On Contrasts
Opposites, Antagonists, and Foils
Categories:
[Explore]
Tags:
[Characters],
[Motivations]
Once you have some of your ideas in place, a very effective way to develop the rest of your characters and your plot is through the use of contrasts. In literary theory, something that is the opposite is called a foil.
So if you have a main character but you are not sure where to go from there, give them a foil. This can be their enemy (the antagonist) or it can be their friend. Pick something (or a couple of things) about your character and figure out what the opposite would be, and then give that to their foil. If your main character is very silly, their foil could be very serious. If they are strong, their foil could be very quick or clever instead. If they always follow the rules, their foil can be sneaky and always cheat.
Whatever the thing that is opposite about them and however they fit into your story, a foil will create tension and drive the plot and character development forward. Even if the character and their foil are on the same team and want basically the same thing, giving them different motivations and having them approach situations in different ways will still make your story more interesting.
The other thing that you can do with contrasts is to use them to point out the things that are actually the same about two different things. For example, in The Wild Robot, the titular robot is an advanced piece of technology on a remote island full of wild animals. At first glance, these are absolute opposites, but as the story unfolds it becomes clear that despite being so different, the way that a robot will always follow their programming and an animal will always follow their instincts actually makes them very alike in that way. They have, in other words, more in common with each other than either has with the largely absent humans of the story (who are both technologically advanced and animals with instincts).
So whether you use contrasts to set up an epic face off between a hero and a villain, show how two different friends can disagree about how to do something, make your characters distinct from each other, or to point out deeper ideas that connect the part of your story together, playing with contrasts can do a lot in your stories.