Exercise: The Chosen Ones
Writing Exercise #1
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Welcome to the new and improved Writing Exercises at Gibberish! In the past, these exercises took the form of weekly microfiction (typically 500 words or less) designed to help me hone my creativity. This year, in order to free up space for longer form fiction, my writing exercises will be reduced to a monthly schedule, but I will be more deliberate about what exactly my exercises are, you know, exercising.
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While exercises will be slow in coming, if you have ideas you think I should explore, feel free to let me know in the comments!
Enjoy!
Prompt: A world where a “chosen one” prophecy puts too much pressure on young boys coming of age
Under the moonlit sky, south of the Great Mountains, next to a river gentle and wide, sat the village of Chergard. Its houses stretched over a hill, with a hall at the crest and a small palisade enclosing it. To the north, connected to the village by a short path, was a longhouse the villagers of Chergard had come to call the Chosen-House.
In the Chosen-House, trying to sleep, Karl tried to pretend he didn’t hear Jan sniffling in the bunk next to him. Karl squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his head deeper into his pillow. Jan was wearing his full armor, his helmet and sword lying in a straight line on his bed—he was kneeling in front of his bed, praying and sniffling. As he stifled sobs his armored body clattered like silverware in a bucket.
Karl could see, even with his eyes closed, Jan’s platinum blonde hair glowing in the moonlight, his ornate armor shining with purpose. Almost since the beginning, Karl had confided to his friend Stanislas that if anyone was born to be Chosen, it was Jan.
Stanislas would always shrug. Karl wondered how Stanislas could shrug so easily. Everyone knew that a young boy not 13 would be called to save the village of Chergard. A wandering prophet had visited the city in great-grandfathers day, and very shortly thereafter all the twelve year old boys were kept in the Chosen-House to train and await their potential choosing. Father spent a year in the Chosen-House, and Karl was doing his year now.
Stanislas. Karl rolled over in his bed to observe his friend. He was inert, motionless, his breath coming in easy rhythms. How could he be so cavalier? Chergard needed someone! In the last few weeks, many of the villagers were agitated. Berlitz village, not four days walk east from Chergard, was rumored to have been sacked completely with no survivors. Stanislas asked how the rumors got to Chergard. Karl couldn’t answer.
Karl didn’t want to think about Berlitz village, or Jan’s weeping, or Stanislas’ carelessness. He just didn’t want to be awake. That was all that mattered. Sleep…just sleep…
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The old Monk was standing at the foot of Jan’s bunk, pounding his gnarled wooden staff against the floor. Karl woke with a start, Stanislas sleepily joined the wakeful. Jan clattered awake, he had fallen asleep kneeling by his bed.
“Wh—No! No!” he shouted as soon as he was conscious, “It’s not today! It’s not today, I promise!”
The old monk raised his bushy grey eyebrows. “Happy Birthday, Jan. Your parents have sponsored a feast in your honor. There will be no training today.”
Some of the boys exchanged happy looks and whispered to each other through stifled smiles. Karl looked at Stanislas, who didn’t look awake, even though he was sitting up.
Jan rose to his feet. “No, something is wrong—it’s not the day, you have to believe me!”
“I think your mother would remember on which day her son was born, don’t you?” the monk smirked.
“Please, abbot! I just need more time! I am ready, I am ready!” Jan pleaded. “What happens? How will I know?”
“You’re thirteen years young now, Jan. You’re a skilled warrior and a strong lad, your future will be plenty bright. Your life ent over just because some light didn’t shine down from heaven.” The monk rolled his hand on his wrist, as if to say get on with it.
“But I must be the chosen one! I’m the strongest! I’ve passed all the tests! It can’t be the day!”
The monk sighed. “I’m sorry son—you ent it. The prophet said it’d be a lad not thirteen.”
“I know what he said!” Jan shouted, slicing his arm through the air. “He was wrong! He has to be wrong!”
“Come on now, lad, enough is enough. You’d think the choosing of The One would be obvious. Step down, Jan. You’ve had a full year of waiting. Let one of these other boys have a turn.” Tears welled in Jan’s eyes, and Karl watched him sob as the old monk wrapped him in a fatherly embrace.
Karl whispered to Stanislas, “How many boys d’you think he’s had to break this news to?”
Stanislas shrugged, and whispered, “All of them.”
The old monk walked out of the Chosen-House with Jan clanking and clattering away. Karl pressed his face against the window, and watched the monk present Jan to his parents, who smiled in a way that didn’t reach their eyes as they embraced their son after a year away.
Karl stepped outside the banquet hall. The noise, the partying—nothing felt right. Jan was heartbroken, his parents were strained, Karls own family had a weird energy to them, as if Jan’s failure meant an opportunity for him to become the Chosen.
A trumpet blast sounded in the distance. Karl froze, a chill flashed through his bones. Fear gripped him—did he really hear it, was that really a trumpet blast? Could it be just wind through the trees? But if he waited for a second sound, it could be too late. He rushed inside, and found the only person he could think of who would know: Stanislas was staring absently into a plate of food.
