Bringing in the Outsider: An Exclusive Guest Post from Jessica Goodman, Author of The Legacies 

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One of the best ways to introduce conflict into a story is to bring an outsider into a totally insular world, one that rarely accepts new people. I’ve done this in most of my books, writing a socially awkward but fast-as-hell cross country star in They’ll Never Catch Us and a townie who gets to go to an affluent New England summer camp because her parents work there in The Counselors. In my most recent young adult thriller, The Legacies, which follows a group of high society teens in New York City as they join the storied Legacy Club, our outsider is a senior named Tori Tasso. She’s a scholarship kid at a prestigious prep school who’s earned a spot in the club under suspicious circumstances and is determined to make it through a rigorous week of activities in order to gain access.  

When I began writing this book, I knew that I wanted to tell this story partially through Tori’s perspective because she, as the outsider, is able to see the Legacy Club and its larger-than-life members with a unique outlook that the other teens cannot. She’s able to point out that it’s definitely not normal that all of the other kids are born knowing they will one day join the club and that they never have to worry about paying for college. She is baffled by the fact that all of her peers seem to understand social norms that are foreign to her, like how to interact at a cocktail party with CEOs and power players, or that, of course, you’d never wear Doc Marten boots to a fancy luncheon. In a sense, she’s a stand-in for the reader, who is also trying to understand this strange new world. 

The other students that Tori interacts with — Bernie, Isobel and Skyler — are so caught up in their own community and don’t know anything different than their own experiences, so they don’t think anything is odd about the way they live (private jets are the norm, as are second homes at the beach and endless amounts of designer goods). They cannot fathom how their lives might look to someone not in their inner circle. But Tori gives them the perspective to expand their worldview and to understand that not everyone has their same outlook on life — or questionable morals.  

Tori blows up their sense of normalcy by pointing out all of the hypocrisies in the Legacy Club, ones that readers might want to do, too. 

But in exchange, these students also affect the way Tori views her own life. At times, her values become compromised. Her priorities change and her understanding of how the world works crystallizes, for better or worse.  

Writing a character like this helps to create tension and suspense, especially in a murder mystery like The Legacies, which tells the story through multiple points of view. (Here, we are also privy to Bernie and Isobel’s perspectives.) This is a great way to reveal secrets and clues to the reader but not to every other character. As one character uncovers a shocking realization, the plot moves forward and momentum picks up, but there is still a sense of discovery as readers wait for the other characters to learn the truth about what has happened.  

The tricky part is knowing when to deploy certain bits of information and to whom. But when a writer gets these details right, there’s no more satisfying feeling.