Do you think reluctant heroes are cliche or overdone? If so, what might make one better in your opinion?
I can definitely tell you reluctant heroes are going to be a part of literature, since it's far from a cliché, you meet them in real life all the time, especially right now. What makes a good one? Let's start with the more common / average the character, the better. He doesn't need to save humanity, all he needs to do is being put on a position where he must overcome his worst fears, it should go way beyond stepping out of his comfort zone.
Just try to avoid writing them in cliched ways. The hero is archetypal, it can't become cliched, and that included various kinds of heroes, but there are definitely hackneyed ways of writing stories about them. When I'm developing a subject that could easily shade over into cliche territory I try to find fresh ways to approach it, often by thinking deeply about ways it's been covered n the past, end especially way back when it first began, before it was done in cliched ways. I research all around the peripheries, try to find similar ideas or ideas I can mix in to give it a powerful and more unusual feel. Especially I consider what kind of ideas or feelings are at the basis of it, what kind of real-life episodes might give rise to the archetype, and see if I've ever experienced them myself or know somebody who has. That way you can draw largely form personal experience that's going to be different from anybody else's (probably). Have you ever done anything that afterwards people thought was heroic? Why did you do it, and what were you thinking at the time? Usually people just say they had to do what they did, there was no choice in the matter, and anybody would have done the same.