Karl gripped him by the shoulder: “Stan, I heard a trumpet, I think!”
Stan looked up at him: “Where? When?”
“Outside just now.”
“Show me.” Stan and Karl rushed back outside. A distant thunder rumbled, though the skies were clear. Stan smacked me on the shoulder: “Get to the Chosen house! Run! I’ll tell everyone here!”
Stan rushed back inside, and I took off at a sprint to the Chosen House. The thunder resolved into the trampling of hooves, the shouts of warriors. The gates crashed down; horses were everywhere; there was fire, shouting, screaming; Karl fell; the world went dark.
Karl awoke in the back of a wagon. He looked carefully around—he was being pulled by the invaders. He was bound hand and foot. He looked desperately back at Chergard—all he could see was a wisp of smoke.
Tears filled Karl’s eyes. “I will return,” he whispered.
(1,040 words)
Thank you for reading!
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What do you think of the “chosen one” narrative device?
What’s your favorite fantasy story you’ve read on substack?
If you were at a viking-style banquet, what dish would you reach for first?
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoy! Paid subscribers, don’t forget to check out the Craft Chat about this exercise!
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Thank you and God bless!
The Chosen Hero is a classic trope, and like many classic tropes, can get cliched; but like most cliches, there's a reason it's popular.
There's also a subtler, more Catholic variation on the theme, relating more to Divine Providence. Consider:
You. are. The One! You are The Big Screaming Deal! You're the Most Important Person in the world because it is Your Destiny to save the whole world! You are Jesus without the humility, you're Neo, you're totally unique and even better than them because you are You!
vs.
"My heart tells me Gollum still has some part to play. For good or ill." When Frodo is chosen by Eru Iluvitar, it isn't spelled out for him with writing on the wall or signs in the heavens. It was all by design from the beginning and that becomes very apparent by the end, but you don't know what the design is as you carry it out – it's different being in the story, than telling it – all the chosen ones can do is, like Bilbo, stick to your duty however painful, and Providence becomes clear in hindsight (or in a pinch when you really, truly need it). Also: it's not just one, we're all chosen for a definite purpose. "He knows what He is about," as Cardinal Newman said.
All that being said, as a storytelling trope…
I heard an interesting take on it, once, in a videogame fanfiction of all things. The hero "wants to be the one who fights for justice, wants to be the one who" stops the big bad, etc. But in the sequel, it turns out that he has a long lost older brother, who was supposed to be "the one" before him only to be forgotten… Until the antagonist finds and rehabilitates him, leading to a rivalry between the brothers, resent of their father on the older brother's part, anger on the father's part against the antagonist for his influence on his "dead" son, and pressure on the younger brother to carry out his father's vengeance. In the end, when the younger son has stopped the antagonist but is grappling with whether to go through with his father's murderous wish, the older brother rescues him and – seeing the younger brother's moral peril – comes to an epiphany: that their father is flawed and human, and that he must forgive him for that, and that it's okay that his younger brother is "the one" so long as they both remember not to blame others.
(Now, the downside to all that is it would probably be challenging to follow the fanfic without already knowing the characters and plots of the couple of games in question. It's easier to retell it in the abstract, although in context there are some fascinating little tidbits like the older brother contrasting the broken promises of how he would save everyone and be looked up to etc. with how "now I know what I would have become" instead.)
For my part, off and on over the years I've kicked around an idea, a question: What if the Chosen Hero went rogue and sided with the forces of darkness? Not so much in a gritty, there are no real heroes, modern superhero comics sort of way. More like, would the legendary mystical sword of ambiguous sentience have to decide between the hero-who-wasn't and some ordinary guy who has to try to stop him and save the world from him (or maybe even save him)? Would it turn out that the enemy's lieutenant who dogs the protagonist at every turn was meant to be the hero, and that you're nobody (except that you're the person in the right place and the right time to try to make a difference)? I feel like that kind of plot would work great if, granting the premise, it was played as straight as possible. Not a deconstruction of heroism, but an illumination of what's really important in heroism.
(Now that I think about it though Star Wars also kinda-sorta did something like that, with the prequels turning out that Anakin is "the chosen one" but Anakin ending up becoming Darth Vader and all. But it played out so slowly I don't even really think of it as a reversal of the Chosen Hero trope. Luke is already established as the hero and the "Darth Vader is Luke's Father" hero-villain connection trope is already established, by the time we get to discover the minor side point that Darth Vader / Anakin was supposed to be oh so Special, buried somewhere under all the villain's Dark Side scheming to conspiracize his way into control of the galaxy.)
Anyhow – I had a particular story idea I drafted that concept into, but, it's one of my more overwrought story ideas from when I was younger and had different struggles in life than now, and I may or may not decide to revisit it someday. It's certainly a premise I'd like to see a good writer play with.
Here is my Chosen story,
https://billferguson.substack.com/p/the-chosen