Friday 7 April 2017

Day 7 - Story Trope: The Chosen One #BYBin30


Stories, TV and films often rely on certain story tropes, such as the alien invasion and the hero that fights for all of humanity. They often tend to be tied quite strongly to genre. For example, while the trope of the Chosen One can originally be seen as closely tied in with high fantasy stories, such as you see with Frodo in J.R.R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings," it is currently seen quite often in YA novels.

For some well-known examples, there is the character Katniss Everdeen in Suzanne Collins' "The Hunger Games" series, the character Tris in Veronica Roth's "Divergent" series, the character Clary Fray of Cassandra Clare's "The Mortal instruments" series, or the character Buffy in Joss Whedon's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," amongst a host of others.

The Chosen One is special. She or he is the only one who can do a certain thing; whether that is opening a special lock, finding a specific treasure or performing a type of magic, it usually ties in with saving the world. In most cases, she or he is the only one who can save the world.

I admit that I enjoy reading about Chosen Ones and I often write them as leads in my stories. Do you have any chosen ones in your stories? Let me know in the comments.

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Give-away


Today's give-away is a copy of "Writing Magic: Creating Stories that Fly" by Gail Carson Levine. If you are a signed up member of this challenge, then all you need to do to be entered into the drawing is comment on this post. The winner will be selected by a random number generator on April 30th.


2 comments:

  1. I must admit I love the idea of "A chosen One" or even "the Chosen few". I am playing with variations of "the Chosen One" in a couple of the books that are in my drafts pile. The problem is trying to make it fresh, and unpredictable; we don't want a rehash of other stories out there.

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  2. I don't read a lot of fantasy or dystopian stories, so there doesn't seem to be a Chosen One in them... though some seem to be quite predictable. I agree with Bron that one of the challenges is to find something new so they stand out.

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