I love the Hero's Journey. I'm a sucker for a classic story about heroes and adventure. Stories of protagonists who achieve impossible goals but only after suffering crushing defeats and almost giving up hope several times along the way.
I don't, however, agree with the common claim that the Hero's Journey is a universal plot structure that every story adheres to, or that it's the only way to tell a story. For one thing, the Hero's Journey is an often western story structure, and there are non-Western, non-colonial story structures, some of which predate the Hero's Journey. And there are even popular Western stories that do not follow the Hero's Journey.
There are better discussions out there than I'm equipped to lead about alternatives to the Hero's Journey. But I do think, at the very least, the classic Hero's Journey beats that we know so well can stand to be flipped around occasionally. Lately, I've been thinking about the Refusal of the Call beat and the way it tends to appear in my stories...particularly the way it doesn't often appear as a "refusal" in my stories.
What Is the Hero's Journey?
Joseph Campbell, the American author who popularized the concept of the Hero's Journey, described it as:
A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow boons on his fellow man.
Campbell broke this journey down into three acts: departure, initiation, and return. Campbell's original structure had seventeen beats across those three acts, but I learned more based on Christopher Vogler's 2007 revision, which truncates this into twelve beats:
- Ordinary World
- Call to Adventure
- Refusal of the Call
- Meeting the Mentor
- Crossing the First Threshold
- Tests, Allies, and Enemies
- The Inmost Cave
- The Ordeal
- Reward
- The Road Back
- The Resurrection
- Return With the Elixir
But for today, we don't have to worry about all twelve. Let's just talk about the Refusal.
Refusal of the Call
Your hero has seen a glimpse of the extraordinary. They know there is more to the world than the ordinary life that they've known. But something keeps them from taking the next step.
Usually, it's fear. Adventures are, by their nature, scary. It's more comfortable to go on with the ordinary. And the hero might not feel that they're ready yet. Sometimes it's obligations in their normal life that hold them back. Sure, it's an ordinary life, but it's their ordinary life. They have family, jobs, hobbies and interests. They can't just drop those things on a whim! Or -- as anyone who has ever played D&D can tell you -- the hero might not be interested in the call until they know what's in it for them.
Whatever the reason, they need an extra push in order to actually begin their adventure. And from a Doylist perspective, there's a good reason for this. You want your story to have tension and conflict. Push and pull. It's just not as interesting to tell a story that goes, "Someone asked the hero if they want to go on an adventure, and they said, 'Yeah, might as well.' And then they did it and it all went super well!"
The Refusal also tells you what the hero has at stake. What they're afraid to lose. What they care about, what they're afraid of. And it does this very well. There's a reason storytellers have been using this method for thousands of years. There's a reason why I eat it up every time.
...Unless Your Hero Wants To?
What I've noticed in my own writing, however, is that I tend to write a lot of very willing protagonists. Sometimes a little too eager about the adventure they're going on. Their reasons vary depending on their personality and their story, but at the end of the day, most of my heroes want to go on that adventure. Which means sometimes they skip that Refusal beat to get to what they think is "the good stuff."
But. That doesn't mean that the story has to lack tension and conflict if you have a willing protagonist. And sometimes you can tell the audience something vital about your hero in the way they accept the call. What are they hoping for? What do they think the call will give them? And why are they so eager to throw themselves into danger to get it?
So let's talk about a few alternative beats to the Refusal of the Call for those gung-ho heroes within our stories.
The Call Refuses You
Your hero is itching to go on an adventure. They're positively bored with their normal life. When they see an opportunity for an adventure, they jump at it -- only to be stopped at the door. "Sorry, kid," the adventure says. "Not you."
So what then? Does your character try to prove themselves? Sneak their way in? Or do they go home dejected until the spy a little glimmer of hope and seize on it? And before we get to that point, why is your hero rejected from the adventure initially? Some flaw of theirs, or is it someone else's bias? Or someone who really doesn't want them here? Maybe the villain is working behind the scenes and knows that if your hero sets out on this path, they're done for.
In Chronicles of Luminhaven, a fantasy school series I'm currently working on, one of the protagonists -- Auri Thistlehawk -- desperately wants to go to Luminhaven Preparatory School for Legends. She's been dreaming of it her whole life. She's willing to defy her own parents to sneak out to the entrance trials and secure herself a spot.
But when they announce those who passed the entrance trials, Auri's name isn't among them. She fails. Her parents, who very much did not want her attending Luminhaven, are all too happy to take her back home and forget about the whole thing. That is until someone shows up at the door a few days later to say, "Changed our mind! Pack your bags, kid, you're in!"
Auri, as an extremely eager thirteen year old, isn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. But everyone else has to wonder: what changed in the past few days? What makes the school who rejected her so eager have her there now?
In this case, it's still a refusal of the call, but your hero isn't the one to refuse the call. And the fact that you don't know the motivations behind those who did can add an extra sense of suspense. This is also a great option when you have a sort of plucky underdog of a protagonist. Show the reader how determined they are!
