An insider story has a protagonist who is already part of the world in which the narrative takes place. These stories often involve protagonists grappling with a changed understanding of that world and its moral underpinnings, as well as the challenges of adapting skills from one world to another.
Few filmmakers are as skilled at turning internal conflict into chest-convulsively taut drama as Michael Mann. His first big hit, The Insider, took a ripped-from-the-headlines story of tobacco companies and corporate corruption and made it compelling for audiences everywhere. The film’s success shows that an insider hero and an outsider villain can make for a fascinating, powerful story.
The movie’s hero, Wigand, is a former employee of the tobacco industry who discovers a massive conspiracy and leaks it to CBS news, risking his family’s safety, lawsuits and potential jail time in the process. But he is not alone, as the icy and wise reporter Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) is his constant ally.
Outsider heros, on the other hand, usually have to confront a series of external challenges. The first book in LeGuin’s Earthsea trilogy, A Wizard of Earthsea, features an outsider hero called Ged who is sent away to a school for magic, where he must learn to accept the necessity of caution and humility in any exercise of power – lessons that his headstrong teenage self is reluctant to accept. The second book in the series, The Tombs of Atuan, also features an outsider hero, Arha, a young woman who is summoned to a magical island and must learn to temper her power with wisdom.