Creating a Foil for Your Character & More

My goal for this article is to cover all aspects of creating a foil for your character (or characters): what a foil is, how to create a foil, and ways to use a foil in a story.

Using Foils in Your Story

What is a Foil?

A foil is a character that contrasts another character. They’re most often used to spotlight aspects of a character that are either flawed or exceptional.

For example, in Up, Charles Muntz is a foil for the main character, Carl Fredericksen. They have similarities (age-related infirmities, gender, race, and interest in exploring), but the explorer has let his obsession with clearing his name and reputation take over his life. To the point where he is willing to sacrifice other people and creatures to reach that goal. Carl realizes that he is not willing to sacrifice his humanity for his promise to his wife, and the contrast between the two makes Charles more villainous and Carl more heroic.

Russell provides a different kind of foil to Carl. Russell is young, enthusiastic, energetic, positive, caring, and rather ignorant in many ways. He acts as a foil to Carl’s age, tiredness, cynicism, grouchiness, and knowledge. This contrast helps highlight what Carl has lost (everything Russell has that he doesn’t) but also puts a strong emphasis on what they have in common and what Carl has to offer Russell: caring and knowledge.

So, just remember: a character can have many foils in a story.

How to Create a Foil

To be honest, you are going to inadvertently create many foils in your story simply because if you are trying to make realistic characters, they are going to have differences that get highlighted through their actions. If you want to deliberately create a foil to spotlight specific traits, here’s one way to go about it.

1. Pick the character you want to create a foil for.

Most commonly, we focus on the main character of our story, but if you’re working with subplots, a foil can be a handy way to create conflict for supporting or minor characters. But you need to pick someone to get started.

Technically, you could do this in reverse: create the foil and then create the character (since they’re foils for each other). That said, that feels horribly backwards in my head. I highly recommend making the important character first, then, the foil.

2. Make a list of the character’s characteristics.

Once you have the character you want to foil, make things easy for yourself by listing out that character’s traits. Looks, behaviors, etc. Being able to grab options from a list will make step 4 much simpler.

3. Pick the trait or traits you want to highlight through contrast.

Are you showcasing a flaw or a strength? Or both? The answer may depend on how you plan to use your foil in the plot (see the “Ways to Use a Foil in a Story” section for more options there).

4. Make a new character using the remaining characteristics in the list.

You know, the list describing the character you want to foil. That list. Use the items left on that to create your foil character. You don’t have to use all of them, but if the two characters have a lot in common except this one thing, it makes that one thing really stand out.

OR you can do the opposite. Make the item you want to stand out the commonality, and make the rest different. Either way, the item you picked will be highlighted.

And you’re done. That’s all it really takes to create a foil. Granted, you still have to integrate the character into your plot to actually make use of him or her, but now you have the foil and can do that.

Ways to Use a Foil in a Story

Now that you have the foil, let’s talk about ways to use it. The 4 most comon uses for foils are to…

1. show the difference between the villain and the hero,
2. create plot conflicts through jealousy or anger/irritation,
3. force the main character to an epiphany/change, or
4. make the character seem more or less human (by highlighting flaws or a lack of flaws).

In fact, foils can do all these things in the same story because the story can have multiple foils, and foils are characters, too. So they can have multiple uses and complications. These can be large, main-plot-level complications. Or small things like someone at work who annoys them (Ever hear the one about hating people with the same flaws as us? There’s truth in that.).

Characters can even be foils to themselves via flashbacks or time traveling (Such as in A Christmas Carol). So there are many, many ways to use your foil.

My biggest recommendation is to focus on the plot over the foil. If you’ve made a good foil, and you use them well in the plot with realistic characterization, the characteristics you built in will take care of the rest.

Happy writing!
-Em