More Than The Sum of Their Powers
One of the fun things about speculative fiction is that you can create characters who have abilities far outside of our current human 'normal'. Our characters can be mutant superheros, aliens, vampires, genetically or technologically enhanced, or whatever else we can dream up. Given that this is so far outside the realms of our everyday experience that there's an immediate temptation to give your character some cool powers and leave it at that. This pattern is also true for characters whose main trait is 'being the chosen one' or 'the first/only X'.
I think one of the reasons people complain about the 'chosen one' trope is that this single title takes over the entire character, leaving little room for anything else. Now, if you have a character who was selected for this role at birth and spends their whole life preparing (think Ursula Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan), that is another matter, as the process of the character's identity being totally consumed by their role is the focus of their character development.
For other characters, even if the character is born with the trait that makes them special, that trait is not the be-all end-all of their life experience. They will have a sense of their standing in socioeconomic class, their culture and ethnicity, their gender, their family relationships, and their role in the community among many other things. They will have their own personality, which may or may not mesh with the personalities of their friends, family and community, or with with the social expectations placed on them.
This is also important in terms of developing secondary characters. Particularly in genre fiction, these characters fill specific niches-- the love interest, the socially adept one, the one whose cool power balances out the main character. Thinking about the other key aspects of how this character views themselves (and how other characters may view them) gives these characters greater realism. It's also an excellent source of subplots, and keeps these characters from seeming creepily obsessed with the protagonist (unless, of course, one of these characters is a stalker-- in that case, carry on).
I think one of the reasons people complain about the 'chosen one' trope is that this single title takes over the entire character, leaving little room for anything else. Now, if you have a character who was selected for this role at birth and spends their whole life preparing (think Ursula Le Guin's The Tombs of Atuan), that is another matter, as the process of the character's identity being totally consumed by their role is the focus of their character development.
For other characters, even if the character is born with the trait that makes them special, that trait is not the be-all end-all of their life experience. They will have a sense of their standing in socioeconomic class, their culture and ethnicity, their gender, their family relationships, and their role in the community among many other things. They will have their own personality, which may or may not mesh with the personalities of their friends, family and community, or with with the social expectations placed on them.
This is also important in terms of developing secondary characters. Particularly in genre fiction, these characters fill specific niches-- the love interest, the socially adept one, the one whose cool power balances out the main character. Thinking about the other key aspects of how this character views themselves (and how other characters may view them) gives these characters greater realism. It's also an excellent source of subplots, and keeps these characters from seeming creepily obsessed with the protagonist (unless, of course, one of these characters is a stalker-- in that case, carry on).
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