Three Types Of Heroes

This picture actually lists all three types of heroes you can find in a story. Those who were born as heroes, those who become heroes on their own, and those who are forced to become heroes. Or, as the picture says: some are born great, some achieve greatness, some have greatness thrust upon them. So, let’s have a look at those types and see what stories they’re good for.

Some are born great. Some people are born as heroes and never doubt themselves for a moment. A lot of pulp heroes fall into that category. There is no initial reason for them doing heroic stuff, they just see a hero is needed and are that hero. Like the fairy tale prince, they do heroic deeds because they are heroic deeds. It is, to put it plainly, their job.

As already mentioned, they’re often found in pulp stories, especially the classic kind. During that era, heroes needed no tragic back story. Their back stories were merely set up to explain why they could do so much different stuff. They often were adventurers or former soldiers - tough men who knew how to keep themselves alive, who could handle weapons, and were trained for unarmed combat. Those were the basic necessities for a pulp hero, everything else (like Secret Agent X’s skill to look like everyone he wanted to copy) was a bonus.

Stories with such a hero in the leading role are not about the hero themselves. Quite often, the hero doesn’t change much during the story, they have no need to. They are what they are and they know it, there’s no reason for them to second-guess their motives or come to terms with being heroes. Instead, such a story focuses on challenging the hero’s skills, on making them go all out and fight for a good cause. It’s about the cause, about another character who needs saving (but, please, not too many damsels here), about a villain who is clearly evil and needs to be stopped before something truly horrible happens. Indiana Jones is such a hero. Sherlock Holmes is one. They’re not looking for a reason to be heroic, it’s just part of their regular work.

If you create a mercenary who travels the world to fight where it is necessary, you have a hero like that. If you have a prince (fairy tale or else) who does heroic deeds for the deeds’ sake, you also have a hero like that.

Some achieve greatness. Some people become heroes through their own free will, because their surroundings push them to it. That is what you find often in literature, because it allows for the growth of the main character. The natural hero, the one born great, doesn’t have growth, but we like it when the main character at the end of the story is different from the same character at the beginning. We have past generations of authors to thank for that, because at some point, it became a rule that a hero needed to learn something from what happened to them. That growth was an intricate part of the story.

Stories ranging from simple ‘slice of life’ stuff to the great epics contain heroes like that. Heroes who begin the story as a regular person and become heroes through their own choices and deeds. And that is an important part: their own choices. The hero of this type, the one who achieves greatness, has a say in it. They get to decide whether or not they are heroic. They see something they can’t accept and become heroes to change it. They are drawn into an unwanted situation and rise above it out of their own will. They change themselves to change the world around them.

Because of that, these stories revolve around the hero and what they do or why they do it. They give the hero room to make mistakes, to make wrong decisions, trust the wrong people, believe the wrong lines. As long, that is, as the hero at some point realizes they’ve been wrong and strives to undo the damage they did. That is important. A hero doesn’t just recognize a mistake, they also do all they can to undo it or at least minimize the damage done through that wrong decision. And the story, despite all other plot points, is about the hero and their growth.

A simple citizen who goes up against authorities, because they believe a law or an action is wrong, a teenager who confronts the bullies in their school, or a woman challenging the status quo are heroes like that. Many different stories can be spun about them, but they will all inevitably see an everyman rise to the status of a hero.

Some have greatness thrust upon them. There is a shorter name for that kind of hero: the chosen one. Especially YA novels seem to have a fondness for them, as successful franchises like Harry Potter or The Hunger Games show. Those heroes are chosen by fate, in essence. It might be through a prophecy, it might be through a seemingly human agent, it might be through just being there at the right (or wrong) time. They have no say in it, they make no choice. The choice is made for them.

Chosen one stories usually feature a world which has something severely wrong about it. Maybe, it’s a dystopian regime, maybe it’s an extremely powerful wizard in the wings, maybe it’s something else. There’s always something everyone fears, but nobody goes up against. And this is the first big problem with chosen one stories: to justify why only this one person can go up against the wrong. Do they have special powers? Why are they ready to challenge the status quo? Why are they able to and everyone else is not? It’s often hard to justify.

Chosen one stories also revolve a lot around the chosen one. Most of them at first balk at their position and don’t want to be chosen. They’re afraid of the task or just neutral towards the problem they’re supposed to solve. So the story must bring in motivation for them, must make the problem a personal one, so the chosen one finally gets up and going.

The chosen one usually faces very bad odds. Of course, those born heroes would laugh at the odds (and probably would look good while doing so), but the chosen one is not born as a hero. They’re born as an everyman. The only difference between them and the heroes who achieve greatness is that they do not get a choice. Someone, usually fate, makes the choice for them, no matter what they want. That might be a reason why adolescents like those chosen one stories so much: they still have a lot of choices made for them, not knowing how much of a pain in the ass it is when you have to make all the decisions yourself. If someone else can be chosen for something great, then so can they.

A chosen one can be the child whose coming was foreseen centuries ago or just that one teen who is not like all of the others. What makes them chosen ones is that at some point someone or something chose them to do what nobody else can do.

Those are the three types of heroes you will find in stories. They may follow the hero’s or the heroine’s journey. They may be men or women or furry aliens from Alpha Centauri. They’re all heroes, though.