While an antagonist is someone whose needs are in direct opposition with the needs of your novel’s protagonist, a foil character is someone whose strengths, weaknesses, personality traits, values, or social contexts are the opposite of another character’s. Many antagonists in literature are foil characters, but literary foils can represent a whole range of people across your story world. What’s the difference between a foil character and an antagonist? We’ll talk more about ways to create your own foil character in writing below. You can also use literary foils to highlight why your protagonist makes the choices that they do, or to put those choices into context within their society. The supporting character serves to highlight the honesty inherent to the main character’s personality, making it a stronger part of who they are than if you had simply told the reader that the character never lies. The two characters that are being contrasted might have different values, worldviews, backgrounds, or ideas, and showing them side by side draws the reader’s attention to these opposing traits.įor example, if you want to show that your protagonist is always honest, their literary foil might be a best friend who constantly lies to get themselves out of scrapes. The word “foil character” (sometimes called a character foil) comes from foil backing on jewellery, which was used to reflect light and draw more attention to the gem’s shine. For example: a jaded, world-weary love interest can make your main character look more wide-eyed and innocent by contrast. Foil characters are used to highlight specific traits in other characters, or to make another character more believable. A foil character is a secondary character in a work of fiction who’s used to juxtapose and contrast against another - typically the protagonist.
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