHOSEN ONES BETTER. But there is one thing I have to say, and it all pretty much hinges on this:

That’s how you should treat your Chosen one. If they are nothing without being chosen, they shouldn’t be chosen. 

Wow, that just sounded harsh man.

But for real. 

Take for example Frodo Baggins. (Technically he wasn’t a chosen one since he volunteered but let’s not get too technical.) He wasn’t some great hero, he didn’t have special powers or anything. He was a 3 foot hobbit who was fifty years old.

BUT. And there’s a but here.

He wasn’t just ordinary. He knew elvish, he was Bilbo’s nephew, he was wise and brave, even if he didn’t know a thing about taking down a dark lord.

Not like Luke Skywalker, who was a whiny farmer’s kid that called the Millennium Falcon a piece of junk. (That was bitter, but for real why wasn’t Leia the Jedi????)

Or in the Spiderman Trilogy (the 2000’s one. Why am I even talking about this give me Tom Holland), where the first thing he does with his power is win a wrestling gig to get money to buy a car to impress MJ.

Not like Steve Rogers, a 90 pound kid willing to take on a 6 foot tall man who was disrespecting the American war effort.

Make. Your. Chosen. One. Special. Before. They. Are Chosen. 

Because ultimately it will make your reader root for them. We all like the ordinary Joe, but we want to see the ordinary Joe brave first, because then we know we can also  be brave and don’t have to wait to have powers or be chosen.

THE END OF MY THOUGHTS.