Answering The Wrong Call
Just because your hero answers a call to adventure doesn't mean that they answer the call that's right for them. Maybe your hero is promised adventure and glory by the villain or told that there is a dire need for them, that the fate of the world rests on them, all the while hiding their ulterior motives.
Or maybe it's not so nefarious as all that. Maybe the hero is just so focused on what they want that they don't realize what they need. The point of this one is that the hero thinks they know what will help them, whether through their own biases or through external manipulation, and will have to reckon with the way they got it wrong as the story progresses. They may have to adjust their expectations, or they may have to pivot in their mission entirely.
I've been reading Wildwood by Colin Meloy, which I think has a great example of this in the character of Curtis. Mind you, this happens a bit after Curtis and Prue answer the call to adventure. But there are a number of calls that the two find inside the Wildwood, and not all of them are the right ones.
Curtis finds himself captured by the soldiers of the charming but ruthless Dowager Governess. When he meets her, however, she's actually kind to him. She feeds him and clothes him, she listens to him, she treats him like he's special. She "shows him the world." And she explains her side of the story: that she was wronged and exiled, and she now intends to tame the Wildwood and bring it under an order that would be good for everyone. She asks Curtis to join her, to be her second-in-command. Even her heir. Even her son.
And he does, because this is the boy who still draws superheroes and admires stories of bravery and heroism. He helps her and fights with her...until the moment he accidentally stumbles on her true intent. At that point, he has to reckon with everything he's been helping her to achieve and how to make right his mistakes. And he suffers the consequences of that.
Another example of a protagonist answering the wrong call is Del from my elemental fantasy adventure in progress, Fox Eyes. Del was bonded at birth to a nature sprite that takes on the form of a shower of sparks. When Del is upset, or afraid, or a little bit clumsy, fires tend to start. Worse, her first memory is waking up in a house that was on fire as the only survivor of that house. She has lived her whole life with the weight of killing her family on her shoulders.
So when she runs into Promise, a wilder who seeks to find her uncle's severed sprite, Del sees a chance to be rid of her sprite once and for all. She thinks that getting rid of her sprite will fix all her problems, and she joins Promise, though she lies about her intentions. But is being severed from her sprite what Del actually needs? And if she realizes along the way that she actually can harness this power, how does that change her journey?
Answering a Call You Don't Understand
This one is similar to answering the wrong call, and it actually happens in most stories even when there is a refusal of the call. The hero thinks they know what they're getting into. They think they know what they're setting out to do and how to achieve it. But the truth will inevitably surprise them along the way.
This offers the opportunity for a somewhat later refusal of the call. When the character realizes that they didn't know what they were getting themselves into, they might stop and say, "Wait, this isn't what I signed up for!" Again, similar to Curtis in Wildwood. I think the difference here is that in Answering a Call You Don't Understand, you might be on the right track but you don't have a map -- or the map you have is flawed. In Answering the Wrong Call, you're sent in the wrong direction entirely.
I think this is the one that best fits Celin, the protagonist of my debut novel, The Wounds of Wisdom. In Wounds, Celin manifests the ability to heal others by taking their pain onto herself. This is considered a Wisdom in her kingdom, and Wisdoms are highly valued. She is sent to court to train with the other Wise Ones, and she's quite excited about it. She's grown up as the illegitimate daughter of a duke and a blacksmith, the granddaughter of a foreigner. She's grown up with dreams of becoming a knight that, until now, she did not think she would ever be able to achieve.
It would be a disservice to Celin to say that she doesn't expect people at Aslemor to be prejudiced against her for a number of reasons. She's grown up with that prejudice even in her small town, and she knows that prejudice is what drove her mother away from her relationship with the man she loved. But Celin still has an idealism about it all at the beginning of the story, that there is a nobility in being used for good, that she can prove herself worthy enough and be accepted as a knight. And she does have a naivety and an insistence on believing the best in people.
The actual journey she goes on is very different, as the world of Aslemor is very different than she expected. She still believes in the core of the call she answered, but she has to reckon with how wrong she was about what answering it would entail.
Promise of Fox Eyes also might fit this bill. Promise sets out to save her uncle. They're told the mother who abandoned them is the key to getting into the realm of the elementals, where she'll allegedly find her uncle's sprite. But Promise isn't interested in getting to know her mother. They only care about saving Zire. And they don't realize how much of the call they've set on will relate back to her parents and the history she doesn't want to know about.
At the end of the day, the Refusal of the Call is still a great beat and a fun way to have your character respond to their first call to adventure (or their fiftieth...maybe that's why they're refusing it now). But if you want an alternative for a hero who is a bit more ready to go, these are a few of my favorite options.
Do you have a beat of the Hero's Journey that you love to shake up? Give me a recommendation and maybe I'll write another of these "other options" blogs.
